One is a new “entry-level” model; the other’s an elegant dress piece with hidden depths. Between them they show that Chopard’s range of time-only LUC watches touches more bases than ever before.
By Chris Hall

We have written enough about Chopard LUC in the past to leave little ambiguity about where we stand: as one of haute horlogerie’s new boys, it represents a take on fine watchmaking that is by turns inventive, quirky, sophisticated and accomplished. It turned 20 last year (and launched a handsome GMT at Salon QP to celebrate), giving us cause to reflect on how the LUC banner has been able for the most part to successfully house a very wide range of styles while retaining a common strand that is identifiably its own. Most of the boxes you need to tick to sit at watchmaking’s top table are ticked: a perpetual calendar (as well as chronograph and tourbillon versions); a tourbillon; a hand-wound chronograph and most recently a minute repeater, not to mention plenty of other less common complications. But at the heart of the LUC range are the time-only watches, the XP and XPS. XP stands for “eXtra-Plat” – literally “extra flat” in French, and the addition of S denotes a small seconds subdial. 

At Baselworld 2017 Chopard released two new XP-derived watches which broaden the reach of the LUC range, in two quite different directions. First up we have the LUC XP in stainless steel. Chopa...