Introducing MB&F x BULGARI Legacy Machine FlyingT Allegra

What occurs while you convey collectively the artistic drive behind Rome’s most well-known luxurious emporium and the artistic thoughts behind a few of watchmaking’s most radical flights of fancy? The reply is sheer magic. The collaboration between Bvlgari and MB&F, or slightly between Bvlgari’s artistic director Fabrizio Buonamassa and MB&F’s founder and artistic director Maximilian Büsser, has resulted on this extraordinary tackle the Legacy Machine FlyingT, an exuberant, excessive jewelry model of MB&F’s first ladies’s watch. Introduced in 20 items in white gold and 20 items in crimson gold, the FlyingT Allegra watch is a triumphant mixture of the distinct personalities of two radically totally different manufacturers. 

Wouldn’t it’s cool if…

As Maximilian Büsser explains in our unique video interview (on the high of this text), many collaborations begin with an optimistic ‘wouldn’t it’s cool if…’ however normally, by no means get past the constraints of the conditional tense. 4 years in the past, throughout Dubai Watch Week, Max Büsser met Bvlgari’s legendary artistic director Fabrizio Buonamassa (the genius behind the design of the Octo Finissimo watch line and the rebirth of the Serpenti), who expressed his admiration for MB&F’s merchandise. Two years later, through the GPHG 2019, Büsser and Buonamassa met once more, this time with Antoine Pin, head of the watch division at Bvlgari and mentioned the potential of engaged on one thing collectively. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be till the 2019 version of Dubai Watch Week that the ‘what if’s’ grew to become a actuality. Naturally, Büsser was stunned {that a} big luxurious model like Bvlgari would heat to the impartial watchmaker. Nonetheless, one thing ticked and Büsser and Buonamassa set to work on the Legacy Machine FlyingT Allegra.

One plus one equals three

Büsser’s pursuit of collaborative tasks began a very long time earlier than he based MB&F in 2005. Because the managing director of uncommon timepieces at Harry Winston, Büsser crowning achievement was the Opus Collection, a set of outstanding timepieces made in collaboration with impartial watchmakers. This intrepid imaginative and prescient of collaborative watchmaking grew to become a elementary pillar for the model (Max Büsser & Associates). As Büsser says within the video, in collaborations, “one plus one equals three”.

And though the collaboration with Bvlgari will go away many in awe, it isn’t MB&F’s first time on the excessive jewelry rodeo. In 2010, MB&F and the French high-jewellery Maison Boucheron teamed as much as make a excessive jewelry model of the Horological Machine 3. Referred to as the JwlryMachine, this magnificent excessive jewelry piece was styled like an owl, full with jewelled feathers and glowing cabochon eyes set over the dual cones of the hour and minute indications.

The Mb&F FlyingT

The LM FlyingT was Büsser’s first watch for ladies and broke MB&F’s 14-year lengthy custom of masterminding advanced males’s watches. Unveiled in 2019, the FlyingT got down to give ladies the identical complexity and 3D spectacle of MB&F’s males’s watches by staging a flying tourbillon within the centre of the dial. Supported by a vertical column development, the flying tourbillon rises prominently from its deep properly to carry out its one-minute gyrations beneath the high-domed glass. The event of the cinematic flying tourbillon, which tasks past the dial plate and is secured in place with a diamond, required radical technical options. Whereas most fashionable watch actions depend on a radial and co-planar method, the FlyingT makes use of a vertical and co-axial method. One other problem within the development of the FlyingT concerned the form of the higher tourbillon cage. As a result of it has extra mass on one aspect, it needed to be compensated. The answer was to put a counterweight hidden beneath the tourbillon case. The intriguing hours and minutes dial perched at a 50°angle at 7 o’clock was designed in order that solely the wearer can seek the advice of the time. Once more, Büsser’s concept was not simple and concerned the incorporation of conical gears to transmit torque from one aircraft to a different.

flyingt Alla Bvlgari

Showing in 2019 with a black dial and full-set diamond fashions adopted by guilloché, lapis lazuli and inexperienced malachite variations, nothing might have ready us for this gorgeous collaboration with Bvlgari. Rome’s preeminent jeweller, Bvlgari is famend for its luxurious excessive jewelry items with a robust emphasis on color and cabochon-cut stones. Relating to iconic ladies’s watches just like the Serpenti, Bvlgari’s aptitude for pairing intrepid designs with mouth-watering gem stones is famous.

The ‘Allegra’ a part of the watch’s identify is taken from Bvlgari’s Allegra watch, a jewelry mannequin with a mixture of totally different sized and totally different colored gem stones suspended on an outer bezel. There’s one other mannequin, the Astrale jewelry watch with vibrant gem stones circling the dial, which additionally feeds into the design of the FlyingT Allegra. When Buonamassa began sketching, he envisioned the FlyingT as a miniature planetarium with daring, vibrant gem stones like planets floating across the central tourbillon.

The 5 gem stones set on the dial of the FlyingT fluctuate in color, measurement and form. Set towards a scintillating snow-set background of brilliant-cut white diamonds (0.24 ct), the dials are set with a medley of tsavorite, topaz, amethyst, tanzanite, rubellite and tourmaline organized in a monitor surrounding the aperture for the tourbillon. As Antoine Pin factors out within the interview, Bvlgari’s gem setters had no bother in any respect incorporating the stones on the dial due to the quantity supplied by the excessive domed sapphire crystal of the Flying T. The hours and minutes dial can be paved with diamonds, respecting the serpentine fingers which might be a signature characteristic of this watch. 

New case design

Buonamassa interpreted the high-domed quantity of the case as a flying saucer from the Fifties or Sixties. In comparison with the unique case of the FlyingT and seen from the aspect, you’ll be able to see how the case has virtually misplaced its case center and lugs. The lugs are barely seen on the FlyingT Allegra, accentuating the domed flying saucer profile of the watch. The unique 38.5mm case measurement of the FlyingT was barely elevated to 39mm to accommodate the brand new form and the blanket of brilliant-cut diamonds (2.80ct) set within the case and buckle. Even the crowns at 9 and three o’clock have been enlarged and are actually set with colored gem stones. A clean gold plaque spanning the dial from 4 to six o’clock bears the 2 model names: MB&F x BVLGARI.

SOLAR ROTOR

The caseback reveals the sun-shaped oscillating weight as its gold sandblasted rays rotate on the ruthenium disc positioned above a platinum counterweight. Though the automated rotor hides many of the motion, which is greater than compensated for by the motion on the dial, the 280-part automated motion, conceived and developed in-house by MB&F, delivers a formidable energy reserve of 100 hours.

Availability and Worth

The Legacy Machine FlyingT Allegra is restricted to twenty items in white gold and 20 items in crimson gold. The retail value is CHF 160,000 (+ VAT), USD 185,000 (+ VAT) or EUR 150,000 (+ VAT).

For extra data, please go to Bvlgari’s web site and MB&F’s web site.