Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. A Lesson in Dress Watch Etiquette with the New Raymond Weil Toccata Heritage x seconde/seconde
A tongue-in-cheek guide on how to wear a dress watch by seconde/seconde printed on the elegant Toccata Heritage dress watch.
Raymond Weil is on a roll. As a brand we rarely covered, third-generation CEO Elie Bernheim is upping the tempo for the family-run Geneva-based brand. What started with the well-designed, retro-inspired MiIllesime of 2024, designed from scratch with contemporary specs, is now a fully fledged and very successful collection. Recently treated to a makeover, the Toccata Heritage dress watch hit the right note with its slim, elegant elliptical case. Today, Bernheim and his team push the envelope with the new Toccata Heritage edition, a humorous guide to dress watch etiquette created in collaboration with seconde/seconde.
Founded in 1976, Raymond Weil’s classic portfolio was populated with fairly staid models with names inspired by the universe of classical music, like Parsifal, Tango, Amadeus, Maestro and Toccata, and more contemporary rock ‘n’ roll references in its Music Icons series. Wielding his baton, Bernheim has streamlined the once-copious portfolio to just four references, including the classic Toccata dress watch, formerly available in rectangular and square cases.
The new Toccata Heritage is an elegantly shaped watch with a smooth, slim elliptical case, and compact proportions – 33mm across, 38mm long and just 6.95mm thick. The essence of a unisex dress watch, the first Toccata Heritage models were released with silver, blue or copper-coloured dials.
Jazzing things up a notch, Raymond Weil turns to contemporary designer Romaric André, aka seconde/seconde, for the latest Toccata Heritage. True to his tongue-in-cheek approach to watch design, seconde/seconde has some fun with the never-ending debate among purists of how a dress watch should be worn and how much of it should be revealed under the cuff.
The grey dial is literally split down the middle, like so many pompous watch debates, and each half is decorated with a different finish. The left segment has a matte grey surface and states the fundamental rule of dress watch etiquette with a yellow inscription that reads “Dress Shirt Cuff Should Cover at Least Half of the Watch” and a yellow line with an arrow pointing to the middle of the dial. The silky sunray-finished right half of the dial adds four other potential cuff positions and explains how to interpret them. The “cuff sweet-spots” position hits the central line, followed by “biz casual”, “semi-formal” and the “formal” cuff position, revealing just a fraction of the dial.
Other fun details are the Swiss Made inscription on either side of the index at 3 o’clock and the way the minute markers disappear and the indices fade to grey as they reach the darker, left side of the dial.
The closed caseback delivers some more humorous advice for wannabe watch snobs: “Never wind your watch while wearing it. Take it off first, then wind it in a dramatic fashion (ideally in the middle of a conversation).” Powering the Toccata Heritage seconde/seconde is the slim hand-wound calibre RW4100 movement based on the Sellita SW210-1. Just 3.35mm thick, the movement runs at 28,800vph and delivers a 45-hour power reserve for the hours and minutes.
The watch is paired with a black calfskin leather strap with an embossed alligator pattern and a steel pin buckle. A limited edition (the brand has not indicated quantity), the Toccata Heritage x seconde/seconde retails for CHF 1,695, EUR 1,825 or USD 2,075. More information at raymond-weil.com.
