Parmigiani is a young brand, founded in 1996. It is owned by the Sandoz Family Foundation, which also owns Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier which supplies the movements to Parmigiani watches. Hermes has a 25% stake in Vaucher, so you also find Hermes supplies many straps branded for Parmigiani.

Diameter: 38.9mm

Lug-to-lug: 44.2mm

Thickness: 8.7mm

Lug width is: 22mm

The watch has 30 meters of water resistance.

The watch case is made of 18kt white gold and is mostly polished including on its teardrop lugs. On the 3 o’clock side is a signed crown. The crown has three positions. In position 0 the watch can be wound. In position 1 the watch date can be quickset. In position two the watch hacks and the time can be set.

Parmigiani describes the dial as champagne in color, and it is but it is much lighter than the champagne color as advertised from other manufacturers. In certain lighting conditions it tends to look white or silver. The hour and minute hands are delta style and, despite being a dress watch, do feature lume. The dial consists of a series of steps or tiers. The outer-most edge of the dial is the highest point, featuring applied indices and Arabic numerals at the 12, 2, 4, 8, and 10 positions. The font of these numerals is unlike any I have seen on a watch before… the effect is to me a bit akin to Breguet numerals but clearly different in design. There are also hour lume pips at the edge of the dial. Moving inward and we step down a level with printed markers, longer ones at each hour, and a lighter dial color. Beneath the 12 o’clock position is the Parmigiani Fleurier branding. Towards the 6 o’clock position we step down a third time, now into a small seconds feature. A date window is at the 6 o’clock position, but it is a wide window displaying multiple dates. The current one is centered and highlighted by a red hour marker back towards the edge of the dial. But because the date window is so large, it creates in effect a fourth step down. As such, this is one of the most three dimensional dress watches I’ve ever seen.

Given the watch features some lume here is some footage of that lume freshly charged.

The watch does have a display caseback showing off the PF331 movement. This is an automatic movement with a gold rotor that has 32 jewels, beats at 4 Hertz, and offers approximately 55 hours of power reserve. There is Côtes de Genève decoration applied to the bridges which are the main elements visible beyond the rotor itself.

Putting this watch on my timegrapher, I get an average across all six positions of +3.17 seconds per day. The range of readings were -2 seconds per day to +8 seconds per day.

Here you can see what the watch looks like on my wrist. My wrist size is approximately 6.75 inches. The alligator strap has a white gold pin buckle. Strangely, despite this being a standard length strap it came with two fewer holes than usual and I had to punch a hole further up the strap to get the watch tight enough. First time I’ve encountered that on a strap like this before.

My overall thoughts:

The positives:

• Comfortable to wear

• Great dial

• Reasonably accurate

The negatives:

• Having to modify the strap was annoying

• Lume on a dress watch I find a bit goofy

I don’t have much in the way of complaints. I bought a leather hole punch kit and using that is easy enough but despite measuring I slipped and didn’t get the hole exactly where I wanted it. It made it far more wearable and holes stretch and deform over time anyway but still, given as expensive as alligator straps are, if you have a smaller wrist and are worried you might want to let a professional take care of it or ask if the seller has a smaller strap. I’m fine with the lume but I’m listing it as a negative because some might find that anathema to a true dress watch.

Otherwise though, it’s all positives. As a dress watch goes the dial is actually surprisingly complex without really calling attention to itself. The delta hands, the strange font for the Arabic numerals, the multiple steps to the dial, all in all it makes for a very interesting piece unless anything else I can think of from other brands.

I should note this style of Kalpa Tonda is discontinued so you will need to shop used if you want to find one. They made a number of these with different dial colors, case metal configurations, and sizes.