Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide Watch Review
The Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide RDDBH00612 pays tribute to the legendary watchmaker who founded the eponymous brand in 1995. The model, limited to 28 pieces, is crafted in-house and bears the Poinçon de Genève and is endowed with a bewitching ‘Leman Blue’ dial. Moreover, the Hommage La Placide is equipped with a perpetual calendar featuring a biretrograde display. US-based Meehna Goldsmith begins by looking at the life of Monsieur Dubuis before exploring this latest creation in close detail.
Roger Dubuis depuis 1995
Most industries bring down the curtain on talent that has lost the rosy blush of youth. Those who were once celebrated are unceremoniously ushered offstage and relegated to the sidelines. Not so in the watch industry. Here, age brings experience and knowledge, allowing for even more exciting second and third acts. Take, for example, Walter Lange who, at 66, revived the A. Lange & Söhne brand in 1990 after German reunification. Or Laurent Ferrier, who, after working at Patek Philippe for nearly 40 years, did not go gently into that good night. After retiring, he founded his own brand and debuted the Galet Classic Tourbillon Double Spiral at the age of 62, a watch that went on to win the Best Men’s Watch prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) in 2010.
Roger Dubuis, who passed away in 2017, was a watchmaker who belonged in this pantheon of notable horologists who came into full bloom in the back stretch of their careers. Another alumnus of Patek Philippe, he spent 14 years in its Complications department before co-founding his own brand at the age of 57 with Carlos Dias in 1995 under the name Société Genevoise des Montres (SOGEM). To understand the Roger Dubuis brand and, in particular, the Hommage La Placide, we need to crack open the history books.
Dubuis and Dias, on the face of it, seemed an odd pairing. Dias was a colourful character prone to showmanship and lavish displays. At the SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) watch fair in 1999, he famously recreated a full-scale replica of the Sistine Chapel for the Roger Dubuis booth. In contrast, Dubuis fit the mould of the contemplative and reserved horologist. He started his career at Longines in the late 1950s before moving to Patek Philippe. It was at the Genevan atelier that Dubuis said he gained a deep respect for traditional Haute Horlogerie and its standards of excellence, forming the basis of his watchmaking philosophy. This is why, from the brand’s inception to the present day, most Roger Dubuis timepieces bear the Poinçon de Genève, the Hallmark of Geneva.
Roger Dubuis Hommage and Sympathie collections (1996)
The Roger Dubuis brand presented its first watches to the public in 1996 with the Hommage and Sympathie collections. Housed in classic round cases and featuring complications such as chronographs and perpetual calendars, the Hommage was a nod to the traditional watchmakers who inspired Roger Dubuis. By contrast, the avant-garde Sympathie represented Dias’s style, featuring flamboyant cushion-shaped cases with pointed corners. Both incorporated a biretrograde perpetual calendar, Roger Dubuis’s favourite complication, which became, and still is, a signature of the brand.
Biretrograde displays
Dubuis had a very personal connection with the biretrograde perpetual calendar. After all, he was its co-inventor. Upon retiring from Patek Philippe, he opened his own independent workshop in 1980, doing repairs and restorations for auction houses. It was during this time that he and Jean-Marc Wiederrecht, the superstar movement constructor of Agenhor, began working on the idea for the first-ever double retrograde perpetual calendar mechanism for a watch, which they co-patented in 1989. That same year, their invention took the stage at the Baselworld fair in the Harry Winston Premier line, the jewellery house’s first watch collection.
Carlos Dias
By all accounts, Dias was a charismatic and overwhelming force. While Dubuis provided the watchmaking credibility, Dias drove the vision and direction. His influence could be seen in the extravagant designs of the Much More and Too Much. By the time Roger Dubuis retired in 2003, the brand had little left of Dubuis’s sensibilities.
Dias continued to release increasingly bold collections with the Follow Me and Excalibur, while also pursuing his dream of turning the brand into a fully integrated Manufacture. But he expanded too fast, overextending resources, and, as a result, there were quality control issues and flagging demand for the brand’s watches. Already squeezed by creditors, the brand couldn’t sustain itself after the 2008 market crash.
At this point, Richemont saw an advantageous purchase, swooping in to buy out Dias’s 60% stake. In the transaction, it gained a vertically integrated Manufacture that had developed over 28 in-house calibres and made nearly every component from screws and pinions to wheels and hairsprings. It also retained one important characteristic common to most Roger Dubuis watches: the movements carried the prestigious Geneva Seal.
Although Dias was gone, new management doubled down on the extreme direction he left behind, even going so far as to trademark the term ‘hyper horology’ in 2022. The Hommage and Sympathie collections, the last vestiges of Roger Dubuis himself, were phased out. Today, Roger Dubuis has four pillars: Excalibur; Excalibur Spider; Knights of the Round Table; and Velvet, catering to the women’s market.
Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide – introduction
The release of the Hommage La Placide comes as a surprise, but one that makes perfect sense. The original Roger Dubuis Hommage collection paid tribute to the watchmakers that Dubuis admired; now the renowned horologist gets a timepiece in honour of him. The sobriquet ‘La Placide’ is in reference to Roger Dubuis’s nickname, which, it is said, he gained as a child when he was a scout, reflecting his tranquil spirit and deep wisdom.
