IT DOESN’T matter if you are new to watch appreciation or an experienced connoisseur – there is no escaping one particularly relentless refrain that echoes from every brand as you consider your next purchase. “Just like you,” the brands often express, “we, too, are special.”

Whether through trumpeting their respective brand legacies, watch designs or technical attributes, all watch marques profess being inimitable to varying degrees. But backing up the claim takes more than unabashed chest-thumping. After all, when faced with the choice between one classically stunning complication and a similarly exceptional watch, how do you determine which stands out – or is, indeed, truly different?

A Lange & Sohne isn’t the first brand that tries to court attention by conveying its uniqueness. However, by virtue of its history – it was established twice, first in 1845, then again in 1996 by the founder’s great-grandson – and its authentically crafted watches, this German brand has more than a fair claim.

It certainly knows how to express a sense of identity. The Lange 1 is not just the most iconic model in the marque’s catalogue – it also ranks among the world’s most recognisable watches. Introduced in 1996 alongside three other collections during the brand’s relaunch, the Lange 1 is a timepiece that you can confidently ascertain from afar.

There is really nothing quite like the Lange 1’s off-centre and asymmetrically positioned sub-dials and outsized date windows. Despite the seemingly incongruous assembly of shapes, the dial of the Lange 1 is actually hewn from a meticulous design process that adheres to the golden ratio.

An ancient Greek mathematical formula, the golden ratio (or golden proportion), is believed to yield geometrically pleasing proportions and aesthetics, and has been employed by artists, architects, and product designers for centuries.

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While the unusual dial design endows the Lange 1 with a characteristic appearance and charm, it also lends itself well to complications, making them distinct. That is to say, even though the purposes and uses of these complications are fundamentally unchanged, their creative and technical expressions are entirely unique.

Lange 1 Time Zone On the new Lange 1 Time Zone, the atypical dial design serves the dual-time complication perfectly: the larger main sub-dial shows the local time, and the smaller one, the away time. Introduced in 2005 and refreshed this year with a platinum case and a rhodium-coloured dial, the Lange 1 Time Zone’s display is clear and intuitive. 

Through this model, A Lange & Sohne also demonstrates its knack for adding small but important features that improve its watches’ functionality and ease of use – another of the brand’s trademarks. For instance, each time display comes with its own day/night indicator. The watch is also equipped with a city disc that is linked to the small second-time zone dial, which the user can select via a pusher at the bottom left of the case. This does away with the hassle of calculating and setting the second time zone.

Last but not least, a daylight savings time (DST) display, indicated by a small pointer with a window at 5 o’clock, turns red when the chosen city on the outer disc uses DST, alerting the user to adjust the time zone accordingly.

Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar The other new Lange 1 model for the year, the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar in a platinum case with a solid-silver black dial, also espouses the collection’s design-derived attributes. The user can read all the important calendar displays at a single glance – the day, date, month and moon phase – thanks, again, to the Lange 1’s one-of-a-kind dial layout. 

The use of an outer dial ring for the month, a retrograde counter for the day, and a superimposed moon-phase window on the small second sub-dial is clever and thoughtful in equal measure. Where regular perpetual calendar watches are plagued by multiple, confusing displays, the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar’s readings are clear, pleasing and entirely onboard with the collection’s iconic style.

Like the two-time zone model, the Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar’s mechanisms have also been constructed “the Lange way”. The watch’s quietly inventive technical solutions include the aforementioned peripheral month ring, which advances instantaneously at the end of each month, and the moon-phase indication, which needs to be corrected by only one day after 122.6 years.

Being a perpetual calendar, the watch’s hand-wound movement automatically computes the differences between the 28, 30 and 31 days of the various months for accurate calendar displays.

The brand’s refusal to compromise on the Lange 1’s signature look, while consistently imbuing the collection with exceptional complications, is admirable. Although such devotion to the cause is fraught with obstacles, it is one that A Lange & Sohne embraces with enthusiasm.

“The commitment to tailor the complex mechanical requirements to the characteristic design of the Lange 1 always presents our developers with constructive challenges,” says Anthony de Haas, A Lange & Sohne’s director of product development.

“But as our collectors know, at Lange, we never like taking the easy way out.”