Hands On With The Parmigiani Fleurier Toric Perpetual Calendar Golden Hour

All complications have their own unique design challenges, and their own clichés as well – dive watches are probably the easiest example as the family resemblance between them is often so close that if you didn’t see the company’s name on the dial you might easily assume they were all made by the same brand. Often, designers of complications choose to either hew to a classical execution (a repeater with a closed dial) or to really lean into mechanical complexity (the same watch with the dial opened up, and with all the interacting racks and snails exposed). Each has its merits and drawbacks; the classical approach can come across as stale, dull, too conservative for its own good; the exposed-mechanism approach often sacrifices legibility and succumbs to clutter – and, since by and large the actual complications are more or less similar mechanically, you end up with similar looking results anyway.

Perpetual calendars generally fall into either the classic or the cluttered category as well. I should say by the way, that there are real pleasures to be found in either execution and there are well done and less well done examples of both. It is however always interesting to see a fresh vision of a classic complication, which is I think what we have in the Parmigiani Toric Perpetual, introduced at Watches & Wonders 2025.

Perpetual calendar designer as a rule must choose what information to display, and not all perpetual calendars display the same information. The Moser Endeavour Perpetual Calendar, for instance, at first appears to not even have a month indication on the dial, although the month is actually show by a very small hand that points to one of the hour indexes, the number of the hour corresponding to the current month. Other than that there’s only the month visible on the dial side; there is no moonphase indication, and the leap year indicator – a necessity for setting a perpetual calendar correctly – is reduced to a small display on the back of the watch. IWC’s Portugieser Perpetual Calendar, by contrast, takes a maximalist approach – not only do you have the day, date, month, and Leap Year all present on the dial side, you also get a double moonphase and age of the Moon indicator showing the current moonphase in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and just for good measure, a four digit indication of the year (an invention first created by Kurt Klaus for IWC in the Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar, all the way back in 1985).

Over the course of its history Parmigiani Fleurier has created a number of perpetual calendars, some of which were definitely of the maximalist school. The Tonda Centum perpetual calendar, for instance had a full suite of calendar indications, including a double moonphase, day of the week, month, and retrograde date indication, and had a smoked sapphire dial allowing you an enticing glimpse of the mechanism. However in recent years, Parmigiani Fleurier has been cleaning up its design language and streamlining its catalog under the leadership of CEO Guido Terrini, and its latest addition to the redesigned Toric collection is a perpetual calendar which offers most of the traditional indications, but in a clean design with a pared down composition.

The calendar indications are all shown on just two subdials. On the right, the leap year and month are shown, and on the left, the day of the week and the date. The indications are relatively small but far from out of the ordinary for perpetual calendars where in general, a lot of information has to be shown in a fairly small space, and the relevant information can it turns out, be quite easily read. This is a somewhat unusual display, and while it’s usually asking for it to say anything’s a first in watchmaking I can’t offhand remember seeing exactly this arrangement before (it would be interesting to see the perpetual calendar works although opening up the dial would of course defeat the intentions of the design).

The Toric Perpetual was released in two versions at Watches & Wonders – a platinum version with a blue dial, and the model we have here, in 18k rose gold, with a gold “Golden Hour” dial (a photographer’s term for the time just after sunrise and just before sunset, when the Sun’s at a low angle and you get a lovely soft golden light) decorated with hand-applied grenage (graining) and hand applied markers. The case measures 40.6mm x 10.9mm, with the caliber PF733 measuring 31.5mm x 5.15mm.

The movement has a 60 hour power reserve, out of two mainspring barrels, and is elaborately decorated with so-called Côtes de Fleurier, which produces a diamond pattern appropriate to the contemporary feel of the watch overall. The movement is based on the caliber PF780, a time-only, hand wound movement released just last year in the Toric Petite Seconde, with a perpetual calendar module under the dial (this is a standard practice even in high end watchmaking, where perpetual calendar mechanisms are added as cadrature, or under-the-dial work, to base movements). The movement is executed to an obviously high standard, and while the finishing is not as painstakingly elaborate as that found in some of the very small batch independents for whom obsessive hand finishing is the raison d’être of the watch, it’s still quite good, with black polished steel cocks for the mainspring barrels and balance contrasting with the rose gold movement bridges (the effect is somewhat reminiscent of the English pocket watch movement style, or even that of Breguet).

The whole watch really radiates a sense of quiet confidence in its own merits, and a sense of luxury that doesn’t need to be obvious or extroverted – in some respects it makes the same impression of solidity and horological density I got from Lange, when its first watches started showing up on the market. While Lange has always had a deliberately anachronistic vibe, though, the Tonda Perpetual feels very much a contemporary design, front and back, but with a very intelligent use of negative space in the design that lets each aspect of the watch really shine.

The clarity of the design also means that the choice of case metal strongly influences the overall feel of the watch. There is an icy, otherworldly, almost interplanetary sheen to the platinum model, but the warmth of rose gold contrasts and complements the contemporary feel of the design and gives you a real sense of close integration between the movement and the dial side of the watch. On the wrist, the watch has a reassuring solidity – a piece of modern watch design with all the appeal of traditional perpetual calendar executions, but with an identity all its own.

The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda Perpetual Calendar: case, 40.6mm x 10.9mm rose gold, 30 meter water resistance, with flush correctors for the perpetual calendar indications; dial in rose gold with hand-grained finish, and hand applied rose gold markers and hands. Movement, caliber PF733, perpetual calendar module on the base caliber PF780, running in 29 jewels at 28,800 vph; double mainspring barrels delivering 60 hour power reserve. Price, CHF 85,000; see it at Parmigiani.com. Available September 2025.