The Hommage La Placide is a compelling and thoughtful proposition from aesthetics to construction, and comes as a posthumous 30-year anniversary present to Monsieur Dubuis for the establishment of his brand. I love a good story and La Placide starts with a powerful theme, linking tradition with a 21st-century perspective. The centrepiece of the dial is Dubuis’s favourite complication, the biretrograde perpetual calendar display, which, in this interpretation, repeats the boldness of his initial collections, expressed in a contemporary style. At the same time, the mechanics under the hood give a respectful bow to his commitment to restoration and passion for expressive horology.
Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide – dial
Let’s begin with the five-layered dial, which is a real treat for discerning eyes. The swooping arcs of the semi-circular biretrograde displays immediately draw attention. The brass retrograde hands, coated with pink gold, move against a backdrop of mother-of-pearl marked by transferred blue texts and hand-bevelled sides. They gracefully move through the days of the week and the number of days in the month, ultimately reaching their end point before jumping back in the blink of an eye, commencing their journey anew. In addition, the counters are also formed in mother-of-pearl and feature a broader circular-brushed finish and transferred texts.
The flecks of blue shimmering from the mother-of-pearl, numerals and days of the week pick up the ‘Leman Blue’ of the mainplate layer, enriched with lacquer to reach that deep shade. The hue is reminiscent of Monsieur Dubuis’s view of Lake Geneva as he travelled by train between Geneva and Vevey as a watchmaking student. Applied 3D pink-gold hour markers provide landmarks for the pink-gold minute hands, finished with satin-brushed and polished surfaces, to track the time. Meanwhile, the moonphase at 6 o’clock, forged with a blue aventurine base and glowing with curved 18K yellow-gold moons, balances out the symmetry. Framing this portrait is the flange. Circular-brushed with a rhodium coating, its transferred numerals and minute track include polished angles to add extra lustre.
Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide – Calibre RD1472
Inside the Hommage La Placide ticks the Calibre RD1472, elevating the watch from a lovely accolade to a historically significant collector’s timepiece. The Calibre RD1472 unites the RD14 base calibre, the Manufacture’s first in-house automatic movement presented in 2004, with the RD72 perpetual calendar module, first used in 1999. The original RD14 calibres have all been given a technical and spa treatment, including a recalculation of the gear train and repositioning of wheel axes. Most notably, the RD14 calibre features a traditional swan-neck regulator endued with a decorative finish, as well as the original in-house balance springs, characteristics which reinforced the Maison’s ‘Manufacture’ credentials.
Now restored, the RD14 base calibres have been linked to the RD72 perpetual calendar module which features a clever month-and-leap-year mechanism, displaying both on the same counter with two co-axial hands. All told, creating the Hommage La Placide required remanufacturing the ‘main plate, large bridge and about 50% of the components, including levers, springs, wheels, and pinions’ — all done in-house, of course.
Fitted with an entirely new 18K pink-gold rotor, the Calibre RD1472 is lavished with 15 decorative techniques, namely wheel-bevelling, tool-bevelling, rounding, circular graining, snailing, Geneva stripes, mirror polishing, teeth polishing, tip polishing, perlage, truing, internal drawing, external drawing, frosting and burnishing. True to the brand’s DNA, the movement also meets the onerous requirements of the Poinçon de Genève. When fully wound, the Hommage La Placide runs for 48 hours autonomously.
Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide – case
In contrast to its ‘Hyper Horology’ cousins, the Hommage La Placide is housed in a more modestly sized 38 mm pink-gold case and is limited to 28 pieces. It secures to the wrist with a blue interchangeable leather strap featuring a pink-gold triple-folding buckle bearing the original Roger Dubuis emblem. It’s packaged in a dedicated collector box that includes a push corrector, certificate of authenticity, Poinçon de Genève certificate and a magnifier, allowing its owner to delight in many of its handcrafted details.
Closing remarks
As a fitting added bonus to mark this launch, owners of a Roger Dubuis Hommage model are invited to visit a Roger Dubuis monobrand boutique to receive a complimentary Hommage strap for their original timepiece.
Despite his passing, Monsieur Dubuis still influences the brand that bears his name and his spirit lives on in the Homage La Placide.
Further reading
Technical specifications
- Model: Roger Dubuis Hommage La Placide
- Reference: RDDBH00612
- Case: 18-carat pink gold, diameter 38 mm, height 11 mm, water resistance 3 ATM (30m), sapphire crystal to the front and exhibition case back.
- Functions: hours, minutes, retrograde day & date displays, moon phase, month, leap indicator, perpetual calendar
- Movement: RD1472 calibre, self-winding movement, frequency 28,800 vph (4Hz), 33 jewels, power reserve 48 hours, 307 components.
- Strap: calf leather strap, interchangeable thanks to spring bars with spurs. Pink gold triple folding buckle.
- Price on application