Jaeger-LeCoultre Adds a Double Gradient Green Dial to the Polaris Collection

When we think of Jaeger-LeCoultre, the watches that come to mind immediately are likely their classic, refined, dress watches. The Reverso and the Master Ultra Thin collections, for example, are made up of the kind of conservative but extremely well executed formal watches that are easy to love from afar, but sometimes harder to fit into a daily rotation, particularly in the work from home era when casual is king. Dressing a watch down is a wonderful thing, but some of JLC’s best watches present a particularly difficult challenge in this regard. Because we so often associate the brand with dressier watches, it’s easy to forget that they actually have a long and proud sports watch history. Famously, as JLC never lets us forget, the Reverso itself was originally marketed to polo players seeking a simple solution to keeping their watch crystals from getting smashed. More recently, you could look to JLC’s Master Compressor line, a series of genuinely overbuilt dive watches, often loaded with complications, that have developed a cult following in certain enthusiast circles, but were too big, weird, and expensive to gain traction while they were actually in production. Then there’s the Polaris, re-introduced after a long period of dormancy by JLC back in 2018. This collection hasn’t been a primary focus for Jaeger-LeCoultre since its initial comeback, but the second new Polaris to be unveiled this year might be a signal that they’re serious about sports watches again. 

That first new Polaris debuted at Watches & Wonders earlier in this spring in the form of a perpetual calendar that drew fairly wide acclaim. But our focus today is on a watch that sits on the opposite end of the pricing spectrum in the Polaris universe, a much simpler take on the retro dive watch aesthetic that is at the core of the collection. This updated version of the Polaris Date takes inspiration from the Memovox Polaris, introduced in 1968. While this new reference doesn’t feature an alarm like the original, the dial layout is a fairly direct pull from the vintage watch, with the same distinctive typeface being used for the Arabic numerals and common details like an interior minutes track (used for the alarm on the original) and large trapezoidal hour markers. 

The first version of the new Polaris Date was a basic black, but we’ve seen a limited edition in a blue gradient dial as well as a similarly colored “Mariner” version with increased water resistance in the years since. The new Polaris Date has a dark green double-gradient dial with a mix of textures and finishes along with a lacquer coating to add a sense of depth. This is essentially a sector dial made up of two large sections with a small ring separating them and an interior dive bezel along the perimeter. What’s interesting about this dial is the double-gradient effect – both of the larger sectors have an independent gradation, with the outer sector finished with a grain pattern and the sector at the dial’s center with a sunray pattern. It’s quite complex, and runs the risk of being too much. We haven’t seen the watch in person yet, but in the JLC supplied photos we think it hangs together surprisingly well.   

In addition to the new dial, this Polaris Date sees a movement upgrade as well. The 2018 version used JLC’s Caliber 899/1, while this green dialed variant is powered by Calibre 899AB. This movement debuted on the previously mentioned Mariner version of the Polaris Date, and offers the same functionality as teh 899/1 but 70 hours of power resistance instead of the more modest 38 in the base version of the caliber. This was always a knock against the Polaris watches when compared against high profile sports watches of similarly priced brands, almost all of which have been offering watches with extended power reserves for quite some time, so it’s nice to see this as an option in an entry level Polaris. It’s worth pointing out that a result of the movement upgrade appears to be a case that’s just slightly thicker, coming in at 13.93mm against the 13.1mm of the 2018 version. The case diameter remains the same at 42mm. 

When the new Polaris collection was introduced in 2018, I think it gave a lot of fans of the brand hope that JLC would make a full throated return to producing new sports watches that stand on their own. The Polaris watches sit very much in the “vintage re-issue” genre of watchmaking that is still so prevalent in 2022, and while the new Polaris Date is undoubtedly a handsome and capable sports watch, you can’t help but wonder what a modern interpretation of the Polaris design language would look like if JLC decided to break free from the late 60s format these new watches are based on. In other words: what would a modern JLC sports watch designed from scratch look like? We really haven’t seen such a thing since the Master Compressors of the early 00s, and it’s kind of a shame, because those watches were genuinely interesting and contemporary in their day. 

The new Polaris Date in green has a retail price of $9,200, and is a boutique exclusive for the first month of its release. Jaeger-LeCoultre