Urban and contemporary, sober and elegant… this dazzling, amazingly zestful 2009 Ladies' chronograph is a startling new addition to the freelancer collection.

Perfectly blending originality with mechanical sophistication, the new model displays all the aesthetic and technical qualities for which the collection is famed.

The functions of this new, exceptional watchmaking jewel are clad in delicate, ultra-feminine tones. With their delightfully original colors, the subdials (12 hours at 6 o'clock, 30 minutes at 12 o'clock and 60 seconds 9 o'clock) offer the last word in feminine refinement. The central chronograph hand, and the day- and date-windows at 3 o'clock, complete the innovative dial in great style.

The circular bezel and the brushed/polished 42mm steel case are both studded with diamonds, carefully chosen for their purity and further underlining the exclusive appeal of this Spring-fresh timepiece. Who could resist the sparkle of 86 or 235 diamonds – depending on the model – twinkling irresistibly against the dial's shimmering colors?

A final touch of class is the full-skin crocodile strap with saddle-stitching that matches the glamorous tones of each model, and fits snuggly to the wrist thanks to its folding clasp with double push-piece security.

Raymond Weil watches are renowned for their perfect balance between technique and design – and the Geneva watchmaker has paid meticulous attention to the aesthetic appeal of the freelancer collection's first Ladies' chronograph, while again giving full rein to its outstanding watchmaking savoir-faire. Beneath the multi-toned dial, and protected by a sapphire crystal with double-sided anti-glare treatment, the heart of the self-winding mechanical movement oscillates at a frequency of 28,800 vibrations per hour. Two characteristic push-pieces activate the chronograph functions: start, stop and re-start at 2 o'clock; reset function at 4 o'clock.

In love with watchmaking sophistication – or passionate about creative finesse? Thanks to this exceptional timepiece, women will no longer need to choose…
Movement
Mechanical, 28 800 vibrations per hour
Circular-graining

Winding:Automatic
Power Reserve: 46 hours
Jewels: 25 rubies

Functions
Chronograph
- start, stop & re-start by push-piece at 2 o’clock
- reset by push-piece at 4 o’clock
- central chronograph hand
- 30-minute subdial at 12 o’clock
- 12-hour subdial at 6 o’clock

60-second subdial at 9 o’clock

Day & Date: 3-day date & day windows at 3 o’clock
Day & date change by winding stem at 3 o'clock

Case
Round – polished, brushed steel – diameter 42mm
Set with 169 diamonds (1.18 carats)

Bezel
Polished steel
Set with 66 diamonds (0.62 carat)
Crystal: Sapphire with double-sided anti-glare treatment
Dial: Iridescent mother-of-pearl with white mother-of-pearl subdials

Indexes: Polished & nickelled, in relief, with white luminescent highlights

Hands
Hour / Minute: Bâton diamond-tipped hands with luminescent highlights
Subdials: Bâton diamond-tipped hands
Chronograph: Bâton hand with counterpoise

Diamonds: A total of 235 (1.8 carats)
Case-back: Sapphire crystal

Strap
White, genuine, full skin crocodile strap with saddle-stitching
RW folding clasp with double push-piece security

Water-resistance: 10 ATM

FREELANCER Ladies- 7730 PAV 46001

Movement
Mechanical, 28 800 vibrations per hour
Circular-graining

Winding:Automatic
Power Reserve: 46 hours
Jewels: 25 rubies

Functions
Chronograph
- start, stop & re-start by push-piece at 2 o’clock
- reset by push-piece at 4 o’clock
- central chronograph hand
- 30-minute subdial at 12 o’clock
- 12-hour subdial at 6 o’clock

60-second subdial at 9 o’clock

Day & Date: 3-day date & day windows at 3 o’clock
Day & date change by winding stem at 3 o'clock

Case
Round – polished, brushed steel – diameter 42mm
Set with 169 diamonds (1.18 carats)

Bezel
Polished steel
Set with 66 diamonds (0.62 carat)
Crystal: Sapphire with double-sided anti-glare treatment
Dial: Fuchsia with white subdials
Indexes: Polished & nickelled, in relief, with white luminescent highlights

Hands
Hour / Minute: âton diamond-tipped hands with luminescent highlights
Subdials: Bâton diamond-tipped hands
Chronograph: Bâton hand with counterpoise

Diamonds: A total of 235 (1.8 carats)
Case-back: Sapphire crystal

Strap
Fuchsia, genuine, full skin crocodile strap with saddle-stitching
RW folding clasp with double push-piece security

Water-resistance: 10 ATM

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The difference between a $500 watch and a $50,000 one is often in the movement.

The ground floor of the Roger Dubuis factory, a top-tier manufacturer specializing in artistically extroverted timepieces, comes as a shock. This is one of Geneva's temples of haute horlogerie, a place where you'd expect the loudest sound to be the nearly inaudible cricket-song of a hand file against brass. But in this gigantic room blue- and white-coated technicians tend enormous, sleek machines. The air is redolent of oil and coolant, the ceiling is strung with pipes and conduit, and, here and there, warning signs and bundled cables testify to the huge amounts of electricity being consumed.

