ReviewFavre Leuba Unveil A Stylish New Dress Watch – The Sky Chief Collection
A dress watch polished to perfection by the 2nd oldest Swiss watch brand in the world.
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I probably wouldn’t have said this 10 years back, but a nice dress watch is an essential addition to your wardrobe today – doesn’t matter if you’re in a shirt from 9 to 5, or if you wear a turtleneck to work. Let’s once and for all break the myth that a dress watch is only meant for special occasions. And even though many will try to convince you that a Casio or, say a professional diver’s watch will go with any attire, well, let me break it to you, it doesn’t. Dress watches are not necessarily ‘theme specific’ anymore – they’re now more about something that you can carry off with almost any attire. The purpose of a good dress watch is twofold: first, to complement a gentleman’s wardrobe, and secondly, to demonstrate the skill of the watchmaker. Getting the best of both, however, is a task. Though overall looks boil down to personal preferences, a well-made dress watch from a recognised watchmaker is hard to find these days.
Enter Favre Leuba, a brand that made a return in 2016 along with its 279-year-old rich heritage of making some of the world’s most innovative and unheard of timepieces. Sure the Raider Harpoon made the most buzz during their relaunch (with its patented dial), but the brand had a surprise up its sleeve: a striking new dress watch. Let’s find out why and where the Sky Chief excels:
A Refined Case & Dial:
Minimalism should be the core strength of any dress watch, i.e., featuring a simple, uncluttered dial. The Sky Chief is one that is built with distinction even with the simplest of elements. With the Sky Chief, Favre Leuba’s design team ensured that the focus always remains on the essence of a watch.
Featuring rectangular ‘outward – sloping’ indexes, the detailing of every index just shows how hard the brand has worked to give a refined look with minimal elements. An inner bezel done in white, bears the minute markings to keep the grey dial as clean and uncluttered as possible. The Chrono-cousins, however, are the only exception to the full clean look, featuring two chronograph subdials with white Chrono hands and markings. The dial is protected by anti-glare Sapphire crystal.
For those who have an eye for detail, the workmanship of every index (yes, every single hour index) displays the extent to which Favre Leuba has gone to achieve ‘detailed’ perfection (this is their first dress watch in decades, after all). Each of the 12 indices of the Sky Chief are raised rectangular markers filled with SuperLuminova, and slope outwards to meet the sunray finished surface of the dial.
The Stainless Steel case of the Sky Chief is fairly sized at 43mm. While the Sky Chief uses stainless steel as its primary case material, there’s no harm in having some precious metal to add a touch of class. Featuring a tetradecagonal outer bezel (Favre Leuba’s signature), both the Sky Chief Date and the Sky Chief Chronograph’s outer bezel come in steel or gold variants. The baton shaped hands (hours, minutes & seconds) of the Sky chief compliment their respective variants, i.e., the steel variant has steel hands whereas the gold one has gold hands. Filled with SuperLuminova, they add value to the readability of the watch.
The Leather Finish:
A great dress watch also needs to be discreet enough to not take the attention away from your attire. Slenderness is one aspect (where the watch already excels) so that it slides easily under a shirt cuff, but a good strap plays a key role in giving the watch a subtle wrist presence. The leather straps of the Sky Chief collection are absolutely gorgeous. They are made from vintage calf leather (in brown and black) with perfect contrasting stitching, giving the watch a royal finish.
Powered by one of the world’s most trusted chronograph movements:
A fine mechanical movement is a good conclusion to a great dress watch; it just adds so much more value to a great looking timepiece. At the same time, you wouldn’t want your watch to be over-complicated, which is why the complications of the Sky Chief range between a simple date display and a chronograph edition. Both variants feature a neat date window at 6 o’clock. The Sky Chief is powered by one of the most accurate and trusted chronograph movements of the world, the Valjoux 7200.
Price and Availability:
The Favre Leuba Sky Chief Collection starts at INR 138,000. For what it offers, it’s an extremely reasonable timepiece in comparison to any other automatic watch in the market right now (in its class). Coming from the 2nd oldest Swiss watchmaker in the world, you can expect this one to exceed expectations you ever had from any entry level dress watch.
The Sky Chief and all of Favre Leuba’s timepieces are available exclusively in India at Ethos Watch Boutiques.
About the Brand – Favre Leuba:
The name Favre-Leuba still has a good sound with true watch lovers. One of Switzerland’s oldest watch manufacturers (2nd oldest to be exact), the brand has a nearly unbroken, almost 280-year-old history. To put things in perspective – when they set up shop in India in the 1860s – Favre Leuba was already 120 years old.
Favre Leuba has achieved many firsts – they were the first to produce a single push chronograph, first to produce the only diver’s watch with a depth gauge (Favre Leuba Bathy 50) and the first to produce a Barometer watch to assist mountaineers and pilots (Favre Leuba Bivouac). They were also the first watch company to set up a subsidiary in India but had to leave the country because of prevailing economic conditions which weren’t suitable for luxury products.
Favre Leuba watches are rich with horological history. The new collections – Raider Harpoon, Sea Sky, Deep Blue and the Sky Chief are inspired by their historic ones, and were relaunched only in 2016, exclusively in India with Ethos Watch Boutiques.
Would you add this one to your collection? Which is your favourite dress watch? Let us know in the comments section below!
