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If you were to sit me down at a desk and ask me to write down 41 watch complications off the top of my head, I think the result would be rather like Ross Geller trying to name the 50 states in that one episode of Friends. There’s just no way I could do it. Forty-one is an absurd number of complications to even conceive of, let alone cram into one surprisingly wearable watch. And yet, that is what Vacheron Constantin’s one-of-a-kind watchmaking department, Les Cabinotiers, has managed to do.
Just about a year after introducing the world’s most complicated watch of any kind — a pocket watch containing 63 complications — Vacheron has unveiled the Les Cabinotiers ‘Solaria Ultra Grand Complication.’ It’s hard to know where to start with a watch like this, especially since I haven’t had the opportunity to see it in person, so to begin, I’ll just say this: I am wildly impressed by this watch, and you should be too. It’s a serious step up from their previous most complicated wristwatch — the Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Celestia Astronomical Grand Complication 3600, which housed 23 complications.
It’s worth saying here that, even before getting to the Solaria Ultra Grand Complication, Vacheron Constantin had a very good Watches & Wonders. The brand is celebrating its 270th anniversary this year and they’ve done a hell of a job with it. Their new 127-piece limited edition Traditionelle Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar, with its novel movement and anniversary-inspired hand-guillochée dial, would have been enough to mark the occasion for most brands, but Vacheron Constantin is not most brands, and the new Solaria is the ultimate proof of that.
Attempting to overwhelm a watch with complications is really nothing new. Many of the world’s finest brands, including all of the “holy trinity,” have taken their crack at ultra-grand complication watches. But even the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime (which boasts 20 complications) and Audemars Piguet’s Code 11.59 Universelle RD#4 (which managed to fit 23 complications and an additional 17 “technical devices” into a surprisingly compact 42mm case) are hard to hold up against this new Vacheron — though to their credit, each of those is a serially produced production piece, whereas this Vacheron is a one-off.
What does that mean for us? Well, if you haven’t already had the chance to see the Solaria in person, you (and I) likely never will. It’s the kind of thing that Vacheron will surely pull out only for very special occasions — you certainly won’t be able to stroll into the brand’s mid-town boutique and just take a peak. But the development of the Solaria has resulted in 13 patent applications and required a whole lot of problem-solving and innovation. It’s hard to imagine all this work going nowhere, though for now even the existence of a wristwatch this complicated as essentially a prototype is worth the effort.
And as if all that weren’t impressive enough, the Solaria Ultra Grand Complication manages to be all it is while remaining smaller in every dimension than a current-generation Planet Ocean Chronograph. Seriously. The Solaria is, by every measure, a ‘wearable’ watch, at just 45mm across and — and I didn’t quite believe this when I read it — 14.99mm thick. Obviously, this is by no means competing with Bulgari for any awards at the thinness end of the spectrum, but this is a watch thinner than many Speedmasters or IWC Pilot’s Chronographs.
If I seem to be struggling to find the words at any point here, let’s be clear that I am. It would be easy enough to just list each of the complications that have managed to find a home in this watch, but I’m going to resist that temptation and say this instead: I know, for some collectors, a watch like this can be hard to care about, but I promise you this is one watch worth paying attention to.
Watchmaking, for as much as we all love it, is an anachronism, and a pretty severe one at that. By any objective measure, its time has passed, and there is no practical justification for most of the watches we all love, let alone watches like this one, which surely cost an immense quantity of man-hours and probably an unbelievable amount of money to produce. But watches like the Solaria Ultra Grand Complication are also one of the strongest cases we have for the continued existence of this arguably antiquated métier. They show us that there is still room to push the bounds of what a watch can be, and I really hope we can all take the time to appreciate that. Vacheron Constantin