It's in a room like this that virtually every watch, from the humblest $100 automatic to the costliest limited-edition mechanical marvel, starts its life. The components are made by supersophisticated industrial robots--computer-guided automatic milling machines and spark-erosion fabricators. Which brings up a question: If this is so, why do watch prices range from less than the cost of a decent lunch to more than that of a comfortable suburban house?

The answer lies one floor up, where those raw parts undergo a dramatic transformation. Here the workers wear blue or white coats, too, but otherwise you've gone back in time. There are no robots, only tools that would be recognized by a watchmaker from a century ago. At one workbench, a woman uses a spinning boxwood disk to polish a delicate sine wave curve into the flanks of tiny brass-gear teeth. Nearby, another woman passes a movement repeatedly under a spinning disk charged with jeweler's rouge. As she does so rows of gleaming parallel stripes appear, like ripples in a frozen pond; these are the famous Geneva stripes, or Côtes de Genève, one of the signature movement decorations of the Genevan school of watch decorating. At yet another workstation, a young man works with painstaking slowness to give a tiny irregular movement bridge a beveled flank so that it catches light like the facet of a diamond. Each stroke is done with the care of a vascular surgeon stitching shut a hair-thin blood vessel.

These are the finisseurs (finishers), and it's their time-consuming, labor-intensive work that holds the answer to the question I posed earlier. The art of movement decoration has been part of watchmaking since the first table clocks were made during the Renaissance. Over the centuries national style developed: the reserved gilt-and–blued steel stolidity of English chronometers; the glitteringly sensuous Genevan approach; the superbly flat dress pocket watches of France, made as thin as possible so as to avoid disrupting the tailored fit of a waistcoat. Whatever the style, the finish of a watch movement was one of the purest expressions of a craftsman's pride, as in most cases nobody but the watchmaker himself even knew it was there.

Which is still the case: An appreciation of finishing is an insider passion even today. But a basic understanding of it can give the nonfanatic a new perspective on the price-value relationship of timepieces. Here are key points to remember.
Respect the robots. A modern CNC cutter or spark- erosion machine can turn out parts that without further finishing can be assembled into high-precision micromachines. The 'bots make possible entry-level mechanical watches from Swatch, Seiko, Citizen, Orient, and Timex of a precision that would have been impossible at such a price point (often less than $500) a few decades ago.
More finishing does not mean more accuracy. Top-grade hand-finishing is really the connoisseur's delight--beauty in the eye of the beholder who knows how to recognize it.

Quality of finish and price tag don't always parallel. If a particular model becomes a collectors' darling (like the stainless steel Rolex Daytona chronograph), or if a brand is just plain hot, price follows suit, even if the watch has little or no hand-finishing.
Precious metals and gemstones change the equation. A machine-finished watch with one or both can cost more than one that is hand-finished. Rarity and peculiar provenance can make a watch expensive regardless of finishing.
Absent those factors, higher price means more finishing. A $10,000 watch, as a rule, has more hand-finishing than a $6,000 one.
At the high end, it's the finisseur. His painstaking work bestows a pedigree price. A $1,000 chronograph with industrial finishing becomes a $25,000 one with hand-finishing.

Above that, complication comes into play. At the very high end, it drives price as much as finishing.
Finally, finishing is a three-tiered cake: basic (robot), machine, and hand. Mechanical watches that sell for less than $1,000 compose the base. They have little or no finish beyond that produced by the robots that manufacture the movement. In the middle ($1,000–$12,000) are mechanical models with varying degrees of machine-executed decorative finish: attractive beveling, blued-finish screws, gleaming countersinks, and engraving. Watches at the upper end of this layer also have some hand-finishing. In the top tier ($12,000 and up) hand-finishing starts to predominate. North of $20,000, you're getting the full-on haute treatment, horology's equivalent of haute couture. A premium-grade movement like Vacheron's caliber 1400, the caliber 215 from Patek, or the caliber 3120 automatic from Audemars Piguet, is a singular object: The hand-finishing means no two are exactly alike.

And the expense is huge. The finest haute horlogerie brands train most of their finisseurs in-house. Just learning how to bevel a flank properly can take anywhere from one to one-and-a-half years. Learning how to black-polish steel to a mirror finish, hand-engrave a rotor, or apply Geneva stripes of just the right depth requires a touch that has to be passed down directly--there are few manuals to go by.

It's fair to ask why a top-notch timepiece is so expensive. But when you multiply the number of hours it takes to hand-finish just one part--more than half a day in some cases--by the number of components in the movement and then by the number of years it takes to learn how to finish a piece of metal the size of a fly antenna, it's easier to see how the price starts to add up. It's the hundreds of hours of human skill concentrated in a cubic centimeter.