Pivot to Green: Jaeger-LeCoultre’s 90th Anniversary Celebration of the Reverso Begins with Green-Dial Tribute Edition
Not many watch models endure for 90 years, but Jaeger-LeCoultre’s iconic Reverso, famously developed for polo players in 1931, is a significant exception. The model’s clean Art Deco lines and pivoting rectangular case — originally designed so the watch’s front side could be flipped over to protect the crystal from being shattered by an errant polo ball — have remained popular into the modern era, helping the Reverso grow into the Swiss maison’s flagship collection, incorporating numerous materials, colors, and complications. At Watches & Wonders 2021, Jaeger-LeCoultre kicked off the anniversary year with several all-new variations on the Reverso, including some intriguing complications that we’ll visit in detail in the coming days. Today, we’ll look at the relatively simple but undeniably attractive Reverso Tribute Small Seconds in a new green colorway.
The watch’s sunray-brushed green lacquer dial takes its inspiration, the watchmaker says, from the verdant pine forests that surround its manufacture in Switzerland’s Vallée de Joux. It continues the Reverso’s tradition of using vibrant colors on its dials, which we’ve seen most recently in the burgundy-accented edition released ahead of the anniversary in late 2020. Following the design codes of the Tribute editions, the reversible steel case is a 45.6-mm x 27.4 mm rectangle with the hallmark Art Deco-derived gadroons at the top and bottom. it frames the emerald-hued dial with its faceted hour indexes and Dauphine hands and a round small seconds subdial adding a playful counterpoint to the overall quadrilateral shape.
Also in the tradition of the earliest Reverso models, the caseback is solid and elegantly spartan, offering a space for personalization; an owner can choose a signture engraving or other motif to make the watch uniquely his or her own. Behind that solid caseback is the rectangle-shaped, manually wound 822/2 caliber, one of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s host of manufacture movements, which stores a power reserve of 42 hours.
Echoing the tones of the green dial is the watch’s calf-leather strap, crafted by Casa Fagliano, a family-owned artisanal leather purveyor founded in Argentina in 1892 and operating continuously since then. Casa Fagliano uses the same soft and supple leather, and the same long-held traditional techniques, that it does for its world-famous polo boots, thus ensuring the strap adds yet another stylistic tribute to the Reverso’s sporting origins. The Reverso Tribute Small Seconds in Green is priced at $8,950.