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Breguet Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Squelette 5395

Extra-thin. Skeletonised. Tourbillon movement. The fact that we’re finding this trio of terms in the same sentence shows how rapidly haute-horological technology is progressing. And, with this piece, another major stride has been taken.

Breguet have been at the vanguard of the ultra-thin crusade for some time, with both the Classique Tourbillon Extra-Thin Automatic 5377 and its sequel, an enamel version, the 5367, enriching the canon. This iteration is arguably the house’s most elaborate piece to date, in more ways than one, and historians will have their eyes fixed on how the tourbillon — an innovation invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1795 — has been made to fit into a three-millimetre-thick case by the maison’s modern-day technicians at the Breguet manufacture in Vallée de Joux, Switzerland.

So intricate a task it was, the rotor had to be placed on the periphery of the plate, shaving nanometres from the width but still allowing an unobstructed view of the watch’s mechanism at work. The titanium carriage, meanwhile,