Coming up from Swiss Ladoire – featuring the youthful punkish talents of Lionel Ladoire – is Mr. Green. Mr. Ladoire kept teasing us with bits and pieces of information about Mr. Green, and now Mr. Ladoire has delivered. Officially, this is the Ladoire Black Widow “Mr. Green” watch. It is a slight redesign of his other collection of Roller Guardian watches, that I wrote about here. What I mean by this is that the movement is inherently the same. The changes to it are thematically in line with what Hautlence has done for many of its watches. What is interesting is how Ladoire has managed to use the same base movement and case, and make something entirely new – on more than a cosmetic level.
As such, the movement plates and parts are much different, the case pieces are different, and the dial is really different. I am fascinated by all that they put into it. By retaining the same technological features, and building on the base movement, they were able to keep costs (relatively manageable), but offer something cool. The Black Widow will be available as a limited edition of only 12 pieces. There really aren’t going to be vary many of these.
Why the name is “Mr. Green” and “Black Widow” doesn’t make sense to me. Why not “Green Widow?” Oh well. The watch really has a unique and evil looking technical style that reminds me of comic book villains – namely the modernized Green Goblin. Makes even more sense with the spider themes in the watch (you know, cause Green Goblin is Spiderman’s enemy). I can totally see him wearing this watch.
The case is about 51mm wide at its widest point and 41.77mm tall. Most of it is in titanium and DLC coated. While the sapphire crystal is highly curved, Ladoire uses a pretty good one with AR coating to ensure you can see the dial. In Ladoire’s own manner, the movement is a masterpiece of form and function. Technically, it is an automatic (with micro-rotor), has a regulator style display for the time (not super easy to read) and a GMT hand (easier to read). Unlike previous Ladoire watches, the Black Widow has discs to display the information that move along stationary hands. These actually provides a relatively straight forward display of the information if you know where to look. The discs are set on ceramic bearings.
The Ladoire Black Widow Mr. Green watch will again be limited to only 12 pieces, and be pretty nifty. Price is 68,800 Swiss Francs.
Tech specs from Ladoire:
LADOIRE Manufacture-made movement: Calvet/o2
- Movement with automatic winding via a micro rotor
- Jewelling: 38 jewels
- Thickness: 10.95 mm
- Shaped mainplate (39.50mm x 29.50mm)
- W-shaped GMT bridge structure, 12-hour dual time-zone display
- Balance with screws, black PVD-coated*
- Optimised gear-train toothing profile
- Frequency 18,800 vph (2.5 Hz)
- 52-hour power reserve
Functions
- Regulator — Offset hours, minutes and seconds with patented display complication (HMS Planetary ®) , divided into three zones with fixed indicator mounted on ceramic micro ball bearings
- GMT 12-hour display with fast-adjustment push-button system
Case
- Two-part asymmetrical dial: 9 — 3 o’clock: 50.84 mm/12 — 6 o’clock: 41.77 mm
- Bezel, case middle and case-back in titanium
- Black case with A-DLC type PVD coating
- Black crown with A-DLC type PVD coating: ergonomically positioned at 8 o’clock
- Black titanium pusher with A-DLC type PVD coating, positioned at 2 o’clock
- Cambered, glareproofed sapphire crystal
- Flat glareproofed sapphire crystal case-back
- Water-resistant to 50 metres
Strap
- Full-grain smooth leather with double hand stitching
- Pin buckle with A-DLC type PVD coating
- Ergonomic strap secured by a single asymmetrical lug