Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface Watch Review
The Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface is one of three new Openface references that have just been unveiled at Watches & Wonders 2025. As you would expect from the esteemed Manufacture, everything is refined to the nth degree. Mark McArthur-Christie, horophile extraordinaire, looks back to 1755, the year the Maison was founded, before examining the specification of this latest model, painstakingly crafted on the outskirts of Geneva.
Esaïe Jean François Hetier – the apprentice
I wonder what Esaïe Hetie’s first job interview on the 17th of September 1755 was like? I suspect it went something like this. ‘So, Esaïe, what do you see as your biggest weakness?’ ‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ ‘Can you make a decent cup of coffee?’
Whatever happened, it must have gone well as Jean-Marc Vacheron took him on as his first apprentice. Hiring your first employee (although the working conditions of an apprentice in 18th-century Switzerland would horrify most of us today) was a huge step for both craftsman and apprentice. You weren’t just taking on a member of staff, you were passing on your genius, your craft and entering into a far deeper working relationship than any modern-day employee and employer.
Image – Esaïe Jean François Hetier’s apprenticeship contract
After at least five years as an apprentice, Hetie would have been entitled to be considered for the role of Master watchmaker, assuming he was able to produce ‘a small clock with an alarm to wear around the neck, and a square clock to stand on a table’. One imagines he aced it.
Young Hetie was clearly a smart lad. Signing his indenture with Vacheron meant he was becoming the 18th-century equivalent of a tech bro (minus the gilet and Nikes). In the 18th-century, watches were hi-tech and those who made them were serious players. The Encyclopaedists, Diderot and d’Alembert, explained in 1757 that “Geneva’s most thriving fabrique is watchmaking. It employs more than 5,000 people, which is over one fifth of the citizens.”
Vacheron Constantin – ‘a 270 year quest for excellence’
Looking at Vacheron Constantin’s history, it would appear that both master and apprentice made a good choice. This year, the Manufacture, based in Plan-les-Ouates, will mark 270 years in business. It may not be an anniversary that firms usually celebrate, but as ‘the oldest watch manufacturer in continuous operation’, it’s entitled to some leeway – and a decent knees-up. As well as all the partying, Monsieur Vacheron’s successors are launching three new Anniversary models.
Image – Vacheron Constantin Workshops in 1900
Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Openface – three new models for 2025
There’s a tourbillon, a retrograde calendar and this watch, the Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface. A complete calendar is not one with all 31 days (sorry – lousy joke), but one that tells its wearer the day, the date and the month. Here, it’s paired with an openwork dial (quite the design challenge with a complete calendar), a 41 mm platinum case and the appropriately-named Manufacture Calibre 2460 QCL/270 movement.
Image – Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Tourbillon Retrograde Date Openface (2025)
Image – Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Perpetual Calendar Retrograde Date Openface (2025)
Vacheron Constantin – a history of producing openworked dials
This certainly isn’t Vacheron’s first foray into openworked dials. In fact, the firm made its first watch with a partially openworked dial back in 1918. It was a pocket watch with an astronomical calendar – a completely innovative design at the time. In 2002, the ref. 47247 used an openwork dial to show off its complex retrograde date mechanism. In 2019, the Traditionnelle Twin Beat perpetual calendar demonstrated the complex anatomy of its perpetual calendar calibre. Then, two years later, the first Traditionnelle Openface Complete Calendar came off the bench, followed in 2023 by the Traditionnelle Tourbillon. So the Swiss marque has certainly had plenty of practice.
Image – Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar (2019)
Openworked dials aren’t an easy thing to get right, as Christian Selmoni, Style & Heritage Director, explains, “Unlike skeletonisation, which involves removing as much material as possible to create a kind of mechanical lacework, the Openface dial displays the mechanism while maintaining a strong dial structure. It’s a subtle exercise, revealing the movement’s complexity and inner beauty without concealing any of its architecture.”
Image – Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Openface Complete Calendar (2023)
Subtle is definitely the word. It’s easy for an openworked dial, as a halfway house between skeletonisation and a full dial, to end up looking as though it’s neither one thing nor the other. But it’s also about balance. For example, you need to take just enough material away from the dial and bridges without compromising component strength. Then you have to weigh up what’s on show with what’s hidden (a neat trick here with sapphire day/month wheels helps) and finish all the exposed components to gladden a horophile’s heart. Finally, and above all, the watch needs to be legible. Looking at a few openworked dials out there (no names, no pack drill) sometimes this seems to have been forgotten. So, as always, the middle ground is the hardest to navigate well.
