H. Moser & Cie Pioneer Perpetual Calendar MD

I’m not a date window guy. Very few watch designers can incorporate a date window into a dial without screwing-up the overall balance. And as a seven-days-a-week watch blogger with PTSD, I don’t live my life by the calendar. That said, I’m always interested in how a watchmaker does windows. The H. Moser & Cie Pioneer Perpetual Calendar MD (Month Date, not Medical Doctor) is their latest spin. Question . . .

My calendar awareness is neglible, but who loses track of the month? I’m down with my Mondaine watch’s day-of-the-week + date disaply, but I’m not sure I’d want to be on a monthly cycle. So to speak.

O.K. sure, the 42.8mm H. Moser & Cie Pioneer Perpetual Calendar MD is a technological tour-de-force, automatically adjusting the date according to the month. There’s even a leap year cycle indicator on the caseback. No more futzing with the date! Yay!

That’s assuming you keep it wound. The PPCMD’s double-barrelled HMC 808 hand-wound movement has a seven day power reserve, and “the date can be set at any time of the day, forwards or backwards, with no risk to the movement.” So you’re covered.

And entranced. The PPCMD’s’s dual month/date indicators balance the overall design beautifully — although I’m not sure why the date is slightly larger than than the month. The model with dots as indices is clearly the cleaner of the two styles on offer, but I wouldn’t kick the other piece out of bed for eating crackers.

If the whole month thing’s too much (price on request), you can still buy an H. Moser & Cie Perpetual Calendar with just the date in your choice of eight colorways. But you know what? The starkly beautiful, Ventablack H. Moser & Cie Endeavor Perpetual Moon Concept is still the perfectly formed apple of my eye, despite a one-day deviation every 1027 years. Probably in December.