Breguet Tradition Automatique Seconde Retrograde 7097 and Tradition 7038

Breguet was founded in 2005. Its traditional series is a homage to the one-handed “custom” pocket watches invented by Breguet founder Abraham Louis in 1796 and their successors in the so-called “TACT” best replica watches, which place the main movement above the mainboard and beside the eccentric dial. As part of its new offerings for 2021, Breguet has unveiled two new timepieces in the collection, one targeted at ladies, the other at gents, both exclusive to Breguet boutiques.  
To begin with “ladies first:” The latest version of the Tradition 7038 features a Tahitian mother-of-pearl subdial, a diamond-set bezel, and an orange leather strap. Its highly technical face is controlled by the movement, finished in a deep brown color, its middle barrel hand-engraved with a rosette motif. Overlapping the barrel and displaying the hour and minutes is the small off-center subdial in Tahitian mother-of-pearl, with a hand-crafted, engine-turned Clou de Paris hobnail motif and a chapter ring with Arabic numerals swept over by Breguet’s signature open-tipped gold hands.
On the other side of this mechanism, between 7 and 8 o’clock, we find the center wheel and its bridge. The 37-mm rose-gold case has the Tradition collection’s hallmark fluted case band; welded, rounded-edge lugs; and a bezel set with 68 brilliant-cut diamonds. Inside the case, visible through a clear case back, is Breguet Caliber 505SSR, a self-winding movement that is fitted with a lever escapement, silicon pallets, and a silicon balance spring, and which offers a 50-hour power reserve when fully wound. Its gold rotor is made with the same rosette motif as the front-facing barrel.
Like the 7038 and other models in the Tradition collection, the 7097’s symmetrical, open-worked dial layout enables easy reading of the time and also a front-row seat to the watch’s inner workings. The bridges for the gear train and balance wheel are positioned opposite one another in the lower half of the watch, while the pare-chute anti-shock device overhangs the balance at 4 o’clock. The mainspring is visible in the center, under the bottom of the hours-and-minutes subdial, with a hobnail motif in the center and open-tipped, rhodium-plated Breguet hands.
Overlapping this off-centered blue subdial, from 10 to 7 o’clock is a circular-brushed semicircle displaying the second’s scale that gives the replica watch its name. A blued-steel retrograde hand, mounted on a small bridge that echoes the design of those on the lower part of the front-facing movement, counts the seconds on the scale and snaps back at the end of each minute. On the other side, through the sapphire crystal, is a self-winding 505SSR1 view, its platinum rotor-style antique Pocketwches. The movement frequency is 3Hz, and the power reserve is 50 hours. Isn’t it so wonderful?