gmt

Spotting a Louis Vuitton timepiece is a rare occurrence. The brand supplements its ubiquitous luggage and bag products with just a few watches to go around. While the LVMH brand group has watches in their DNA (owning such brands as Tag Heuer, Hublot, and Zenith), the actual Louis Vuitton branded watches are very hard to come by.

A new collection of two-tone Louis Vuitton Tambour watches is available in a chronograph, GMT, and three-hand version with a subsidiary dial. Each are automatics, each contain high grade ETA mechanical movements, and each has the fashion-forward style that the tapered Tambour watch case is known for. In a similar fashion to the Baume & Mercier Riviera, the type of the two-tone pieces creates an alternative look that helps the colors blend in without distraction, but still allows for an attractive case. As such you will see steel and 18k gold playing together in a pleasing harmony.

The new Two-Tone Tambour watches come in a few varieties with men's and women's models. For the men there is a three hand version with a subsidiary seconds dial at 9 o'clock, a GMT model, and the pictured chronograph model. Each with the eye soothing deep yellow hands. I am impressed that Louis Vuitton actually chose yellow gold for the watches, as the "standard" color of gold is hard to find these days in relation to other types of gold such as rose or red gold. Look for these new two tone gold and steel Tambour watches at select Louis Vuitton stores around the world soon. Prices for these models is sure to be in excess of $4,000 - $5,000.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Bulova continues to creep up market and some of the latest offerings are clear indication of that. Funny enough the once American, now Japanese (Citizen watches owned) watch maker seems to be using less Japanese movements now as opposed to before. As such, this Bulova Accutron Edison GMT watch contains a high-grade Swiss ETA 2893-2 automatic mechanical movement that I would have never guessed would end up in a watch like this.

Going along with the Japanese obsession for double naming products, what was once two labels is now one under this watch. Accutron used to be a separate label, but owned by Bulova. Now both names are mashed on the face in a seemingly unnecessary attempt to gain as much brand recognition as possible. I will let it slide though as it is just one of those Japanese marketing quirks. The focus on the watch is the large applied Arabic hour indicators while the GMT hand is smaller and has its own ring that doubles as an hour indicator path for the hour hand. I like the little red GMT hand that looks almost cute. The lugs on the 41mm wide steel case look to be direct homages to those on classic Accutron watches - namely the popular Spaceview. Aside from the odd looking "two highways intersecting" graphic in the middle of the watch, things seem to be pretty classic "on the Edison GMT watch front." The caseback has a movement display window and the watch is water resistant to 50 meters. The crystal is sapphire. No price yet, but I would expect just a couple of thousand dollars for this new Bulova Accutron timepiece.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Here is another complex and beautiful limited edition watch from luxury watch and jewelry maker Harry Winston. The newest is this Ocean GMT Traveler watch that wants to excel at being the perfect two timezone watch. You have the main watch dial and another watch dial (on the left) that you can adjust to different timezone in one hour increments. A small window above the dial has the reference city that you can switch with the pusher at 10 o'clock. A simple to use and highly effective GMT traveler watch.

The watch is available in 18k rose or white gold in a 45mm wide case. There are versions with and without diamonds with a total of six limited edition variants of between 80 to 15 pieces per model (total of 200 for the line). The watch features an automatic tourbillon movement with the tourbillon cage serving as the seconds hand for the watch located at 6 o'clock. Detail rich, the Ocean GMT Traveler is a pure Harry Winston, combining style and function with a distinct emphasis on luxury that is easy to live with. The fitted strap is alligator and the dial enjoys Cotes de Geneve polishing that is something typically reserved for decoration on watch movements. Price will no doubt be in excess of $50,000 most likely, of course more for the diamond covered varieties.

Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

I do like Wyler Geneve watches a lot, and their newest GMT watch brings something new to the table that won't affect how it looks or its accuracy. Wyler Geneve proudly proclaims that their new GMT watch is the first CarbonNeutral® watch. Let's look at this a bit more closely. I'd like to think this means that the watch itself is environmentally friendly. Maybe it will biodegrade, and is made of that corn plastic that those new disposable forks I can tear in half are made out of? No it is something else. Wyler Geneve has bought into something called carbon offsetting. Now you get an idea why the above term is not "carbon neutral," but rather the trademarked name "CarbonNeutral." CarbonNeutral has an interesting business model going for themselves, with an increasing amount of business interest and attention. I'll explain briefly how it works.

If you are interested in being more environmentally friendly, but cannot really change how to you do business, you can buy yourself into the 'green club.' A basic evaluation of your business is done to determine your environmental impact, or at least how much waste your business is emitting. You can then purchase offsets, it's like eco-karma. Does your factory pollute noxious gas into the air? Fund a green campaign else where that does the opposite. The idea is to offset your environmentally unfriendly ways with environmentally friendly programs elsewhere. This is not to say that Wyler Geneve is a big polluter at all, just that they decided to participate in carbon offsetting, and felt that working with CarbonNeutral was a good idea. Thus, they have started with the new GMT, offsetting where necessary to make this product CarbonNeutral. It is a good thing, maybe a PR stunt, but overall you can't complain that it does any harm. Wyler Geneve points out that it is the first watch to participate in a CarbonNeutral program. I think the best part is the humbling experience that it must have gone through when trying to determine its actual emissions and environmental impact of making the watch. The pictured new Wyler Geneve GMT watch is in steel with a rubber strap and rugged good looks.

Ariel Adams publishes the watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Luxury jeweler Fred, which is part of the LVMH group, has launched their first automatic complication watch: the Move 1 GMT. The watch has a 41 mm case and a two-tone face. Instead of the quartz movement in the Move 1 Chrono, this watch has an automatic 310-calibre Dubois-Depraz movement. The GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) function shows a second time zone with the orange hand on the face. The turning single-direction crenulated bezel has twenty steel teeth for controlling diving time. There is also a special edition steel and diamond version which is limited to 70 pieces. I think i'd like it far better if it didn't have the word "Fred" repeated over and over as part of the design on the dial. A discrete LV or a Fendi or Gucci logo I can handle in limited doses but, no offense to the jeweler, there's just something too quotidian about Fred.

The latest watch in the Saqra series from DeLaCour watches is the second timezone GMT model. The stainless steel watch uses an automatic ETA 2892 movement. The dial features the days of the week and each day is split into 24 hour segments, providing an instant reading of a.m. or p.m. It has a shows the date in a window at 12 o'clock.  The watch is also available in 18K rose or white gold and rose gold and titanium. The watch displays small seconds in a comet-decorated circle in the six o'clock position.