Vacheron Constantin

The Fiftysix takes its design from Vacheron's reference 6073 of 1956, down to a box-shaped crystal modeled on the original's Plexiglas. Two small dials show the day and date, and a gauge at 6 o'clock shows the power remaining.

Explorer Cory Richards tested an earlier version of this watch on Everest in 2019. The 2026 titanium series comes in four dial colors, one for each point of the compass, and the white dial stands for north. An orange hand shows a second time zone, with its own AM/PM indicator.

Vacheron made 200 of this version for the 30th anniversary of the Overseas and gave it a pale-azure lacquer dial. The white gold case is 8.1mm thick, and the watch comes with a white gold bracelet plus white and denim-blue rubber straps.

Vacheron's engravers cut lines by hand from a Maltese cross, the brand's emblem, out to the edge of the dial, in a pattern Vacheron designed for its 270th anniversary. The tourbillon cage at 6 o'clock forms the same cross, and Vacheron limited the watch to 127 pieces.

In normal mode the watch keeps time for about four days on a full wind. When you take it off, you press a pusher to put it in standby, and the movement slows down and keeps the perpetual calendar going for up to 70 days. A scale at 12 shows the days left.

Vacheron made 370 of these in platinum for its 270th anniversary. A hand-engraved openwork dial shows parts of the movement, and the watch tracks the day, date, and month alongside a precision moon phase.

This is the perpetual calendar among Vacheron’s three 270th-anniversary openface watches. Its date hand sweeps across an arc and jumps back to 1 at the end of each month, and the calendar needs no correction for short months or leap years.

The third anniversary openface watch pairs a tourbillon, open to view at 6 o’clock, with a retrograde date.