Vacheron Constantin has focused much of their efforts for SIHH 2013 on a new niche market we have been featuring increasingly for quite some time. Women. In fact we have even taken the unusual step of inviting a number of them to write about watches for Click Tempus, so how enlightened is that.

Vacheron Constantin’s tradition as a producer of women’s watches started with the 19th century, when the first pocket-watches especially made for women appeared. Although smaller than men’s watches they were much more lavishly decorated and thus demanded skills in miniaturisation and decoration that only a few of the watchmakers of the time possessed. Vacheron Constantin was one of them.

One of the first of the manufacture’s women’s watches was a quarter-repeater produced in around 1810 and which proves that watchmaking complications were not only for men.

Advance a century to 1912, an era of innovation and progress. This is when Vacheron Constantin decided to make a break from the round case for fine watches and became one of the first watch manufacturers to produce the tonneau case. It became a fashion emblem as soon as it appeared, appealing to men as well as to the female gender.

The Malte collection comprises only luxury watches in this iconic shape. Today it adds another chapter to its century of history with new creations for women. Curvaceous and poised, it becomes an ideal celebration of feminine grace. Its clean and refined lines, demure in spirit, exude sensuality in a display of diamonds.

The line has three models, in pink and white gold and they are the picture of elegance and grace. Diamonds make a generous appearance, studded on the bezel as well as clustered in the tonneau shape in the centre of the brushed silver-toned dial. Roman numerals complete the picture.

Powered by a Calibre 1202 Quartz movement, the watch comes in the choice of a leather strap from Alligator mississippiensis or a satin band.