Is it enough these days for a watch to just be really, really nice"
By Chris Hall

As full-time observers of the watch industry and the products it produces, it very often falls to us journalists to speculate about “trends”. Certain ideas seem to pass through the watch world like waves, some quicker than others. Right now, we are in the middle of a fairly large wave of nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s which has carried with it shorter, smaller, spikes – all the orange, or brown, watches seem to appear at the same time, for example.
There is also a longer-term trend towards a diversification of the materials one might make a watch out of; and if you zoom out further still, looking at men’s watches over many decades, we have seen watches become generally bigger. Notwithstanding a modest correction in the last two years (which is more about remembering some people still want 38mm-41mm watches), that continues. With a few exceptions – Rolex; Patek Philippe – the brands that are at least in touch with these trends generally seem to be the more successful. 
The reason I bring this up in the context of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Power Reserve is that it is a long way from any of these trends. Certainly it is in no danger of being called “trendy”, either. It does have a blue dial, which is something of a recent thing for the entire industry (and which we will get into in more detail on in a minute) but th...