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RAPAPORT... The Rodeo Drive Committee and the City of Beverly Hills will hold the Rodeo Drive Festival of Watches from October 10 to 13, 2013, a celebration of luxury watch brands and exquisite timepieces with a street-wide open house slated for the evening of October 10. The special event is sponsored by Bulgari, David Yurman, Hublot, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Patek Philippe, Richard Mille, Westime and Beverly Hills. Business participants also include Breguet, Ermenegildo Zegna, Harry Winston, IWC, Jason of Beverly Hills, Louis Vuitton, Montblanc, Officine Panerai, Patek Philippe, Porsche Design, Richard Mille, Vacheron Constantin and Van Cleef & Arpels.
During the four-day festival, 20 boutiques will feature product launches, exclusive watchmaker appearances, exhibition debuts and luxurious hospitality for their guests. Highlights of the timepieces featured will include the Porsche Design's P'6752 WorldTraveler, Tourbillon Blancpain, Jaeger-LeCoultre's Master Ultra Thin Jubilee, Hubolt's Big Bang Ferrari Beverly Hills and Van Cleef & Arpels' Papillons Extraordinary Dials. In addition, Bulgari will showcase its first Grande Complication watches for women, three new timepieces from Royal Oak Offshore Chronographs at Westime and Richard Mille's RM 52-01, which is released as a limited edition of 30 nano-ceramic timepieces featuring an 18-karat red-gold skull.
"After Switzerland, there is no place on earth, besides Rodeo Drive, where there is such a high concentration of luxury watch brands in a two block area," said the event chair, Adrienne Lee. "The Rodeo Drive Festival of Watches is a unique opportunity for collectors and enthusiasts to view and experience timepieces from the world's most respected brands in one place."
To prepare for the festival, Breguet reopened its doors this past week after extensive interior renovations, entertaining guests with a cocktail reception on Rodeo Drive and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The reception also marked the brand's U.S. launch of the global traveling exhibition "Breguet the Innovator. Inventor of the Tourbillon," which will be on display until October 19. First unveiled in Geneva at the start of 2013, the exhibition showcases a retrospective of the tourbillon, which was awarded a patent on June 26, 1801.
Among the priceless historic timepieces on display in the exhibition will be a tourbillon repeater chronometer from 1812, a legendary perpetuelle pocket watch with "a toc" quarter repeater known as the "No. 5" and an antique tourbillon movement. The exhibition will be accompanied by one of largest contemporary collections of tourbillon timepieces in the world, according to the watchmaker, including a rare Breguet tourbillon pocket watch and the ultra-thin tourbillon introduced this year.
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