I could use some help, maybe even from @Robert-Jan here

The NYT has a piece on this year’s W&W, covering a few pieces I’ve not seen reported in my usual haunts.

As a lover of the GMT, and especially of GMT’s with new or unusual approaches to displaying two time zones, I am both excited and confused by this watch.

I’ll let the NYT (partially) explain it






So, I get that in normal ‘non-travel’ usage the nifty trick of the rose gold hand “hiding” behind the rhodium-plated hand. In this normal/non-travel configuration, the watch appears to be a simple two-hander.

And, I get that that when “converting” to the GMT function the rhodium-plated hand pops forward in one-hour increments (a so called “travelers GMT” or “true GMT” approach), while the rose gold hand stays behind remaining to indicate “local” time.

And, I get that the button on the crown sends the “travel time” hand wizzing back over top of the rose gold “local” time, in rattrapante fashion

This far, it’s all very cool and I’m very intrigued with this approach. There’s a cool video of the hiding/revealing/rattapanting on Parmihiani’s IG right here

But here’s what I definitely don’t get: either this is a constant 24hr movement for both hour hands (seems very unlikely to not be mentioned because it’s unusual for people to want a 24hr), or somehow the magic buttons convert the rhodium gold hand from a 12hr into a 24hr hand (seems impossible as the dial orientation wouldn’t match for 1/2 the times), or the hour hands are both 12 hr hands and this isn’t a GMT watch at all?

I’ve looked around for the few other press releases I can find (eg at ablogtowatch, etc.) and no one mentions it. The company’s few IG posts and videos on the watch don’t explain, nor does the company’s website. I’ve also now posted on the company’s IG asking after.

But if anyone here finds/knows - and especially if @Robert-Jan might ask the company while he’s at W&W (knowing he’ll be too busy to see this)

Until there’s better info, I’m convinced this company has a mere dual-time watch with both hands on 12hr time, that it has officially named and released as a GMT? Seems too kooky to be true, but I can’t understand the fix.

 

Never heard the term 'rattrapante' applied to anything other than a chronograph so Parmigiani is playing fast and loose here. It seems simple enough, it just has an extra hour hand that the user can set for a second time zone. On their website they describe it as a 'second time zone' complication. So it's not a real rattrapante nor a 24 hour GMT watch as classically described. It's not a bad looking watch, just poorly named, but prospective owners won't know what a rattrapante chrono or a real GMT complication is either.

And I do find it odd that it doesn't have a date, most travellers would want to have a date function, no?

 

How do you know that?

 

Parmigiani is playing in the high end luxury end of sports watches with Nautilus, Royal Oak, Czapek, Ferrier and others. That's the price of admission for these super sports watches, and there always is a shortage now.

 

I know enough about luxury watches and who buys them. Most buyers couldn't tell you the difference between an Annual Calendar and a Perpetual Calendar, most buyers of luxury products aren't immersed in the item, they are going for looks and the luxury experience.

 

I've always understood rattrapante meaning to catch up so most rattrapante complications are on chronos for obvious reasons. In this situation, the rattrapante complication are the hour hands instead of seconds hands. I think the rattrapante is correctly used although not in the sense that most watch people would use it. Calling this a GMT if it's not a 24 hour hand is a misnomer.

 

Ok, so we agree this watch they’ve named a GMT (including on their website) isn’t a GMT.

For a watch attempting to play at this caliber, it’s pretty wild they named the watch incorrectly (I could overlook an incorrect description in their copy, but to miss-name the watch?!)

ALSO pretty wild that the watch rags I’ve seen “cover” it haven’t noticed/called this out - I mean, ignoring for the moment this “coverage” is actually just regurgitating a press release handed to them by the company. But still…

As for the rattrapante, I’m really not agile with the history of it all to say - but seems to me they’re fairly saying they’ve applied the rattapante complication to a GMT hour hand rather than it’s traditional chronograph utilization?

$28K for a GMT that can’t describe GMT time. Doesn’t have date. Doesn’t have seconds hand.

And since we’re piling on, I didn’t want to over-complicate the initial post to mention, but suffices to say that a double 12hr “dual time” without an AM/PM indicator is … *sad trombone*

 

I really like the concept of the watch. It would be interesting to have indices that split the hour markers and function as a 24hr scale for the rose gold hand. Current local time could stay on 12hr scale. That would be nifty. Hiding the second zone hand is a practical complication if they have made sense out of it which is yet to be seen.

 

Nice catch!

Love that Worn and Wound didn’t bother to mention this GMT is not a GMT.

On their dismissal of the AM/PM indicator: one loss is that the watch becomes unwieldy to use as a “telephone” dial time (ie, when in your local time, repurposing the second time zone to tell you a far off place’s time).

And more generally, their dismissal of the AM/PM indicator even for “normal” travel is telling: sure, a person that goes on a 4 day vacation twice a year 4 time zones away can ‘easily’ remember if home time is AM/PM. But frequent travelers who might in a single 2 week trip make multiple stops across the globe start to appreciate the at-a-glance information a person wants, without risk of inaccuracy or mistake.

Relatedly, if you’re traveling in the air for extended times, you cannot in fact “just look out the window” to determine if local time is AM/PM (because local time is your destination, which may be hours and sunsets away).

T knowing if it’s AM/OM is, after-all, a reason GMT and other 24hr standardized times are useful in the first. Saying “who needs an AM/PM indicator” is the same as saying “who needs 24hr time scales” - answer: people who look to buy a “GMT” watch

 

All for a schlubby take on the Globemaster

 

Update: watch sold out until 2023

 

I suspect they weren’t making many in the first

 

Globemaster GMT; that was my thought too.

Hopefully that will motivate Omega to do something in this direction. Never heard of “schlubby” before but I rather like it, albeit not at that that price.

The idea of a “rattrapante” GMT reminds me of the mock-up of a GMT I did for Adrian Buchmann at Christopher Ward, based on the Tudor Aeronaut, where the GMT hand and the running seconds were made to look identical to trick the casual observer into thinking they were looking at a rattrapante chronograph.

 

I can accept Parmigiani's use of the term 'rattrapante' for the action of the second hour hand although it is not normally used in this context. A bit of a cheat, imo. But their calling this watch a GMT is just incorrect, but the press doesn't seem to care, they just repeat what the press release says. There have been a few comments on some of the boards about this misnaming but it will have no effect.

Ten or fifteen years ago there was a flurry of watches which had a hinged back, in use it looked like a solid back but the wearer could flip it open to view the movement, which was covered with a sapphire crystal. Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Blancpain and others used this on various watches for a few years. But Blancpain kept referring to this as a half-hunter watch because only the back had the hinged cover, i.e., a 'half-hunter' in their mind. But this is not the definition of a half-hunter watch. A half-hunter pocket watch has a hinged cover over the dial but there is circular cutout in the center of the cover which allows the wearer to view the time without having to fully open the cover. But Blancpain continued to use the term, incorrect as it was.

Parmigiani's use of the term 'GMT' to describe this watch is just another example of the advertising wagon getting in front of the horse. Parmigiani's designers know full well this is not a GMT watch, but no matter, the folks running the commercial side thought it sounded better calling it a GMT watch, and also calling it a rattrapante, too. A rattrapante GMT watch sounds impressive. Since it doesn't have any indication of am/pm, or even a date, it isn't worth too much as a real traveller's watch. But they have sold out of their allocation for a couple of years, so mission accomplished.