#Patek Philippe releases new Calatrava Pilot Travel Time watch

With last month’s debut of the 37.5-mm Calatrava Pilot Travel Time ($48,495) in 18-k white gold, Patek Philippe proves that its retro aviator watch is equally at home on a woman’s wrist as it is on a man’s. Originally launched five years ago in a brawny 42-mm size, the sporty-retro Calatrava Pilot Travel Time took its cues from a pair of 1930s-era watches that now reside in the brand’s Geneva museum. Reinterpreted for the modern era, the updated model is designed to draw a new generation of younger, hipper Patek fans, who are more likely to wear a fine watch with jeans than a suit.

The smaller version — with a practical, userfriendly dual-time-zone system for travelers — debuted in rose gold in 2018.

Now available in white gold, it continues to expand the brand’s considerable bench of complicated watches for both genders.

While conventional wisdom has long held that women prefer the convenience of quartz, Patek Philippe has bucked that trend, particularly in the last decade. In a 2009 milestone moment, the brand unveiled its long-awaited, in-house, manually winding chronograph movement; to everyone’s surprise, the mechanism was launched in a women’s watch — the Ref. 7071, cheekily dubbed Ladies First.

While conventional wisdom has long held that women prefer the convenience of quartz, Patek Philippe has bucked that trend, particularly in the last decade.

Patek followed up that groundbreaking chronograph with a family of Ladies First technical complications devoted to women: the Ref. 7000 Minute Repeater, the Ref. 7059 Mono-Pusher Split-Seconds Chronograph and the Ref. 7140 Perpetual Calendar ($99,950), which remains in the current collection.
In 2013, the brand expanded its classical Calatrava family with the Ref. 7134 Travel Time, the Ref. 7130 World Time and the Ref. 7121 Moon Phases. A few years later, it added the Ref. 4948 and Ref. 4947 Annual Calendars with Moon Phases.

In 2018, Patek revisited the women’s chronograph with the classically round and manually wound 38-mm Ref. 7150 ($89,893).

The new chronograph sports vintagey details, like the guilloché-engraved pushers, a gently cambered sapphire-crystal “box” glass, and sculpted Breguet hands and gold-applied numerals. A pulsometer scale around the perimeter is a nod to old-time doctor’s watches, which featured a similar scale for measuring pulse rates.

They sure get our hearts beating a little faster.