Skeletonising a grand complication is an exercise in restraint as much as revelation. Remove too much material and the movement loses rigidity; intervene in the wrong place and its voice is compromised. For its latest Les Cabinotiers one-of-one, unveiled at Watches and Wonders 2026, Vacheron Constantin’s engineers spent a year modelling the architecture in 3D before a single cut was made to Calibre 2755 TMR, a minute repeater rooted in more than two centuries of the maison’s chiming-watch tradition. The watch is offered exclusively through private client channels on a price-upon-request basis.
Engineering Legacy
Vacheron Constantin’s Calibre 2755 has deep roots within the maison, and for this single creation, it has been taken further than ever before. It first appeared in the Tour de l’Île of 2005, built to mark the manufacture’s 250th anniversary. A purer execution of a minute repeater paired with a tourbillon came in 2016 with the Traditionnelle Tourbillon Minute Repeater, which marked the true debut of Calibre 2755 TMR. For this 2026 Les Cabinotiers edition, engineers took that calibre and spent a year reworking it into its skeletonised form. The resulting variant carries the reference 2755 TMR SQ, with SQ standing for squelette, the French word for skeleton.
The mainplate lost roughly forty per cent of its original volume. Bridges were openworked into geometric forms, their structure layered to create depth and draw the eye through the mechanism. The Maltese cross, a Vacheron Constantin signature since the 18th century, appears in the hour wheel and repeater barrel drum, turning functional components into structural design features.
The movement measures 33.90 mm in diameter and 6.30 mm thick. It contains 473 components across 44 jewels, runs at 2.5 Hz, and delivers approximately 58 hours of power reserve with an indicator to monitor it. That indicator carries real practical weight, as the minute repeater draws a significant burst of energy directly from the mainspring during activation, temporarily increasing consumption from the movement’s stored power reserve. The minute repeater uses a flying centripetal regulator with two inertia blocks instead of a traditional anchor system, ensuring a smooth chiming sequence. Its silent strike regulator, developed by Vacheron Constantin in 2007, eliminates the background whirring typically associated with repeater activation, allowing the chimes to sound without mechanical noise interference.
Surface and Decoration
Nine finishing techniques bring contrast and light across the exposed architecture. Flanks carry brushed lines for a matte surface, upper faces are levelled to a satin-bright finish, and bridges receive bevelled, polished chamfers. The craft behind each of those finishes is considerable: training as a chamferer at Vacheron Constantin takes two years, and mirror polishing alone requires at least ten hours of manual work per component. The tourbillon bar, rounded and mirror-polished inside and out, accounts for more than twelve of those hours, with the carriage itself requiring a further four to five days to bring the Maltese Cross motif to its finished state. The repeater hammers follow the same discipline, each brought to a high lustre entirely by hand. Anthracite-treated parts sit alongside brass and steel throughout, creating sharp visual separation between components that would otherwise read as a single mass. The overall standard of decoration is what earns the watch the Poinçon de Genève, the Geneva Seal, one of the most demanding finishing certifications in the industry.
The case is 45 mm in diameter, rendered in 18-carat 4N pink gold and measuring just 12 mm at its thickest point. Both bezel and caseback are subtly concave, which reduces the visual mass on the wrist without compromising the proportions. A sapphire dial opens the movement to full view, framed by two peripheral silver-toned gold rings and a blue ink-filled minute track, with eleven pink gold baton markers providing clean orientation. The blue technical calfskin strap closes with a pink gold folding clasp carrying a half Maltese cross at its centre.
Lasting Appeal
By skeletonising an established grand complication calibre for a single watch rather than a production run, Vacheron Constantin has produced a watch that rewards close, repeated inspection while preserving the chiming performance that has defined the manufacture’s work for more than two centuries. The watch puts its full mechanism on display without sacrificing refinement, and it gradually discloses its architecture in full.
