POLO, ANYONE?
Two luxury watches owe their origins to an ancient game played on horseback.
The polo field was the birthplace of one of the most inventive luxury watches ever designed, the Reverso by Jaeger-LeCoultre. A true sport watch, the Reverso was the brainchild of businessman César de Trey.
After watching British military officers play poloin India in 1930, de Trey sought to find a way to protect players' wrist watches from the obvious risks that went along with riding horses at high speeds while swinging a mallet.
He approached Jacques-David LeCoultre with an idea about a case that could be flipped over, and the two engaged French designer René-Alfred Chauvot. On March 4, 1931, Chauvot filed an application with the Paris patent office registering "a watch capable of sliding in its support and being completely turned over."
Nine months later, the Reverso was born.
The Reverso's subtle art deco lines and unique, pioneering reversible casehave made it one of the world's most recognizable watches. The inventiveness and ingenuity found in the original live on today in the Jaeger-LeCoultre collection, which includes the Monoface, the Duetto and the Duoface. Like the original, the Monoface flips from a single watchface to a blank surface, allowing for personalizationwith monograms, emblems and messages created using lacquer, hand-engraving or enamel. The Duetto Reverso features two faces, allowing the wearer to flip between them at will. The Duoface Reverso boasts two dials that display two different time zones powered remarkably by a single movement. Two elegant examples of the Duoface are the Reverso Classic and the Reverso Tribute.
The entire Jaeger-LeCoultre
collection is manufactured
in Vallée de Joux in
Switzerland; the brand's
watches are all made
under one roof.
The company's original
building; Jaeger-LeCoultre's
headquarters today.
Featuring the original three-lined gadroons and 12 Arabic numerals, two-toned finished dials and sword hands, the Reverso Classic Duoface Small Seconds offers a timeless design for elegant travelers.
Driven by a single manual wind movement, caliber 854A, the vertically brushed, silvered gray face with Guiloché treatment and black transferred numerals indicates hours and minutes, and features a small seconds sub-dial, while the watch's black face with Clous de Paris Guilloché displays a second time zone as well as a 24-hour subdial with day/night indicator.
Offered in stainless steel,the large format watch measures 47 millimeters by 28.3 millimeters and is presented on a light brown strap with stainless steel double-folding buckle. It is waterproof to approximately 30 meters and has a power reserve of 42 hours.
The Reverso Tribute evokes the original Reverso, with its trapezoid applied indexes echoing the form of the Dauphine hands to create a moderninterpretation of the original watch. Also powered by caliber 854A, the Tribute features an understated silvered gray dial with velvety Clous deParis Guilloché and applied hour markers on one side and on the other, a sunray-brushed blue dial reminiscent of the colorful models first made in 1931. It displays two time zones and features a practical day/night indicatorand 24-hour display, as well as a small seconds sub-dial.
Measuring 47 millimeters by 28.3 millimeters, the stainless-steel case of the Tributeis fitted with a blue leather strap specially designed by Casa Fagliano,which has been a world-renowned Argentinian polo bootmakerfor five generations.
Casa Fagliano handcrafts the Reverso's watchstrap with the same cordovan leather used to make its signature polo boots. It takes the family 24 hours to make a single strap from scratch. Waterproof to approximatcly 30 meters and with a power reserve of 42 hours, the Tribute is an understated homage to the history of the iconic Reverso and the perfect timepiece for the refined world traveler.
Both the Reverso Classic Duoface and the Reverso Tribute Duoface along with the entire Jaeger-LeCoultre collection are manufactured and assembled under one roof in Vallée de Joux in Switzerland,as they have been since 1833, when Antoinc LeCoultre transformed his family's small barn into a watchmaking atelier with the intention of creating timepieces of great accuracy,
