The new Lady Beat by Armin Strom is the newest watch from the brand and the first ladies’ timepiece in their collections. Armin Strom demonstrates one of the brand’s core principles which is to always innovate. Boldly redesigning the brand’s typical movement, dial, and case, Lady Beat marks a milestone of the new System 78 Collection, which highlights innovative watchmaking at a competitive price. The latest no-compromise watch from the Biel-based manufacture is a decidedly feminine one, but one exuding the technical look and feel of the genuine manufacture movement powering every Armin Strom timepiece.
The Armin Strom Lady Beat’s design features differentiated aesthetics that make it wholly unique and feminine. And this is thanks to the fact that the men behind Armin Strom know their boundaries: instead of using the brand’s testosterone-influenced in-house design, the brand consulted freelance designers of the opposite sex to ensure authenticity and a decidedly feminine feel. The new Lady Beat features an off-centered dial —white or black—, a slimmer new stainless steel case with a much smaller diameter at 38 mm hitting the new size sweet spot of most women.
The highlight of the front of this watch is the visible triplet of bridges echoing the pocket watch inspiration behind Caliber ALA20, just one of many mechanical elements visible on the dial. The contemporary dimensions maintain the essence of Armin Strom DNA while shaping a new aesthetic that showcases the brand’s love for reduction to the essential, enhancing legibility, and maximizing the user experience for discerning female collectors, enthusiasts, and casual wearers.
The Lady Beat is the manufacture’s answer to finally serving women also interested in fine mechanics. Technical head Claude Greisler and owner Serge Michel felt that the time was precisely right to include women in Armin Strom’s high-quality Swiss-made offerings.
“There is more to discover with this watch than women are used to,” Greisler mentions. “Our passion for visible mechanics is also evidentat first glance here.”
“We listen to women,” said Greisler. “We listen to all our customers.”
“It would not have been right or good to rush this watch,” Greisler is sure.“Good design is honest and functional,” Greisler says of the manufacture’s latest creation. “It does not need makeup to be attractive.” But there is an Armin Strom-typical element that increases its attractiveness: Lady Beat can be customized in color and other elements in the Armin Strom online Configurator. “We know that colors are so important to women,” Greisler continues, “so we offer plenty of choice.”
Greisler refers to the brand’s history in skeletonization and open-worked movements, a consistent leitmotif continued in Lady Beat. While the inspiration for this watch originated with Greisler and Michel, they wisely collaborated with two women very well acquainted with designing watches for other women. It was important to the two male company founders that they collaborate with female professionals, one of which had previously been a product manager for a well-positioned company famous for feminine watches and jewelry, as they judiciously recognized they were not qualified by themselves to create such a sophisticated, ambitious, and challenging product for the opposite sex on their own. This watch is by women for women without men in the middle interpreting. And these women understand the fascination of Armin Strom.
Armin Strom had been experiencing great demand for a watch like this for quite some time, but the team hadn’t been sure how to go about it until now or had it wanted to overextend its capacities. With the new collaboration team in place, the first thing to do was make a shape analysis. What they found was that softer shapes were the order of the day, perhaps something moon inspired. And it had to be a celebration of mechanical transparency. It has only been ten years since Greisler and Michel re-founded Armin Strom, transforming the brand into a real manufacture focused on making its own timepieces. This is such a short amount of time in which to have achieved so many highlights —manufacture base movements, tourbillon movements, and the celebrated resonance movement of the Mirrored Force Resonance and its offshoots. The founders are cautious, clever, and sensibly working at their own pace. And this natural progression now leads to a fabulous watch just for women.
While the base idea is rooted in Gravity Equal Force, and the movement remains the centerpiece of any Armin Strom watch, the mechanics have been reordered to ensure both the svelte, wearable character of the watch, and to put the spotlight on mechanical dial animation. The previous case design has been trimmed down even further to create the first 38 mm stainless steel case at Armin Strom. Greisler and the two female designers very quickly settled on a watch filled with soft shapes. The normally very classic lugs of an Armin Strom watch were cast aside in favor of an integrated strap, and the overall look is filled with circles and semi-circles rather than the angular shapes generally associated with this classically male brand.
Lady Beat was conceived from the get-go to be a technical ladies’ watch, which meant that the concept had to be holistic and not just a shrunk-down men’s watch, which is the most commonly traveled route for creating timepieces for women in the watch industry. But Armin Strom never does things like everyone else; this manufacture prefers to work from the ground up every time. The watch’s winding is automatic for maximum comfort. The visible micro-rotor from gravity Equal Force was redeveloped into a full-sized central rotor on the back to ensure more winding power and a long power reserve.
Finally, though technical, the entire watch should still exude a feminine feel without resorting to diamonds and mother-of-pearl to “prettify” it. This watch should not be a compromise of any sort: it is unapologetically for women but in the minimalist Armin Strom style.
“While a man might think it’s cool to watch the rotor make its eternal revolutions winding the watch on the front, we collectively didn’t feel that women would be as interested in watching the winding system at work. The most complicated part of making this watch was trying to get into the heads of our potential female customers,” Greisler laughed. “These soft, moon-like shapes fill the optics of this watch,” Greisler said.
Look closely and you will see a half-moon-shaped plate sharing the watch’s lower level with the mechanical elements, while a full moon-shaped subdial sits atop it. Another example is that the dial no longer has numerals, but rather more softness thanks to a reduced logo that simultaneously functions as the 12 o’clock marker. Visible screws holding the undulating, patterned dial to the plate below remain visible, though, reminding us unmistakably that this is a technical oeuvre by Armin Strom. The seconds’ hand, which can quickly turn a watch into more of an instrument, has also been foregone here in favor of a clean look.
There is no shortage of technical elements on the dial: first and foremost, the visible balance with its mesmerizing rotations practically occupy the position of honor on the dial. The indications, on the other hand, are off-centered, as is often the case at Armin Strom, and given less focus than the watch’s beating heart. Conceived from the get-go to be a technical ladies’ watch, the movement was redeveloped to bring the balance —the beating heart of any watch—, to the front of the watch where it is visible at any time. Its hypnotizing movement also allows the wearer to see at a glance whether the watch is running or not.
Additionally, the team removed the ingenious stop-works declutch system and motor barrel design crafted to transmit equal force to the balance from Gravity Equal Force’s movement to minimize Lady Beat’s movement height and keep its dimensions svelte. And, finally, the team decided to remove the running seconds, deciding that they distracted from the beauty and focus on the balance in motion, the watch’s pulse.
The new Armin Strom Lady Beat ref. ST20-LAB features a stainless steel 38 mm case with an off-centered subdial in white or black and delivered on a bi-material strap with rubber and Alcantara lining in satin white or black. The watch is powered by the Armin Strom automatic calibre ALA20 beating at a frequency of 25,200 vph.
Sticker Price CHF 16,900 Swiss Francs —approximately $18,500 USD. For more info on Armin Strom click here.
