Women’s Watch Wednesday – The Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous Moon Medium Tested

Earlier this year, Swiss watch brand Jaeger-LeCoultre unveiled its newest collection of Rendez-Vous watches, including the Rendez-Vous Moon Medium watch. The 34mm timepiece quickly captured the hearts of women around the world thanks to its chic design, intricate dial, romantic moon-phase complication and technical prowess. Today, we give this watch some wrist-time and see why it has some great appeal.

In fact, since Jaeger-LeCoultre first unveiled its “made for women”  Rendez-Vous line in May of 2012, it has not been afraid to offer complications and important functions. Positioning the line as a sexy and alluring, yet also elegant and technically advanced, Jaeger-LeCoultre launched the series five years ago with a 29mm and a 34mm Night/Day model with 214-part mechanical movement. Since then, Rendez-Vous has had complications including retrograde indications, and even tourbillons.

Now, with the new medium-sized – 34mm – Moon version, the brand brings a unique moon and sun disk to the six o’clock position on the dial. While there are many versions of this new watch – in stainless steel and in gold, with metal bracelets or alligator straps ranging from blush to red, blue, black and other hues – I recently opted to borrow the Reference Q3572420 Rendez-Vous Moon Medium in 18k pink gold.

Reference Q3572420, with blush strap, alluring white dial and gold sun/moon accents is a vision of tonal beauty. I see a lot of watches, and a lot of watch straps, but the colour of this blush strap, along with the perfectly sized gator blocks, sits beautifully on the wrist – almost blending in for a nude appeal.

The watch features a bezel set with diamonds. Now typically, I am not a big diamond watch person because I think diamonds dress the watch up a bit too much; however, the diamonds work beautifully- and I found myself wearing this watch from day to night to weekend without a thought. Making the watch even more attractive is the fact that it features an interchangeable strap system so the strap, with folding buckle, can be changed out easily by the wearer without the need for tools. In addition to straps, the watch is available with a metal bracelet that offers a cool, crisp, modern feel to the piece.

The dial is the true design attraction of this watch. The silvered dial features a guilloche and grained motif that offers depth and dimension at any angle. Additionally, it is a multi-layer dial, with the lowest layer housing the large round sun and moon disk, the second layer being the centre dial and the top layer being the outer number ring, and inner chapter ring. The moon indication disk is large –allowing for a bold sun motif during day and a full-on granular finished gold moon during night. The hour, minute and seconds hand are all blued.

If the design of the watch doesn’t wow you – and I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t – the technical details should. The watch is powered by an automatic mechanical movement, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Caliber 935A, that is completely decorated and assembled by hand in the brand’s Le Sentier workshops.  The 265-part movement, with 41 jewels, beats at 28,800 vibrations per hour and offers 40 hours of power reserve. The watch is water resistant to 3 bar. Best of all, the 18-karat gold version I borrowed retails for a respectable comparatively priced at EUR 23,600 while the steel version with blue accents comes for EUR 15,300.

More details on www.jaeger-lecoultre.com.

Technical Specifications – Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous Moon Medium

• Case: 34mm diameter x 9.56mm height – stainless steel or 18k pink gold, diamond on the bezel
• Movement: Calibre Jaeger-LeCoultre 935A, in-house – automatic – 4Hz frequency – 40h power reserve – 265 parts inc. 41 jewels – hours, minutes, seconds, moon
• Strap: alligator leather strap with interchangeable device, folding clasp
• Reference: Q3578420 (Steel on leather) – Q3572420 (18k pink gold on leather)
• Price: from EUR 15,300

This article has been written by Roberta Naas, founder of watch-magazine A Timely Perspective. Roberta is also the author of six books on watches.