The launch of Raymond Weil’s Millesime 2930 last year felt like a real breakout moment for the brand. It saw them win their first ever GPHG award and injected a fresh sense of vitality after years of relying on the Freelancer as their main flagship collection. Building on this momentum, they’ve now expanded the Millesime into a full-blooded range with the addition of 11 new references. For now, we’re focussing on just four of those watches, the Raymond Weil Millesime Moon Phase.
A moonphase is a natural addition to the Millesime due to its neo-vintage aesthetic and dress watch appeal. Across the four watches, there are two sizes available – two at 39.5mm and two at 35mm. Ostensibly this splits them into men’s and women’s duos but with the increasing popularity of smaller watches, there’re actually very unisex.
They’re all made from stainless steel although one reference at each size also features a rose gold PVD, giving those watches a more traditional luxury dress watch aesthetic. Speaking of luxury, the plain steel edition at 35mm also features gemset lugs, making it the most overtly feminine of the four but only fractionally.
Of course, at the core of the Millesime Moon Pphase is the new moonphase, presented at 6 o’clock on the sector dials. It matches the graphic, Art Deco style of the watch’s display with a face presented on the disk of the moon adding a cool level of stylisation. It would be a worthy addition to our complete guide to modern moonphase watches. Beyond the addition of this celestial complication, the dial remains refined and elegant. In terms of colour, at 39.5mm there’s midnight blue for the gold case and silver on the steel, at 35mm that’s flipped to a silver dial on the gold model and denim blue for the steel.
Powering all four watches is the RW4280 automatic movement, based on the Sellita SW280-1. It’s a calibre that has seen use previously in watches like the Raymond Weil Maestro Moon Phase. The main drawback is its 38-hour power reserve, which is fairly low by modern standards. Hopefully that will be improved in future considering that Sellita has upgraded its range – presumably when Raymond Weil uses up its current stock of movements they’ll move to the improved version.
For attractive moonphase watches, they have very reasonable prices: the 39.5mm steel model is priced at CHF 2,125, both rose gold-plated models are CHF 2,225 and the gemset 35mm model is CHF 2,450 (approx. £1,875/£1,960/£2,160). I think those prices make sense because these are some of the most attractive dress watches Raymond Weil have released in recent years.
Price and Specs:
More details at Raymond Weil.
Why did they have to ruin the 35mm version with bling on the lugs? It also jacks up the price unnecessarily.