DADS, GRADS, GROOMS GIFT GUIDE NO. 10: NEW GIRARD-PERREGAUX WATCHES

WHEN IT COMES to men and gifts, three times a year are pretty much all you need to remember: the year-end holidays, the far more personal birthday celebration and what we call the “Dads, Grads and Grooms” season — Father’s Day, graduation and weddings. (The latter includes gifts from the groom to his groomsmen and from the bride to her husband-to-be.)

MoS has curated 10 brilliant gift ideas for this masculine season, along with ideal (and all-new) Girard-Perregaux timepieces with which to celebrate it. — The Editors 

AS WITH OUR previous gift guides, here we’ve saved the best for last. The extraordinary watchmakers at theGirard-Perregaux manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds have been very, very busy bees the last few years, and all that work has paid off spectacularly in the form of innovative models and movements that debuted at this year’s BaselWorld show.

So well-rounded is the GP catalog these days that, as it happens, there’s a perfect timepiece for everyone on our list: Dad, the graduate and the groom. Certainly makes things easy, doesn’t it?

FOR DAD: TRAVELER WW.TC

For dear old Dad we have the reinterpretation of an icon: the 44-millimeter successor to the original GP WW.TC is sleeker, with dynamic curves and an elongated shape for a distinctly contemporary design. The chronograph with time-zone indication has a 46-hour (minimum) power reserve and hour, minute, small second, world time, day/night indicator and date functions. With a nod to the GPs that preceded it, the Traveller’s oscillating weight and folding clasp pay tribute to the arrow found on Girard-Perregaux’s emblematic Three Gold Bridges. 

FOR THE GRAD: HAWK CERAMIC

Sport, hip and shiny, thanks to its extremely fine zirconium oxide powder ceramic case. The Hawk collection debuted last December, but the Hawk Ceramic was released just a few weeks ago. This visually striking black ceramic version of the Hawk offers a high-tech casing (it’s hypoallergenic, heat-reflecting and extremely scratch-resistant) for the mechanical perfection housed underneath. The dials are easy to read, while luminescent touches on the displays make this sports watch s functional as it is appealing. It’s designed for a quick glance — but anyone proudly wearing it won’t be able to keep from staring. 

FOR THE GROOM: 1966 COLUMN-WHEEL CHRONOGRAPH

This is a true watch lover’s wristwatch — a seamless blend of advanced mechanical engineering and classic style. The hand-wound column-wheel chronograph (and its 312 components) housed in the eternally elegant 1966 model is the result of five years of horological exploration. It has 31 jewels; its microvar variable inertia balance wheel beats at 28,800 Vib/h; and the small second is at 9 o’clock. The chronograph’s display includes a central direct-drive second hand and a jumping minutes counter — that is, the small hand jumps from one minute to the next in a fraction of a second, making it much easier to read than the usual continuous mechanism. The core of this integrated chronograph is the column wheel with a lateral clutch. Too good to be true? Like (we hope) the groom’s impending marriage, not in the slightest.