girard perregaux cat's eye tourbillion

PARIS, June 9 (Reuters) - French retail group PPR (PRTP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is buying a 23 percent stake in Swiss luxury watch manufacturer Sowind Group, which includes the Girard-Perregaux brand, PPR said on Monday.PPR (PRTP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which owns fashion house Gucci, could increase its stake in Sowind as part of a long-term partnership which aims to help Gucci establish itself in the high-end watch segment. It gave no financial details.Sowind Chairman Luigi Macaluso will retain control of the group and will join Gucci's management committee."We are convinced that this agreement will create a number of important synergies for our watch brands and their further development," Robert Polet, Gucci Group CEO, said in a press statement.The deal comes weeks after PPR rival LVMH (LVMH.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) agreed to buy Swiss watchmaker Hublot.The global luxury watch market is worth 18 billion euros ($28.5 billion) a year, according to an estimate from Swiss bank Vontobel. (Reporting by Jessica Mead; Editing by David Holmes)

Girard-Perregaux Cat’s Eye Small SecondThe new Girard-Perregaux Cat`s Eye Small Second ladies watch will be officially introduced in January, 2011 at the upcoming Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie SIHH 2011 event.Introduced in 2004, GP’s Cat’s Eye line of ladies watches enjoys considerable popularity among women of all ages. Soon after the collection’s introduction, the Swiss watchmaker even received “The Most Beautiful Women’s Watch of the Year” prize in Tokyo.Unlike most ladies watches that tend to feature simple quartz or very basic automatic movements, the Cat’s Eye collection is powered by serious manufacture-made calibers and offers a great number of complications. Those include power reserve indicators, retrograde indicators, annual calendars, moon phase displays and even zodiac calendars.It is actually strange that they still didn’t introduce a model with a tourbillon or a perpetual calendar.The reason, probably, is that the watch is delivered in a rather compact ellipse-shaped case with its major and minor diameters being only 35.25 mm and 30.25 mm respectively. It is also less than 11 mm in height, which leaves around 6 mm of vertical space for a movement.This particular model seems to be one of the least sophisticated in the range, however.Powered by the Caliber GP3300-0044 automatic movement (a close relative of the GP3300-50 movement that animates the fabulous Girard-Perregaux 1966 Small Second watch,) it comes with a decorated red gold oscillating weight, but features only basic functions, like hours, minutes, small seconds display and a small date indicator.As you can see on the pictures, the small seconds and date indicators are unevenly spaced along the major axis of the dial with the former located on the left side and the latter on the right side. Although their positioning may look a trifle negligent at the first look, there is clearly some basic geometry behind this.Look. While the center of the date window is positioned almost exactly in the F2 focus of the ellipse (sorry, didn’t have a ruler with me,) the small seconds display looks like it stays right between the F1 focus and the center of the ellipse. It also clearly stays on the same axis with the two diamonds denoting 7 o’clock and 11 o’clock positions. Very nice!The watches are delivered in a choice of two cases –one in 18-carat rose gold and the other in white gold– and sport traditional for the line mother of pearl dials, either black or white.Still no info about the price, but expect the MSRP to be set somewhere near $15,000 mark.