Breguet Marks 250th Anniversary with Classique Souscription 2025

The Classique Souscription 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Breguet

It may not have the name recognition of Rolex or Patek Philippe but Breguet, a company founded by Abraham-Louis Breguet in Paris in 1775, is one of the most highly regarded watchmakers in the world, with Breguet himself a universally recognized innovator in the field. We have Breguet to thank for the tourbillon movement (patented in 1801), the world’s first self-winding watch (1780) and the world’s first wrist watch (1810). His clients included royalty galore: Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte, Tsar Alexander I, and the Ottoman Emperor Selim III, just to name a few.

This year marks the company’s 250th anniversary, and to celebrate the occasion they unveiled a new timepiece: the Classique Souscription 2025 wrist watch. It is, in essence, the reimagining of a pocket watch that debuted in 1795. “This is the first time that we have taken a pocket watch and adapted it to a wristwatch format,” noted Gregory Kissling, Breguet’s CEO. “We wanted to surprise people by presenting not a grand complication, as some might have expected, but a single-hand watch.”

That is not a misprint—the watch has just one hand, which was the norm until the 17th and 18th centuries when minute and second hands were introduced. These not-uncommon designs are considered the descendants of both sundials and, more directly, historic tower clocks that traditionally boasted just one hand. Telling the time in this manner is simpler than it may seem. The hand will point either to the hour or to one of the graduations, or lines, in between the hour numbers. Each gradation represents a minute marker, and the bold lines represent a quarter hour (15, 30 and 45 minutes past the hour). At glance, one can tell the time, albeit not the one hundred percent exact time.