Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Polaris Chronograph gets jazzed up with new colours and movement

LAUNCHED to much fanfare in 2018, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Polaris collection excited the watch community with its contemporary revival of a vintage brand classic – the 1968 Memovox Polaris alarm dive timepiece with a limited production run of just 1,714 pieces.

Five years later, Jaeger-LeCoultre is back on the scene to ensure its Polaris Chronograph speeds ahead of the competition. Expect two new colour-saturated dials and a new movement to boot.

Available in a warm grey or a deep blue, the new 42 mm editions see the transformative power of colour being used to its fullest extent. The timepieces’ design architecture remains unchanged from their 2018 precursors, but they look entirely different – thanks to the richness of their lacquered dials, coupled with Jaeger-LeCoultre’s impeccable eye for details.

Take, for example, the three-part dial. It comprises a central disc, a middle ring with applied hour markers, and a white-on-black tachymeter scale outer ring. The different areas are demarcated through layers of lacquer that graduate from light to dark, resulting in an impressive visual depth that begs a second glance. The lacquer also highlights the dial’s rich tapestry of textures, which includes sunray-brushed, large-grained, circular-grained and opaline finishes.

The lacquering process itself is an exacting art – it requires the skilled hands of a patient master to accomplish with perfection. The Polaris Chronograph’s dial is coloured, then coated with 35 layers of translucent lacquer, before the rest of its components – like the luminescent-coated skeletonised hands, Arabic numerals and trapezoid-shaped indexes – are polished to a mirror finish. 

Beneath all this lies Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new in-house Calibre 761, a fully integrated self-winding chronograph that riffs off the collection’s previous Calibre 751, with a running-seconds sub-dial replacing the 12-hour counter at the 9 o’clock position. A 30-minute indicator at 3 o’clock balances the dial, while a red-tipped central chronograph seconds hand allows for an easier and more precise measurement reading. 

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Twin barrels power the vertical clutch column-wheel movement, which offers a power reserve of 65 hours. Look through the timepiece’s sapphire crystal display caseback and you’ll see that the movement has also been faultlessly finished – the Cotes de Geneve decoration on the baseplate is studded with blued screws and accompanied by Jaeger-LeCoultre’s signature open-worked winding rotor with the “JL” initials. 

With its expert balance of form and function, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Polaris Chronograph delivers on its promise to be a companion for everyday adventures. Pile on the fact that the watches come with additional interchangeable straps – a steel bracelet and a blue “Clous de Paris” patterned rubber strap for the blue dial; a beige canvas strap and similarly patterned black rubber strap for the grey – and you have a watch that will see you through all that and more.