12 posts tagged Hodinkee

It’s not exactly breaking news that IWC has a strong partnership with the film industry. We’ve told you before about IWC’s support of both the Tribeca Film Festival and the Beijing International Film Festival, and this week IWC was in the south of France at the Cannes Film Festival.

On Monday evening, IWC hosted the For The Love of Cinema dinner, with guests including actors, directors, models, race car drivers, art luminaries, and others. It brought together individuals from the various industries with which IWC is involved, allowing Formula One drivers to mix with movie stars. 

While a private concert by Jamiroquai was certainly one of the evening’s highlights, the real focus was on the presentation of the IWC Filmmaker Award. For Cannes 2013 the award was presented to screenwriter Alan Trustman. While you might not know Trustman’s name at first, you’ve doubtless enjoyed his films, including The Thomas Crown Affair (both the original and the remake), Bullitt, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs!

Along with the award, Trustman was presented a special watch by IWC CEO Georges Kern. The special Portuguese Chronograph Classic (which you can read all about here) is engraved with the words “For the Love of Cinema” on the caseback.

-HODINKEE for IWC Schaffhausen

Not too long ago IWC announced the new Portuguese Chronograph Classic, an in-house flyback chronograph to augment the reference 3741 chronograph that so many people love. Although this year is the year of the Ingenieur family, the Portuguese Chronograph Classic is definitely worth a closer look.

The biggest development in the Portuguese Chronograph Classic is the use of the in-house caliber 89361, which has a number of awesome features. First off is the flyback mechanism, which, combined with the hacking sub-seconds register at 6 o’clock, speaks to the navigational history of the Portuguese family.

Looking at the dial you’re probably wondering where all the sub-registers are for the chronograph, and the answer is that both minutes and hours (up to 12) are nested at 12 o’clock. The caliber 89361 displays elapsed time this way to make reading the chronograph time just as intuitive as reading out the time of day. No fussing with multiple subdials here.

The 89361 is automatically winding and has a 68-hour power reserve, plus there is a date window at 3 o’clock on the Portuguese Chronograph Classic for good measure. You can see this amazing in-house movement through the expansive sapphire caseback.

The Portuguese Chronograph Classic comes in a variety of configurations. You choose from either an 18k red gold or stainless steel case and a silver-plated or slate-colored dial, offering four very different looks.

-HODINKEE for IWC Schaffhausen

This year IWC kicks off a partnership with New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival. Two very special watches are highlights of the partnership, and here we’ll take a closer look. 

Involvement with film is nothing new for IWC, but to celebrate the new partnership, the brand created a piece unique Portuguese Automatic that was auctioned at Antiquorum New York on April 10th. The platinum Portuguese Automatic has a slate grey dial inspired by New York, bordeaux subdials to recall the red carpet, and beautiful rose gold hands and numerals, not to mention the customized rotor. It sold for $60,000, more than twice the high estimate, and all of the proceeds benefit the Tribeca Film Institute. 

Obviously, only one lucky watch lover can have this Portuguese, but for a slightly larger audience, IWC also released the Portuguese Automatic Edition Tribeca Film Festival 2013. Limited to 100 pieces, these watches retain a lot of the visual cues of the piece unique above, though steel steps in for platinum in the case, steel markers and hands replace the rose gold ones, and the rotor is decorated accordingly. These are available exclusively through IWC boutiques in the USA and you can find more here. 

The festival runs from April 17-28th and you can find more information here. Also, be sure to check out HODINKEE’s inside look at the limited edition and piece unique Portuguese watches with President IWC North America, Gianfranco D’Attis.

-HODINKEE for IWC Schaffhausen