For SIHH 2019, Jaeger-LeCoultre is introducing a more emphatic look for its Master Ultra-Thin collection

By Chris Hall

There are times as a watch journalist when you have to stop and wonder how far removed your critical favourites are from the commercially successful products. Can it really be that the slender, attractive, elegant watches we dote on are so universally rejected by the great watch-buying public"
How else to explain the appearance of the VC 56, the replacement of Audemars Piguet?s Jules Audemars collection with the Code 11.59, and now this, the introduction of a certain butchness to Jaeger-LeCoultre?s Master Ultra-Thin"

This is not perhaps quite in the same category as the first two in that list, and yet it hails from the same basic impulse. Sleek and simple round-cased watches from premium brands just aren?t selling, or so it would seem. So the Master Ultra-Thin is getting a razor-sharp remix, characterised by the sunburst guilloche dials, topped with translucent blue enamel, on this and the Master Ultra-Thin Moon released at the end of 2018.

The white gold tourbillon model uses the brand?s in-house calibre 987, which it says has been reworked technically and aesthetically. No specific details have yet been released but judging by the case back, that would include a new streamlined tourbillon bridge.

On the dial, the large tourbillon aperture is balanced by an equally emphatic circular date indicator at 12 o?clock, which is new to the brand. ...