It has become my tradition in recent years to wear and wrist-test a GMT or world-time watch during my annual pilgrimages to the Swiss watch fairs ? Carl F. Bucherer’s Patravi TravelTec II, at Baselworld 2016, and Parmigiani’s Tonda Hemispheres, at last year’s SIHH, being recent examples. This year, Jaeger-LeCoultre, one of the brands exhibiting at the 2018 SIHH in Geneva, was kind enough to provide me with an ideal traveling companion, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Geographic, a watch launched at SIHH 2016 as part of the brand’s 25th-anniversary Master Collection.

The watch has a charmingly old-fashioned appeal, with a modest but still contemporary 39 mm in diameter for the stainless steel case; the thin bezel has a gleaming, polished finish, as do the top surfaces of the curving lugs, while the sides of the round case have a brushed finish. The crowns ? one in the traditional 3 o?clock position for winding and setting the local time, the other at 10 o?clock for advancing the world-time city disk in either forward or backward direction ? are very petite but fluted for easier gripping, with the tiny relief JLC logo on their rounded surfaces.
The elegantly sloped bezel frames the dial, protected under an ever-so-slightly domed sapphire crystal. The first things you notice about the dial are its understated cleanliness and the admirable restraint shown in its overall design; the navy blue highlights are very judiciously used. In the center are openwork...