Baselworld 2013: Bulgari - The Roman legend transcended with the Bvlgari Bvlgari

In the trend of the revival stories, the Italian label tackles the 1977 iconic piece, the Bvlgari Bvlgari, which appeared just after the first expansion phase of the Roman shop which became a global brand through its stores opening in New York, Geneva, Monte Carlo and Paris. Purists attribute the design of this model to late Gérald Genta whose name, in the current history of the brand, survives only through the eponymous company acquired in 2000 along with Daniel Roth. Around the BVL191, an automatic calibre with a 42 hours power reserve, equipped with a rotor mounted on ceramic ball bearings and some manufacturing subtleties, the brand became resolutely watchmaker, playing the range of sizes with a 18K pink gold version of 39 mm in diameter - including a limited series of 250 pieces on which the mention Bvlgari Roma has been engraved on the bezel - and another version with a 41 mm diameter. The latter uses steel and pink gold, sometimes in two-tone mode, over a range of dials playing on two shades.

Thanks to the BVL 328 automatic column-wheel chronograph calibre (50 hours of power reserve) the reasonable diameter lends itself to several chronographs variations, all recognizable by their small second hand at 9 o’clock, their 30 minutes counter at 3 o’clock and their 12 hours counter at 6 o’clock.


Finally, always in this format, the Bulgari Bvlgari Tourbillon affirms the top-flight micro-mechanics know-how of the brand. Unveiled at 6 o’clock, like a well in a black lacquered dial crossed by a sapphire glass bridge, the famous complication of Abraham Louis Breguet offers a fully automatic in-house winding.



In short, borrowed from the Roman era and its coinage, unique and highly recognizable, the original design of Bvlgari is somehow irretrievably current. Its contemporaneity has today earned itself, since the famous Halle 1 of BaselWorld 2013, a remarked part despite the surrounding informational hubbub.