A. Lange & Söhne Puts a Platinum Bracelet Back on the Datograph Perpetual

The Datograph is Lange’s hand-wound flyback chronograph, launched in 1999 and still the watch most people point to when explaining why they love the brand so much. For its first generation, up to 2012, you could order one on a platinum bracelet, and almost nobody did. Wellendorff, the German jeweller, made those bracelets for Lange, they added a small fortune to an already expensive watch, and the few that exist now sell for absurd sums; Loupe This sold one for $116,000. Lange now has a new platinum bracelet of its own design, and it debuts on a limited Datograph Perpetual, the version that adds a perpetual calendar, with a black dial and diamond hour markers.

The case is 950 platinum, 41mm wide and 13.5mm thick, matching the white gold Datograph Perpetual in the regular collection. The finishing is part brushed, part polished, with sapphire crystals front and back. Lange only calls it splash resistant, which is standard for the brand.

The dial is solid silver finished in gloss black, with rhodium-plated subdials. Eleven baguette diamonds, about 0.13 carats in total, are used as hour markers, except for the four and eight positions. The layout is unchanged since the model launched in 2006: big date at the top, a 30-minute counter with month and leap year at three, small seconds with day and day/night at nine, plus a moon phase. The main hands are white gold, the central chronograph hand is rhodium-plated steel, and the sub-dial hands are blued steel.

Inside is the hand-wound calibre L952.1, the first-generation Datograph’s L951.1 with its own perpetual calendar module. It has 556 parts and 45 jewels, a column wheel, a horizontal clutch and flyback, and beats at 2.5Hz with 36 hours of power reserve. The short reserve is the cost of building on the older base instead of the one used in the Up/Down models. Finishing includes German silver plates and bridges, ribbing, polished edges and blued screws. The bracelet has five rows of 950 platinum links, polished ones alternating with brushed, and wide polished bevels along the sides.

The A. Lange & Söhne Datograph Perpetual ref. 410.136E is limited to 50 pieces and price is on request. There's no way this is under a quarter of a million euros. See more on the A. Lange & Söhne website.