We love quartz watches at Worn & Wound. For many people, they had been the primary watches we ever wore, and signify a basis of enthusiasm that has stretched on for years. There are various, many aspects to quartz, and in the event you consider quartz watches merely as “inexpensive” options to mechanical, you’re lacking out on quite a lot of historical past, distinctive design, and particular actions that merely aren’t doable with a mechanical caliber. One in every of my favourite little quartz rabbit holes is the output of conventional, high-end Swiss manufacturers throughout the earliest days of the know-how, main up into the interval also known as the “quartz disaster.” It’s fascinating to look again and see how these manufacturers dealt with such a significant shock to a centuries previous trade, and the quartz watches produced by essentially the most storied Swiss manufacturers throughout this era are nearly at all times vital, carrying with them design attributes that successfully distinguish them from conventional mechanical watches.
The Girard-Perregaux Casquette is one in every of my favourite examples of a storied Swiss model experimenting with quartz on the very starting. The Casquette first appeared in 1976 and was introduced again because the Casquete 2.0 in 2022 in a restricted version that shortly bought out to a point of fanfare and acclaim. The watch has what’s now regularly known as a “driver’s type” orientation, with an LED show that shows the time digitally when considered from the aspect. Within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, this actually would have felt futuristic, and it nonetheless form of does in the present day, even when the tech inside is considerably antiquated.
The newest version of the Casquette is a restricted version made in partnership with Saint Laurent, the French trend home. Technically, this watch flys underneath the banner of Saint Laurent Rive Droite, a retail outpost and life-style model run by Saint Laurent with places in Paris and Beverly Hills. I suppose that makes this a “trend watch,” a time period that’s loaded with complexity in 2024 and is a worthy topic for an article of its personal. In any occasion, that is the second time Girard-Perregaux has partnered with Saint Laurent on a Casquette. The primary was a smooth black model with a case crafted from ceramic and titanium, and this version may be very a lot the inverse: silver and grey tones dominate, with a case made absolutely from Grade 5 titanium, which permits for a wide range of finishes to be utilized.
