Welcome to the family.

‘Restraint’ is not a word you’d normally associate with Corum. Their famous Golden Bridge collection features a splendid open-worked dial, the Bubble is delightfully irreverent, and even the Admiral is ringed with its signature colourful nautical pennants. And yet, Corum’s new collection is exactly that—restrained.

CEO Jérôme Biard explains it perfectly: “We wanted to have a collection with an elegant, classic design. It complements, following our customers’ demand, our most daring pieces.” Enter the La Grande Vie collection.

The last time we saw an entirely new line of watches at Corum, it was the early 2000s when the Bubble was introduced. La Grande Vie couldn’t be more different. Sleek, minimalist and utterly pared back (the brand name isn’t even on the dial), the La Grande Vie family is everything you’d expect from a classical watchmaker—slim baton indexes, dauphine hands, sunray dial. Except it’s slightly out of character for the brand.

That’s not to say we don’t like it. On the contrary, we think it’s a breath of fresh air for Corum. Kinda like when you’ve had wagyu steak dinners the whole week and now you just want a fresh, crisp salad.

The collection comprises just three models (blue, green and brown dials) for now and will be part of the ‘Heritage’ line. Housed in a 42mm titanium case is the Calibre CO 082, a reliable fuss-free movement which also features in the Coin Watch series and certain Bubble timepieces. It offers a pretty standard 42-hour power reserve and is water resistant to 50m.

The most distinguishing feature of the watches is undoubtedly the gorgeous sunray dials with a very on-trend black gradation from the outer edge in. The baton indexes are kept deliberately slim to allow more of the sunray effect to be displayed and the only text, ‘La Grande Vie’ (which translates to ‘the great life’), is on the bottom half of the dial in an elegant cursive font.

To keep things simple, Corum decided featuring its brand name on the dial. Instead, its key logo sits unobtrusively at the top, doubling up as the 12 o’clock marker. Wrapping up the whole package are matching straps corresponding to the individual dial colours.

As an everyday watch, the La Grande Vie works beautifully. It’s not too casual, neither is it overly stuffy. A case thickness of 9.05mm means it doesn’t slide under the cuff as easily as an ultra-thin watch would but with that brilliant pop of colour, the last place you’d want the watch to be is hidden in your sleeve. 

Available on request at S$5,992 (incl. GST).