Parmigiani Adds to its Toric Collection with Tourbillon Slate Edition

Parmigiani Fleurier, the haute horlogerie watch brand founded by inventive independent watchmaker Michel Parmigiani, leads off the second wave of launches on 2020’s Watches & Wonders digital platform, which first went live back in April. The new timepiece from Parmigiani that immediately caught our eye is the new Toric Tourbillon Slate, the first tourbillon piece to join the revived Toric collection, which was unveiled in 2017.

The Toric collection is named for the distinctive case design of its models, which is directly descended from the very first watch made by Michel Parmigiani. Its hallmark traits include the gadroons and knurled pattern on its contours, inspired by Ancient Greek columns. The slate-colored guilloché dial, which debuted on a Toric Chronometre model released in 2019, takes its artisanal, engraved texture from the concentrically patterned scales of a pine cone, one of the many examples of the Golden Ratio found in the natural world and also evocative, of Fibonacci’s spirals from the world of science.

Sweeping over the dial, and its applied 18k rose gold numeral hour markers, are two semi-openworked, javelin-shaped hands with luminous coating. The watch’s central point of interest, its 60-second flying tourbillon, is displayed in a large aperture at 7 o’clock — an unconventional position chosen, says the brand, to honor the birth hour of its founder and namesake: Michel Parmigiani was born at 7:08 AM on December 2nd, 1950.

Inside the elegantly formed Toric case, made of 18k rose gold and measuring 42.8 mm in diameter and a relatively slender 9.45 mm thick, is an accordingly slim in-house movement, Parmigiani’s Caliber PF517. Self-winding by means of a platinum micro-rotor decorated with a Grain d’Orge guilloché, the movement achieves its thinness (3.4 mm) by integrating the tourbillon directly into the mainplate. Made up of 207 components, including 29 jewels, and sporting circular côtes de Genève and beveled edges on its bridges, the movement stores a power reserve of 48 hours and peers out from behind a sapphire caseback.

The Parmigiani Toric Tourbillon Slate, mounted on a Havana-colored alligator strap from Hermès with a rose-gold pin buckle, is strictly limited to 30 pieces, priced at $130,000.