The Lange Cabaret And The Lost Art Of The Rectangular Watch

Are shaped watches on the comeback trail?

Right now, every single watch A. Lange & Söhne makes, is round. The same is true at Vacheron and at Audemars Piguet (at least, if you think of the Royal Oak as a round-ish watch, which I do) and at Rolex, Omega, and … well, the list goes on and on. With the exception of a few holdouts – usually collections with lots of history to back them up, like the Reverso – rectangular mechanical watches seem to be even more of a minority than ever. Even rarer are rectangular watches with rectangular movements, which used to be a mainstay of Patek’s historically important Gondolo collection, currently down to just three watches, all of which use the round caliber 215. 

The rectangular caliber 25-21 REC was a beautiful piece of work but it’s no longer in the Patek catalog. Rectangular watches, especially with rectangular movements, seem to mostly exist nowadays as modern versions of legacy watches, like the Reverso and the Tank (and it’s square, not rectangular, but I feel like NOMOS deserves an honorable mention for the Tetra).

Before The Cabaret, In 1994 There Was The Arkade

Given their rarity in modern current production collections, it may come as a surprise to find out that when A. Lange & Söhne presented its first collection in 1994, with four watches – the Lange 1, Saxonia, Tourbillon Pour Le Mérite, and the Arkade – one of them, the Arkade, was a rectangular watch with a shaped movement, which filled up pretty much all the room in the case. 

Before dyed-in-the-wool Lange enthusiasts object by saying that the Arkade was not in fact a rectangular watch I will concede the point ahead of time – the case of the Arkade was rounded on top and on the bottom, but had straight sides so it was, at least, rectangle adjacent. 

The movement inside the Arkade, the Lange caliber L911.4, has exactly the same shape as the case and fills up the watch through the display back in a most satisfying way. At 22mm x 29mm overall the Arkade was on the small side and was something of a play for the ladies’ watch market but this was at a time when the default even for luxury brands was to make watches for the so-called “feminine client” in quartz, so between the very high grade movement and the inclusion of the same big date display found in the Lange 1, it was in its own small way a rather revolutionary watch.

Does A Watch Movement Have To Match A Watch Case?

I should say, by the way, that while there is a strong modern belief that a movement should, first of all, fit the case in which it is placed at least to some degree (movements are always smaller than cases at least a little bit, for obvious reasons) and as well, that a shaped watch should also have a shaped movement, that this has not always been the case historically and there are many revered shaped vintage watches which would have outraged some modern collectors because they did not have similarly shaped movements. When Cartier launched the Tank Cintrée in the early 1920s, it was with a round movement – the LeCoultre caliber 123, which is a beautiful piece of work and none the worse for being round.

Still, there’s no doubt that there is something especially satisfying about a movement which corresponds in shape and size to the watch case that holds it. You have a feeling that there is a kind of seamless continuity between mechanics and aesthetics which you don’t necessarily find, at least to the same degree, in a shaped watch with a standard round movement. This is one of those things you either care about or you don’t but if you’re the sort of person to whom it does matter, you probably care about it a lot. After many years of exposure to watches I’m more or less agnostic on the matter – I prefer it when movement and case match but if they don’t, especially in a shaped watch, I don’t find it a deal-breaker.

Cabaret Time, Lange Style

This brings us, then, to the Lange Cabaret. The Cabaret was the larger sibling of the Arkade and unlike the Arkade, it was not rectangle adjacent, but fully, resolutely and unapologetically rectangular, at 36.3mm x 25.9mm. The Cabaret was originally launched by Lange in 1997 and the first model was extremely striking, with a rose gold case, black dial, rose gold hands and markers and rose gold surrounds for the big date windows. The case has been described by Langepedia.com founder and Lange specialist Alperen “Alp” Sever, in glowing terms:

“Cabaret surely has the most elaborate and detailed case design ever made by A. Lange & Söhne. Apart from the usual hallmarks such as the brushed case band and notched, angled, and polished lugs; the bezel is built on three-steps with sharp corners and a slope on top. The Cabaret’s case design is a complete departure from A. Lange & Söhne’s previous non-round piece, Arkade with the main differentiator being the protruding lugs. As you might recall, lugs are one of the most important design hallmarks of the brand, which were utilized even at Odysseus along with the integrated bracelet.” The particular watch you see here is part of the original series – reference 107.031.

It’s an astonishingly beautiful watch even before you turn it over but as is so often the case with Lange, it’s business in the front and party in the back (not that the dial side of the Cabaret isn’t its own kind of party). The movement inside the Cabaret is the caliber L931, which is a straightforward adaptation of the Arkade’s L911.4 – the only major change is to the size and shape of the mainplate and ¾ plate. 

The quality of the movement is Lange at its somewhat anachronistic best. The chatons, fixed in place with heat-blued screws, screw-rim balance, and hand-engraved balance cock are all present and correct along with the black-polished cap for the escape wheel. It is, in short, a stunning example of exactly the level of design and execution which made enthusiasts compare Lange favorably to Patek in many respects when the company re-launched.

The Cabaret was available in a number of different versions, including a moonphase model and a very exciting tourbillon model, which Sever noted in 2021 could still sometimes be seen ” … gathering dust in A. Lange & Söhne boutique windows.” The tourbillon model is not only beautiful, but important historically as it was the very first tourbillon watch to include a stop seconds (“hacking”) mechanism.

For collectors, the time-only models represent something increasingly rare in watch collecting today – absolutely impeccable movement design and execution, a very real and impressive history and lineage from one of the most important four or five companies in modern watchmaking, and relative rarity and exclusivity, combined with relative affordability. (The latter may not be as much of a deal-closer as it should be as we seem to be infected with an incurable collective belief that if a watch costs more it must be worth more because it costs more, although Lord knows circular reasoning, hahaha, is not confined in collecting only to watch enthusiasts). 

The Cabaret is a real treasure. In 2010 I’m sure it made sense for Lange to discontinue it – much as I’m a shaped-watch-shaped-movement fan, they’re probably never going to be anything other than something of a niche within a niche. Still, though, shaped watches of any kind are enjoying a lot of popularity these days (with the Cartier Crash leading the charge, but certainly not alone) and the model we’ve got here is, I think, of all the time-only Cabaret models, the sexiest. There is something about the rose gold on black on white color scheme that just gets right in amongst me.

The A. Lange & Söhne Cabaret, ref. 107.031, as shown: case, rose gold, rectangular, 30M water resistance; dimensions 36.3mm x 25.9mm. Movement, shaped rectangular Lange caliber L931, hand-wound with big date complication, running in 30 jewels with 40 hour power reserve; mainplate and ¾ plate in untreated German silver; hand-engraved balance cock, with jewels set in screwed-down chatons. Alligator strap with matching tang buckle.  

For a very complete and detailed look at the Cabaret and why It Is A Watch That Matters And Attention Must Be Paid, check out Alp’s thorough breakdown of the Cabaret and its history on Langepedia.com. For an appreciation of the Arkade, see Peter Chong’s 2012 article on Deployant.com, and for a look at the Cabaret in context, see Alp Sever’s video, “Datograph, Cabaret, 1815, And The First Automatic Movement Of A. Lange & Söhne,” part of our series, A Lange Story, right here on The 1916 Company.