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Product Releases
From BaselWorld: New from Swatch Group
By Michelle Graff
Basel--An extremely lightweight ceramic watch and a moon-phase timepiece with four retrograde hands were among the new watches unveiled by the Swatch Group at BaselWorld.
Group brand Rado introduced what it is billing as the world’s thinnest high-tech ceramic watch, the aptly named “True Thinline” (below).
The Thinline has a total height of less than 5 mm, with all components, including the watch’s quartz movement, reworked in order to fit into this slim new case size. It features clear gold-colored indexes (these indexes are diamonds on the Jubilé version), sapphire crystal dome and rubber bracelet.
Meanwhile, Longines debuted the “Master Collection Retrograde Moon Phases” timepiece with self-winding mechanical Calibre L707.2 movement. In addition to displaying the hour, day, night and the phases of the moon, the watch has four retrograde functions: day of the week at 12 o’clock, the date on the right-hand side of the dial, a 24-hour second time-zone on the left-hand side of the dial and a small seconds at 6 o’clock.
The watch is available in 41 mm or 44 mm, with either a black dial and black leather strap or a silver dial with a brown alligator strap (below).
From Omega comes the special edition “De Ville Hour Vision Blue” (below). The 41 mm timepiece houses Omega’s Co-Axial Calibres 8500 self-winding mechanical movement, which is visible through the sapphire crystal case back.
The watch features a blue dial, 18-karat white gold facetted hour, minute and seconds hands and a date window at 3 o’clock. Sales of this special edition Hour Vision watch will benefit the charity Orbis International and its Flying Eye Hospital, which works to fight preventable blindness worldwide.
Joining Omega in its support of Orbis International is Daniel Craig, an Omega brand ambassador and the latest actor tapped to portray fictional secret agent James Bond.
Lastly, American-founded Swatch brand Hamilton introduced two new models in its “Lady Hamilton Vintage” line, one square-shaped and the other oval-shaped. Both watches feature quartz movements with leather thong and stainless steel straps. They retail for $545.
The oval-shaped watch is 14.5 x 28.4 mm with a white dial while the square-shaped model (below) features a mother-of-pearl dial and 15 x 28.55 mm case.
The watches are part of Hamilton’s “Modern Times” series, which was inspired by the 1936 Charlie Chaplin comedy of the same name.









