Established in 2005, Breguet?s Tradition collection pays tribute to the one-handed ?subscription? pocketwatches invented by founder Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1796, and their successors, the so-called ?tact? watches, by placing major movement components on top of the mainplate alongside an off-centered subdial. The newest addition to the collection, the Tradition Quantième Retrograde 7597, will be featured at WatchTime Live, our first all-digital collectors’ event, kicking off later this week.

The Tradition 7597 model combines the distinctive, off-centered subdial time indication with a retrograde date display, a complication that Breguet’s eponymous founder was among the first to develop. The 40-mm case, in white gold or rose gold, features the familiar fluted sides and houses the manufacture’s self-winding Caliber 505Q, equipped with a reverse in-line lever escapement with silicon horns and a silicon balance spring. Its solid gold rotor, visible behind the transparent caseback, is evocative of those used in the very first self-winding watches, called Perpetuelles.
As in Breguet’s historical subscription watches, the large barrel is topped by a symmetrically arranged gear train, and the center wheel at 8 o?clock triggers the similarly sized oscillating mechanism at 4 o?clock. The oscillator is enhanced with another early Breguet innovation, the pare-chute device for anti-shock protection ? also a hallmark of the Tradition collection. Th...