Image – Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface (2025)
Vacheron Constantin Calibre 2460 QCL/270
The whole point of openwork is to show off the movement elements that would usually be hidden behind the dial. In this case, that’s the manufacture Calibre 2460 QCL/270: a more modern version of the Calibre 2450, which was the first self-winding iteration of the complete calendar that Vacheron entirely designed and developed in-house.
As well as its complete calendar indications, it has a precision moon-phase display. You’ll only have to worry about adjusting it (assuming you don’t let your watch run down) in the year 2100, so you’ll have plenty of time to make a cup of tea and read the instructions.
While we’re doing numbers, the movement is made from 312 components, measures 29 mm (11 ¼ ”’) in diameter and is 6.35 mm thick. It self-winds thanks to the gold oscillating weight (complete with skeletonised Maltese cross), runs at 28,800 vph (4Hz) with 27 jewelled bearings and will happily do so for around 40 hours. Despite the Haute Horlogerie aesthetics, this is far from a watch that needs babying – you could easily wear it every day (just not in London, OK?) and it’s even water resistant to 30 m.
Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface – dial indications
Vacheron has managed to strike the balance between legibility and enjoying the movement’s on-show calendar complications. Dauphin hands help – the facets reflect the light to make them far more legible at a glance than other designs. The date is taken care of with a blued hand, incorporating a half-moon tip, that runs around the crisp minute track on the dial edge. The day and month wheels are looked after with white printed clear sapphire discs. This takes away a huge amount of what would otherwise be visual clutter and weight. The light print doesn’t disappear against the brushed bridges underneath, but it reduces its visual impact significantly. With a clever unity of design and colour, the day and month are also highlighted thanks to a rectangular blue background that creates the visual illusion of two apertures, so anything date-related is the same colour and therefore easy to find and read.
Image – Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface (2025)
Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Openface – a ‘Hallmark of Geneva certified timepiece’
Being able to see much more of the movement also lets you enjoy the detail in each component. Parts are carefully finished, chamfered, polished or rounded off by hand with ‘côte unique’ finishing on the bridges. This traditional decoration, used by Vacheron Constantin more than a century ago, was rediscovered in 2021 when the firm reproduced the Historiques American 1921 watch. As you’d expect, the movement carries the Poinçon de Genève.
Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Openface – hand-guilloché dial
Openwork makes the dial finishing all the more important. Here, Vacheron Constantin used their trademark Maltese cross as the starting point for a design developed by the firm’s guillocheur. Where you’d usually see a barleycorn or basketweave pattern, they’ve opted for a figurative way of integrating the cross. A more modern interpretation, sure, but still created on rose engines dating from more than a century ago that need years of experience to use effectively. This modern take on traditional techniques is typical Vacheron.
The firm explains the unusual way the crystal and dial work together, “Fitting these openworked gold dials with the sapphire crystal is another technical feat, since the crystal is not simply placed on top of the dial but actually integrated into the gold. The details of this integration are visible on the upper sides of the dial. This operation requires extremely careful cutting out from a solid dial, with precisely delineated zones to accommodate both the guilloché pattern and the sapphire crystal.”
Image – Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface (2025)
Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface – closing remarks
The clue about how Vacheron has managed this tricky balance with openwork, traditional and modern, legible and complex, is in their press release. It’s all about detail and frankly obsessional watchmaking. Most press releases will tell you what your new watch’s strap is made of. Not Vacheron Constantin. It explains not just that your strap is alligator but precisely which species. Since you asked, it’s Alligator mississippiensis or, rather unfairly, the ‘common’ alligator. Perhaps name-checking the reptile in question would have been a step too far.
Vacheron Constantin will only be making 370 of each of the three Anniversary watches.
One hopes Jean-Marc Vacheron and François Constantin are looking down with a benevolent smile and that somewhere amidst all the anniversary celebrations, someone raises a glass to Esaïe Hetie.
Further reading
https://www.vacheron-constantin.com/
Technical specifications
- Model: Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Openface
- Reference: 4020T/000P-H038
- Case: 950 platinum, diameter 41 mm, height 11.05 mm, water resistance 5 ATM (50 metres), sapphire crystal to front, exhibition case back.
- Functions: hours, minutes, complete calendar (day, date, month and precision moon-phase display)
- Movement: 2460 QCL/270, self-winding movement, frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 27 jewels, power reserve approximately 40 hours
- Strap: dark blue Mississippiensis alligator leather, with alligator leather lining, hand-stitched, large square scales
- Price: £67,000 (RRP as of 1.4.2025)
- Limited Edition: 370 pieces