H. Moser Updates their Flying Hours Complication and Adds a Smoked Salmon Perpetual Calendar for Geneva Watch Days
At last year’s Geneva Watch Days, H. Moser had one of the most talked about (and divisive) releases of the week, a splashy collaboration with Studio Underd0g that saw the high end and affordable indie sharing a passion fruit inspired colorway across a pair of watches, sold as a set. It generated a lot of opinions and was, for a time, one of the most buzzed about watches of the year. Moser returned to Geneva Watch Days this year with a slate of new releases that, I think, has succeeded in evading the kinds of hot takes we saw last year, while still, as always, being very “Moser.” The new Pioneer Flying Hours and Endeavour Perpetual Calendar in smoked salmon might not inspire heated opinion pieces from watch writers like yours truly, but they remain exciting in their own way in a year that’s already seen Moser push some boundaries and play with our expectations.
The new reference in the Endeavour Perpetual Calendar line is about as classic Moser as it gets. This dial color was first introduced in a Streamliner back in 2023, and was an immediate hit for the way it spun the traditional idea of a “salmon” dial into a new, more contemporary context. Less rosy pink and more of a metallic rust, this salmon dial has a reserved and almost autumnal presence that really suits the Endeavour, itself a more reserved and mature segment of the Moser lineup. The case of the perpetual calendar is white gold and measures 42mm in diameter, and wears extremely well, if not razor thin, at a hair over 13mm tall.
The perpetual calendar is Moser’s signature complication, with the manually wound HMC 800 caliber offering one of the cleanest looks in a QP across the entire watch industry. For the uninitiated, a quick glance at the dial would never reveal you’re looking at a perpetual calendar, and yet once you’re familiar with the layout, it’s remarkably easy to orient yourself to how the calendar operates. The trick, really, is in the reading of the month. Moser takes advantage of the fact that there are twelve hours in a day and twelve months in a year, and uses a small hand mounted to the center pinion to point to the hour that corresponds to the current month. For example, if it points to 3:00, we’re in March, 4:00 is April, and so forth. The oversized date aperture at 3:00 automatically changes to “1” on the correct day for each month, and the leap year indicator is hidden away on the caseback.
While I had a real personal affinity for the new smoked salmon perpetual, the loudest (literally) novelty in the Moser suite this year was the all new Pioneer Flying Hours, which debuted in two references, one in stainless steel with a white fumé dial, and the other in red gold (with black titanium accents) and an aventurine dial.
These watches are evolutions of the concept first seen in the Endeavour Flying Hours back in 2019. Those watches featured numerals on three visible, rotating discs, matched to a rotating, centrally mounted minute wheel that would line up with the correct hour throughout the day. This execution of the concept has been tweaked significantly while adhering to the same principle. The visible hour discs are gone, replaced with three apertures, one of which will always display the current hour. The minutes wheel still rotates from the center of the dial, but now when it crosses 60, the hour jumps instantaneously with an incredibly satisfying “click” to the next aperture.
This is a nice update, and I like having the complication in the Pioneer case, which is Moser’s sportiest and most casual offering, with the exception of the Streamliner. Here the brand uses the larger format Pioneer case, measuring 42.8mm across. While the aventurine dial is quite beautiful, it presented some legibility challenges thanks to a highly reflective crystal. Those were mitigated somewhat by the white fumé version, which has a surprisingly elegant look. The previous iteration of the Flying Hours was a cool curiosity, but never really caught on and didn’t inspire many follow up references after its initial introduction. I always felt it might have been a harder sell to some Moser collectors, as it broke some of the brand’s more minimalist inspired design codes. The new version is a good compromise and feels more stripped down and in line with Moser’s desire to keep branding, wordmarks, logos, and so forth off of their dials.
The new Endeavour Perpetual Calendar in smoked salmon has a retail price of $68,000. The Pioneer Flying Hours in red gold retails for $49,900 (and is limited to 100 pieces), while the steel version in white sells for $41,200. H. Moser
The post H. Moser Updates their Flying Hours Complication and Adds a Smoked Salmon Perpetual Calendar for Geneva Watch Days appeared first on Worn & Wound.
from Worn & Wound https://ift.tt/Y4KqId7
Comments
Post a Comment