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New Feature Iconic Watch Brands : BREGUET

BREGUET

Over the next few weeks i am going to be writing blog posts focusing on each individual watch brand and trying to provide a bit of background and also to put the lesser known brands into some context. Instead of starting with the big watch brands – Rolex, Omega, Breitling etc I’m going to start with the lesser known brands, today its the turn of Breguet. If you haven’t heard of Breguet i hope this article persuades you to look a bit deeper at them and consider giving them a prime piece of wrist real estate.

Brequet Watches

It may sound surreal but in certain places is not uncommon to hear that the music is suddenly stopped and replaced by the superman theme. While looking up to see what’s going on you may on occasion notice that a waiter wearing a superman outfit is prancing around to the music holding a bottle of very expensive champagne high above his head (the holding above his head bit is important as it is so he doesn’t melt his face off from the attached blazing firework). He will deliver the bottle to a table and sometimes, but not always, the people who just paid whatever outrageous amount for the champagne will proceed to shake it and squirt it all over superman and themselves.
So where am i going with this? Well if these people were watches they probably wouldn’t be a Breguet. If Breguet were a person he would be understated, reserved and very elegant. He wouldn’t be brash, assuming or garish.  However he also wouldn’t disapprove of the people squiring the champagne , he just probably wouldn’t notice as he was too deep in an important conversation. What I am trying to say is that Breguet Watches are classy and have a history second to none. In the industry they are know for their exclusiveness, their technical virtuosity and the reputation they have earned by being the choice of kings of nations and empires.

Watch 160 - the worlds rarest watch

Breguet was the favourite watch of Marie Antoinette queen of France. One of Marie’s admirers commissioned  Breguet to make a time piece “fit for a queen”. The watch was to be made from gold wherever possible and the number of complications should be as great and varied as engineering boundaries would allow, and then of course push them a bit. As for the time and cost of such a watch it was unlimited, unfortunately the Queen never had the chance to read the time on her watch “watch 160″ as it wasn’t finished until 1827 (that’s 34 years after her death, 4 years after Breguets death and 44 years after the watch was commissioned!!) Rome was built faster but the NHS it system probably wasn’t. I wonder if he ever got paid for the commission?

The Mary Antoinette watch came to symbolise Breguet as a company – its dedication to produce the most cutting edge timepieces with an unrivalled elegance. Breguet wouldn’t let money or time stand in the way of the most advanced watches of the period. His was the pursuit of haute horlogerie.

Breguet name dropping… here are a few of the people who have owned Breguets…this is once club it would be quite nice to be in:
Marie-Antoinette – Queen of France, Louis XVI – King of France, The Prince of Wales, (1801), The Prince of Wurtemberg, Selim III – Sultan of the Ottaman Empire, Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, George III, Price Orloff, Prince Poniatowski, Prince Ferdinand of Spain, Queen Victoria, The Duke of Wellington, Baron Rothschild, The Duke of Windsor and a very famous Sir Winston Churchill, thats just a few. Mostly Breguet owners are statesmen Kings, Queens, Princes and generally very important people.

Hopefully I’m not leading us all astray here, I do realise that I have spoken a lot about how Breguet seek excellence and how many wealthy people have owned them…however, are they available to the mere moral? the answer is yes, Breguet watches range in price from £3195 – £5600 for standard models and can hit the sky for custom and limited editions but let’s not worry about those for now. That puts them in the same price bracket as most other luxury Swiss watches.

I would say that if you are looking to buy a watch that comes with a lot of history then you have a choice of a lot of brands. However Breguet is unsurpassed for its sheer presence in the “unbelievably important people of history” category and owning ones puts you in the same very exclusive club. A Breguet will look stunning on your wrist but its generally not a watch that will have every Tom, Dick and Harry realising that you have impeccable taste as most people have never heard of, and never will hear of Breguet. However if you roll in the right circles you may get a nod and a smile from a fellow Breguet owner.

If you have any questions about Breguet just post them below and we will try and answer them!

Check our range of Breguets here.

Kind regards

Iconic Watches

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Watch Info and tagged with antionette, antoinette, Baron Rothschild, BaronRothschild, breguet, breguet history, Louis XVI, marie antionette, Marie Antoinette, Prince of Wurtemberg, Selim III, Sir Winston Churchill, watch 160. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.