Welcome to Watch Man Watches, GQ’s month-to-month curation of high-end timepieces for the true watch nerds amongst us. This January, MB&F rethinks its Legacy Machine, Hublot goes full reptilian, Breguet will get its engines turning, and IWC turns its famed Mark-series pilot’s watch inexperienced.
2025 is shaping as much as be fairly the yr within the watch business.
Loads of manufacturers are marking vital anniversaries, which usually means special-edition watches are on the way in which. We’ve received Audemars Piguet’s one hundred and fiftieth, Vacheron Constantin’s 270th, Breguet’s 250th, and Rolex’s GMT-Grasp’s seventieth birthday. Nevertheless it’s a high-end unbiased with a purpose to occasion that’s supplied us with of a pair knockout watches of the yr: MB&F’s Legacy Machine Perpetual and Sequential Flyback ‘Longhorns.’
MB&F—Maximilian Büsser & Pals—opened up store in Geneva in 2005 and has been crafting beautiful watches and clocks for twenty years. What was as soon as a seat-of-the-pants operation is now a bona fide horological enterprise with 60 staff that constantly debuts a few of the most mind-bending timepieces on this planet. The ‘Longhorns’ watch will get its identify from the extra-lengthy lugs connected to the case that have been beforehand solely included in an costly prototype that offered at Phillips for 277,200 Swiss francs (roughly $300,000). Whereas the regular-production LMs have been made with out these Longhorns, MB&F is bringing them again simply in time for the model’s twentieth anniversary.
Now, MB&F is becoming these lengthy “horns” to its LM Perpetual Longhorn and LM Sequential Flyback Longhorn watches. Just like the one offered at Phillips, the lugs have two holes drilled within the lugs so the wearer can regulate the bracelet to their desire. Each of those watches are executed in chrome steel and fitted with black (fairly than white enamel) subdials, with the LM Perpetual measuring 44mm by 17.5mm thick and the Sequential Flyback measuring 44mm by 18.2mm thick. (Neither is for the faint of wrist, to make certain, however the strap place optionality ought to definitely assist with respect to consolation.)
Developed by star watchmaker Stephen McDonnell, the actions in each Legacy Machine fashions are by now the stuff of horological legend. (The QP mannequin particularly received the Aiguille d’Or class on the GPHG, watchmaking’s Oscars.) Simply set and laid out to maximise legibility, they function outstanding, curved steadiness bridges displayed entrance and heart on the dial together with rhodium-plated dial plates that make for a uniform aesthetic. The subdials—executed right here in black fairly than the mannequin’s typical white enamel—make for a futuristic look that’s balanced considerably by the extra classically knowledgeable white Roman-numeral typography.
Restricted to twenty items every, these beautiful creations carry a worth of 168,000 Swiss francs ($183,603). And earlier than you go crying foul, lamenting how a small change to a watch’s lugs can deserve the dedication of a wholly recent anniversary mannequin, think about the years lengthy growth course of. The model shelved these lugs completely for over 15 years till it might determine a system that made them genuinely usable along with merely stunning. That’s laudable consideration to element.
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