Breguet Reveals All At A Captivating Exhibition On Place Vendôme In Paris

Abraham-Louis Breguet would have been pleased to see the chic and watch-savvy Parisian crowd that gathered Thursday night for the inauguration of the Breguet boutique at N° 6 Place Vendôme, not far away from the Quai de l’Horloge where he established his company in 1775.

The new boutique is acting as temporary custodian of the exhibition: “La Tradition Breguet, at the Heart of an Icon” that was first shown at La Cité du Temps in Geneva in January. The exhibition – seperate from San Francisco’s Art And Innovation exhibit – has been touring the world and will stay at the Place Vendôme boutique until December 5th, providing watch lovers with the complete story, from its historical origins to the latest timepieces, of the “Tradition” collection that celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

Launched in 2005 with the “Tradition 7027” the collection has been regularly enriched with ultramodern materials such as silicon and titanium, and with complications that include power reserve indicator, fusée tourbillon, GMT function, and retrograde small second.

Haute Time readers are already familiar with the “Tradition” collection. Earlier this year, you voted from all over the globe for the Breguet Tradition Chronographe Indépendante 7077 electing it “Haute Time Watch of the Year 2015” from among 64 competing watches. And your expert assessment is reconfirmed with this exhibition – Breguet has chosen to highlight this timepiece in a special showcase all on its own!

So just for the pleasure, we are going to show you again some of these incredible timepieces that look like modern art, easily recognizable with their visible displays of the movement mechanisms, their strong graphic identity, and their “Breguet” eccentric moon-tipped hour and minute hands.

It is amazing to think that this collection is inspired by the legendary “Souscription” watches designed by founder Breguet back in 1796 and the “Tact” watches 3 years later. The exhibition takes us through time by showing us the inspirational pieces from the past right up to the very latest timepieces from the Tradition collection.

Abraham-Louis Breguet is universally considered the greatest watchmaker of all time. He made the first tourbillon in 1801, the first chronograph in 1820, and invented the ‘pare-chute’ – the basis for modern shock-absorption systems to protect mechanical watches, visible on most of the Tradition creations. The exhibition moves to Zurich after December 5.

For more information, please visit the official Breguet website. Follow Haute Time on Instagram to catch all of the new releases as they happen.