A rare complication

THE "complete calendar" watch might well have become obsolete, if not for Vacheron Constantin. In fact, it may very well hold the monopoly in triple calendar complications - such a watch is not found in the current catalogues of any other luxury brands.

The triple calendar complication isn't a horological fusion of an annual and a perpetual calendar, as some people might think. Like the annual and perpetual calendar, it tells the day of the week, the month and date.

But this arcane complication is less sophisticated than the perpetual calendar, which requires no manual adjustments for February, April, June, September and November - months with fewer than 31 days. The mechanisms in the perpetual calendar automatically take care of that. In the complete calendar, the wearer has to do the adjustments by hand.