A. Lange & Söhne’s latest and greatest were touring Australia last week, making it the first chance local audiences had to get up close and personal with some of the finest watches in the world. We felt Lange had one of the strongest collections on show in Geneva, and six months later we stand by that initial assessment.Besides, even though we at T+T were privileged enough to see them at SIHH, we were still pretty excited to re-acquaint ourselves with the collection.

Joanna Lange and Watches of Switzerland Chairman Eric van der Griend introduced the collection in an imposing atrium of the Grand Hyatt, each speaking to the values that make A. Lange & Söhne such a great manufacture. Joanna Lange provided some insights into Lange’s German character. While she referenced their new manufacture building and the importance of tradition, she also joked that the company likes to keep using lengthy German words on the dial (hello doppelfederhaus) just to confuse the rest of the world. Van der Griend discussed the increasing importance of Australia in the global market – pointing to the fact the latest collection reached our shores much earlier than in previous years. Meanwhile, she revealed that the reason Lange’s power reserve indicators show a red low-power warning when there’s only 10 hours of power left is because no German ever sleeps longer than that.

Understandably there was quite a crowd around the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon, but the real stars (if you’ll pardon the space pun) were the literally star-studded Saxonia Moonphase and the Grand Lange 1 Lumen Moonphase.Once the formalities were dispensed with it was time for the serious business of inspecting the watches up close.