At 80, the Reverso has lost none of its allure
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Yannick Nardin
Freelance writer and journalist
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The history of the Reverso, the iconic watch by Jaeger-LeCoultre, is well known around the world. Designed for polo players in India, it first appeared on the field in 1931. Today, 80 years later, this Le Sentier-based Manufacture is celebrating a timepiece that has lost none of its original allure over the decades. “When we began preparing this ‘Reverso year’, we asked ourselves what had made it so successful and timeless,” explains Claudio Menz, product marketing director at Jaeger-LeCoultre. “We finally ended up with four key reasons.”
The golden ratio
Claudio Menz continues: “The first is that it was designed according to the golden ratio, a concept that was familiar in ancient Greece and which was used to design some incredible buildings like the Parthenon. Secondly, because of the longevity of our Manufacture, our ‘baby’ has not only been kept alive but has matured beautifully over time. Thirdly comes innovation. Underlying the Reverso is an ingenious solution to a practical problem. This principle was preserved through the extraordinary opportunity offered by the two sides of the watch to show useful complications, even grand complications. The last reason relates to personalisation, with the two sides offering greater scope for artistic expression. We decided to put all our efforts into focusing on these aspects.”
With the new pieces in its collection for 2011, Jaeger-LeCoultre has found a response to each of these specific qualities. The Grande Reverso Ultra Thin and Grande Reverso Ultra Thin Tribute to 1931 express the personality of each timepiece in a highly elegant, simple format. This allows the owner to give free rein to their imagination when it comes to personalising the case-back. To do this, the Manufacture now offers a wider selection of techniques, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, drawing on artistic expertise such as engraving, gem setting and enamelling, as well as technical processes such as the one used to reproduce the owner’s fingerprint in the metal, for example.
“The legend lives on...”
The Grande Reverso Duoface is in the great tradition of useful complications with its dual time zone inspired by the original design of 1994. As for the Reverso Répétition Minutes à Rideau, the sliding curtain is one of the Manufacture’s grand complications, made up of more than 200 parts. When pushed open with the fingertip it reveals the mechanism in the skeleton dial and activates the minute repeater mechanism, for which the gongs were made in a special alloy, machined all in one piece.
Jérôme Lambert, CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre, concludes: “Some legends draw their strength from their history. Fixed in time, definitively immobilised, they look only to the past. But sometimes, the right kind of magic produces an incredible phenomenon: the legend lives on, breathes, evolves, becomes more beautiful, yet retains its aura.” And that is the story of the Reverso.
