Turquoise is having a moment in fashion right now, and Frederique Constant has responded with something more considered than a colour-matched dial. The new Classics Manchette Turquoise centres on an authentic fragment of turquoise stone, extracted from a natural block, which means that no two dials will ever be identical.
The Manchette collection first appeared in 2012, built around a distinctive nine-link bracelet that blurred the line between watch and jewellery. The 2025 revival reworks the format with seven articulated links in a yellow gold-coloured PVD-treated stainless steel, adorned with the Clou de Paris guilloché pattern associated with Geneva fine watchmaking.
Turquoise as a stone carries its own history. Used in jewellery and ornamentation since antiquity, it has long been associated with positive energy and inner equilibrium, properties that have nothing to do with why it looks good on a wrist and everything to do with why people have been drawn to it for thousands of years. On the Manchette dial, it reads as a thoroughly contemporary choice that happens to have deep roots.
The case, with a height of just 6.45mm, sits low and close to the wrist in the manner of a cuff rather than a conventional watch, which is precisely where the Manchette has always been most interesting. The bracelet fastens with a polished stainless steel folding clasp and is designed to be worn against the skin.
The movement is the FC-200 quartz calibre, running four jewels with a battery life of 60 months. For a piece conceived primarily as a jewellery-watch, the quartz choice is the right one: it keeps the case slim, the functions simple and the focus where it belongs, on the dial and the bracelet. An anti-reflective sapphire crystal protects the stone dial, and the engraved snap solid case back adds a considered finishing detail. The watch is water resistant up to 30m.
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