The Baume & Mercier Hampton Automatic series channels the design language present in the 1920’s Art Deco era. The rectangular case features subtle curves and rounded edges that are meant to play with the way light reflects off the case. There’s a display caseback that allows a view of the automatic movement inside, and due to the nature of the case shape, it’s secured by four screws.
The model comes in two sizes, a modestly-sized execution at 43mm x 27.5mm with sweeping seconds and no date, and a larger iteration at 48mm x 31mm with small seconds at 6 o’clock, along with a date window. Both Baume & Mercier Hampton Automatic feature applied Arabic numerals on an opaline-silver dial, with Black ruthenium sword-shaped hands.
Releasing a watch in two different sizes ensures that folks of many different wrist sizes can pull off the watch, and while the watches do use different movements and feature slightly different complications, the general aesthetic remains the same: classic and elegant. It was a bold design choice that certainly has a specific appeal, and both of the movements used, the ETA-2895 and the ETA 2671, are finished with Côtes de Genève and snailed decor on the mainplate.
The rectangular watch recalls an era of bootleggers, flappers, and jazz. It isn’t a stretch to picture the Baume & Mercier Hampton Automatic right there in a speakeasy adorning the wrist of a dapper gentleman lighting up a gasper while chatting up his stunning date, a real bearcat. On her wrist, the 43mm execution; his, the 48mm – both equally as hotsy-totsy.
Baume & Mercier Hampton Automatic
