Parmigiani Fleurier CEO Guido Terreni tells us how to make complicated watches minimal
Borna BošnjakDo you know the through line of all of Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF and Toric watches? You’ve surely heard of quiet luxury by now, but what about private luxury? That’s the tenet that Guido Terreni, CEO of Parmigiani Fleurier, is doing his best to upkeep with all the brand’s releases. To find out what exactly he means by that, you’ll have to watch the video, but let’s just say it involves making some very complicated watches somehow minimal.
The Toric Perpetual Calendar is perhaps the best example of this ideology, as all the indications you’d normally expect from a complex calendar watch like this have been distilled into just two sub-dials. It’s by no means the first QP to coaxially combine functions, and yet, it does so with surprising legibility.
This ethos extends past the uncluttered dials. Despite its complication, the Toric Perpetual Calendar is only 10.6mm thick, even with its modular PF733 movement based on the manually wound calibre in the Toric Small Seconds. And even though the perpetual calendar isn’t fully crown-operated, Parmigiani neatly tucks away the pushers on either side of the crown. They’re not completely hidden, rather accentuated by the curvaceous case flanks as part of the design, rather than an afterthought.
Though it took some time, I think it’s safe to say that the new Parmigiani look is now just the Parmigiani look, but where do you go from here? If you’ve already hit the nail on the head with a design, and especially one that’s fairly new, you don’t want to muddy the waters with changes. For Parmigiani Fleurier, that meant exploring new materials, the most exciting of which is certainly the ceramic and metal alloy of the new Tonda PF Sport Ultra-Cermet. The muted grey tone is thanks to a material similar to tungsten carbide, one that’s already been used in watchmaking, and is renowned for its ceramic-like scratch resistance and metallic sheen.