Vacheron Constantin has marked the Overseas collection’s 30th anniversary with an Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin in white gold with an azure blue dial. It’s a lighter, less saturated shade than the deep blue the collection is known for and introduced back in 2016. Limited to 200 pieces, the watch pairs a full perpetual calendar and moonphase with a case just 8.1mm thick and powered by one of the thinnest movements of its kind, the calibre 1120 QP/1.
The Vacheron Constantin Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin features a new and lighter azure blue dial and an
integrated bracelet with links influenced by the Maltese Cross design.
The Overseas’ own story starts with Vacheron’s response to the quartz crisis, the 222, designed by Jorg Hysek and launched in 1977. Although short lived, it was a sports watch built to answer exactly the kind of existential threat that also produced Gerald Genta’s Royal Oak and Nautilus at rival houses. The 222 was phased out in the mid-1980s (although it has since become an icon), but nearly a decade later, under new ownership by the Vendôme Group (now known as Richemont), Vacheron Constantin’s design chief Vincent Kaufmann and outside designer Dino Modolo revived its sports watch for a new generation, launching the Overseas in 1996 as, in the brand’s own words, an invitation to travel.
If the Overseas has a single most-loved decade, it’s this most recent one. The 2016 relaunch made it the last Vacheron Constantin collection to move to fully in-house movements, retiring the outside Jaeger-LeCoultre and Frédéric Piguet base ebauche the earlier generations had relied on, and introduced both the tool-free interchangeable strap system and the original deep azure dial that this anniversary watch now reworks.
The new Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin is powered by Calibre 1120 QP/1: 276. Its components
are compressed into 4.05mm, with a 22-carat gold rotor engraved with the Overseas compass rose.
What makes the new watch a genuine technical statement, not just a new dial colour, it’s the calibre 1120 QP/1 underneath. A perpetual calendar has to deal with the odd number of days per month throughout the year, so for example, April has 30 days and February sometimes has 29, so it tracks leap years automatically rather than needing the periodic correction a simpler annual calendar requires.
This movement takes that a step further: it’s built to recognise that the year 2100, despite being divisible by four, is not a leap year, since the Gregorian calendar excludes century years not divisible by 400. It’s a genuinely obscure calendar quirk, and building a mechanism that quietly gets it right, without any input from the wearer, is the actual mark of a serious perpetual calendar with technical prowess. That entire mechanism, together with 276 components and a 22-kt gold rotor engraved with a compass rose, fits into a movement just 4.05mm thick. Couple in Vacheron’s superlative finishing and you have the very definition of a luxury sports watch.
Author: Andrew Hildreth
Other luxury watches recently reviewed by I-M Inquisitive Minds include the Roger Dubuis Excalibur The Metamorph Merlin, the new Rolex Perpetual Padellone, and the Breitling Navitimer Chronograph Miles Davis.
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