“BY ALL MEANS move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me,” said Miranda Priestly to her assistant Andrea Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada. Montblanc’s cross-category Glacier collection, which sees pens, leather goods, and watches try to show just how thrilling glaciers can be.
For example, a display of functional, masculine bags during a presentation of the new line on Aug. 9 featured an ice motif. The nylon on which the icy design is printed is Econyl, made from recycled materials, and they look like bags to be worn by very cool kids. The wearer will be cool in more ways than one, considering that the bags’ buckles are the Montblanc M Lock 4810, a pressure closure used in the world of climbing and mountaineering and introduced as a new brand code.
As for the pens, the new design elements of the Montblanc Meisterstück Glacier collection feature blue-grey and white tones, a PVD coating technology that gives the surface an ice-like appearance, as well as engraving on the Doué and Solitaire editions that resembles the refraction of light when hitting ice crystals. Based on the legend that the Mer de Glace glacier resembles a giant monster hugging the northern slope of Mont Blanc (the German-headquartered brand’s namesake Swiss mountain), every nib in the collection is engraved with the Mont Blanc Mer de Glace dragon.
Finally, the brand used this collection to launch its first certified diving watch, the Montblanc 1858 Iced Sea Automatic Date. It comes in a 41mm stainless steel case with a bicolor ceramic unidirectional rotating bezel and a case back featuring a 3D relief engraving of an iceberg and a scuba diver exploring the glacial waters below. BusinessWorld fiddled with the watch last week and saw the ease in switching the watch’s stainless-steel bracelet with a rubber strap — almost making the watch seem like a two-for-one deal, retailing on the company’s website for $3,190 (or P177,762.75 with a P55.72 per dollar exchange rate).
“Gazing into the depths of this Alpine ice is an incredible experience that we wanted to bring to our products, finding a creative way to create that same sense of awe and wonder. These pieces don’t just emulate the aesthetic appeal of the icy texture but celebrate these glaciers and iced lakes by expressing the spirit of adventure the Mont Blanc inspires in everyone; a spirit that is core to Montblanc’s own attitude towards exploration and the preservation of the great outdoors,” Marco Tomasetta, Montblanc Creative Director, was quoted as saying in a statement.
“Staying true to the maison’s spirit of exploration and dedication to craftsmanship, the maison’s watchmakers revived an almost-forgotten ancestral technique to create the illusion of a frozen dial,” explained Michael Tantoco Huang, Senior Vice-President for Store Development for Rustan Commercial Corp. (which distributes Montblanc in the Philippines) in a speech during the launch.
“Truly, Montblanc is a brand whose craftsmen and artisans fully commit themselves to designing masterpieces that are actual works of art, symbolizing the core of the brand’s DNA.”
Montblanc is available at Rustan’s Makati, Rustan’s Shangri-La, Rustan’s Cebu, Greenbelt 5, City of Dreams and Resorts World. — JL Garcia