Van Cleef & Arpels, legendary jewelry makers, also produce exquisitely unique watch complications. Far from the more “standard” fare of chronographs, dual time zones, and alarms, Van Cleef excels in the area of aptly-named “poetic complications.”

The Midnight in Paris watch displays the night sky over Paris and the dial rotates once over the course of 365 days, exactly matching the shifting of the stars over a one year period. The stars are depicted as gold dots, and as the disc rotates ever so slowly they are revealed in the circle aperture on the lower portion of the dial. The opaque area masks stars that are out of range on any particular date.

For centuries, the heavens have inspired artists and craftsmen. Van Gogh’s Starry Night is a wonderful depiction of France’s night sky. The painted ceiling of the Main Concourse in New York’s Grand Central Station is an astrological mural of the constellations in gold against a rich green background.

Another great feature of the watch is that is has an officer style back: the cover hinges open to reveal a calendar that is rimmed in a disc of genuine meteorite. The calendar enables the owner to set the watch to the accurate date. The movement is a manual wind mechanical with a 40 hour power reserve.

Girard-Perregaux has enjoyed a long history of producing some of the world’s most highly complicated watches married with a rich sense of design. In 1860 Constant Girard-Perregaux introduces his first tourbillon with three bridges, and 150 years later the brand has come a long way.

This year at SIHH, GP introduced a new limited edition tourbillon with three golden bridges. The bridges of a watch provide stability and support for the finely tuned movements of the mechanism, and are not usually shown as a design element. However, Girard-Perregaux is known for this design element, and the result is a supremely elegant, masculine piece with the three bridges fully exposed. The rose gold warms the industrial ook of the bridges and provides a rich contrast with the white gold screws and dial below. The tourbillon’s movement is clearly visible and the effect is stunning. At only 50 pieces worldwide, this is surely a piece the collectors will covet.

It’s not easy to be a start up in the watch world, full of 100-plus year old manufactures. The Swiss have a virtual lock on fine watchmaking, and Ralph Lauren wisely launched his new haute horologerie collection in a partnership with the Richemont group.

This is not to say that Mr. Lauren did not have his hand in every step of the process. He is according to reports an avid watch collector (he also owns some of the rarest automobiles) and of course has his own distinctive style and unwavering dedication to quality. It’s also rumored that he rejected the brown color of his watchbands several times until it was just to his specifications.

All of this hard work and attention to detail has borne a distinctive collection of three first models, the Stirrup, the Slim Classique, and the Sporting collection. Movements range from manual winds to automatics.

The highest complication is a World Time in the Sporting collection, that has a second time zone, 40 hour power reserve, day/night indicator, and date. The collection was introduced at the 2009 SIHH show amid great anticipation from retail. Historically many fashion designers have licensed their name to manufactures but this is the first “designer” launch that embraces the craft of watchmaking at its highest level.