Some hot-on-cold platinum-gold action, from the brand behind the most sophisticated (and aesthetically polarising) ‘travel’ watch of the last decade
In all my years spent covering the watch industry, I can scarcely remember anybody who has rejected the possibility of wearing Greubel Forsey completely out of hand. I use the verb ‘wear’ because, for the vast majority of us hobbyists, the idea of actually owning and collecting watches which average a sticker price of US$600,000 (give or take) is sheer insanity. But that’s the beauty of ‘Editor’s Pick’: I get to choose just how much – or in this case how little – realism I want to inject into the picture.
Much like their astronomic price tags (easily 7-8 times what you’d pay for a certain jeweller-stamped sports watch at the top of the market) , Greubel Forsey’s GMT pieces aren’t for everyone. Whereas most Swiss watch brands court the respectability that seems to accompany traditional horology, Greubel are the guys whom you can always count on to go full sicko mode: on every case, dial and movement that crosses their workbench – more Doc Brown than Louis Abraham Breguet. To my mind, the brand’s GMTs (more so than any other model) express the heart of this dynamic, where very serious, classically beautiful technique collides with a novel approach toward design and engineering, frequently bordering on the extreme.
Despite the brand’s self-effacingly simplistic name for it, the Greubel GMT is anything but your bog-standard, two-timezone watch. The eponymous complication is in fact only the first in an arsenal of other features: including a worldtimer, power reserve, fully three-dimensional globe (that rotates once every 24 hours for good measure) and an inclined tourbillon. It is, in no small part, the reason why Greubel Forsey has become so synonymous with crafting watches that wear like miniature cities suspended under glass; and the experience of, for lack of a better word, experiencing the GMT (even if only for a few hours) is akin to inhabiting the perspective of some omnipresent, far-off martian – surveying another species from space.
Unsurprisingly, the popularity and distinctiveness of the GMT means that Greubel has made multiple versions since 2011. These range from the dressier incarnations that you’d expect (cast in a range of noble metals) up to the ‘Final Edition’ – a titanium send-off of the brand’s signature collection, released in a tidy 11-piece run last August. The broad contours of this ‘5N Movement’ version are consistent with other GMTs, meaning that if you hated that design to begin with – as some people on the internet appear determined to do – this is hardly going to subvert expectations. But beyond the admittedly bulbous protrusion that displays our planet’s natural rotation (in real time) and the vague appearance of being very information-dense, the GMT remains clever, audacious and in this instance, more than a touch reminiscent of the ‘hyper-complicated watch with an extravagant movement’ niche that has dominated indie collecting these past few years.
As in previous incarnations of the GMT, the 5N version favours a movement that is obscured for the most part. This is as much a practical consideration as it is a quirk of design: with so many complications to nestle into a diameter that’s 43.5mm, the feature most visible to the naked eye is the movement’s mainplate – cast here in a pale, blushing hue of rose gold. The case technically isn’t two-tone, but that’s the comparison that has a tendency to emerge whenever I think about the 5N.
The rose gold adds warmth and contrast to what – in its most technical guise – can be an imposing mechanical exercise; and the addition of just one secondary colour opens up possibilities for all kinds of rubber and textile straps. That may sound an awful lot like misplaced enthusiasm in the broader conversation of a watch that costs as much as a two-bedroom apartment, but then again, we’re talking about what is essentially one of the most daring rethinks in how human beings perceive multiple instances of time, masquerading as a ‘travel watch’ with a self-esteem problem.
Specifications
Greubel Forsey GMT Single Edition in Platinum
Case size: 43.5 mm
Thickness: 16.14 mm
Material: Platinum
Water Resistance: 30m
Movement: Manual Winding 5 N
Functions: Hours, Minutes, Small Seconds, GMT, World Timer, Rotating globe with universal time and day-and-night, Power Reserve, Tourbillon
Frequency: 21,600 vibrations/hour
Power Reserve: 72 Hours
Strap: Rubber
This piece is available on Wristcheck.
