The Skinny
- Reference PAM01467
- 44mm
- Titanium case with anthracite DLC coating
- 300m water resistance
- Automatic mechanical caliber P.9010 with dual barrels, 3-day power reserve, beating at 28,800 perth hour, with dual time display, date, and sub-seconds display.
- Gray fabric strap made from recycled post-consumer materials.
- Limited to 212 pieces.
- Released October 2023
- Price upon release – $12,700
The Exceptional 44mm Luminor
However Panerai styles it, the 44mm Luminor is one of the brand’s most proportionally balanced and easy wearing watches. The proportionality comes down to there being ample, yet not too much, space for all features of the watch to work in harmony: note the ripple effect of the bezel, case and crown guard, as well as the serene distribution of hour markers and numerals as examples of why the 44mm Luminor is such a winning format. As for the wearability, these 44mm watches sit nicely on a surprisingly wide range of wrists, and a Luminor 44mm seems to have the versatility of a 40mm watch.
The ultimate strength of the 44mm Luminor, however, is its ability to take on vastly different treatments and always look great. It’s a design that Panerai has long steered in many directions, from fully polished steel time-only models with softened retro colorways to carbon Luminors with pops of primary colors across complicated chronographs. With the limited edition model in hand here, the 44mm Luminor has been given a chic grayed-out treatment to celebrate the opening of Panerai’s new flagship store in Manhattan. With a nod to the Big Apple area code, there are 212 examples for sale of the PAM01467.
Understated Chic
This model sports an anthracite gray DLC coating over its ultra-light titanium case. A fumé (faded) gray dial matches perfectly. It’s almost a cliché to make an NYC tribute in black. Since The Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol, and pretty much every punk rocker slumming in the East Village donned all black garb (à la French existentialists), the blacked-out look trickled up into the highest fashions and from there back down into Midtown business attire and mainstream brunching outfits. To the point: New Yorkers actually do wear a lot of black, and however cliché that fact may be, it remains a fact.
But the PAM01467 isn’t truly blacked out, and it really succeeds for that reason. It’s rendered in an elegant dark gray and, in fact, is somewhat luminescent in a dim kind of way. As such, the watch looks sophisticatedly monochromatic, and it entirely avoids the militaristic night-vision vibes that so many blacked-out watches carry (including a number of Panerai’s carbon watches). I see the PAM01467 as ready for an urban evening out. It’s confident, understated, and just a bit detached — which is a fine encapsulation of NYC chic.
Amazing that an Italian dive watch dating back to WWII can be made to play this chic role in NYC 2023. It’s a testament to the versatility of the 44mm Luminor format.
The More Overt Tribute to NYC
Any well-known landmark is bound to feel a little generic to natives who, when asked to name an iconic place in NYC, are more likely conjure their favorite coffee shop or even a local bodega. Of course those mundane places aren’t going to make it onto a watch, so Panerai gave us The Brooklyn Bridge. New York has so many popular landmarks, and among them I suppose The Brooklyn Bridge is the hippest of the bunch. Not quite under the radar, but not the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building or WTC either. The Brooklyn Bridge is a solid choice.
Even so, native New Yorkers don’t tend to wear New York memorabilia, which is generally sold to tourists and recent transplants (John Lennon donning a New York City tee shirt leaps to mind). And yet I have a small hankering for that caseback engraving – perhaps because I looked out at The Brooklyn Bridge from the C-Train twice a day for over a decade going to and from work. But the more powerful reasons I want to own the PAM01467 are that it is simply gorgeous and the movement is super compelling.
BiTempo means Dual-Time, not GMT…or, hold on, does it mean GMT?
The automatic P.9010 uses dual barrels to save up a 3-day power reserve, which is pretty robust if not entirely a-typical these days. But it is the subtle and useful dual time display that wins my affection.
Two rather well informed watch aficionados asked me where the GMT markings were on the PAM01467, and I explained that BiTempo is Italian for DualTime, and that the PAM01467 is not a GMT watch.
Bear with me, as this discussion is about to get nerdy
GMT refers to the 24 time zones we Westerners carved the world up into for navigational purposes, but this watch simply has two hands that go around the dial every 12 hours. Those 12-hour cycles existed long before we invented 24 time zones. That seems clear enough, and this is not a GMT watch.
However, Panerai puts GMT on the dial of some of these dual-time watches (e.g. PAM01441) and sometimes refers to this complication as a 12-hour GMT. And, indeed, the distinction between time-zones on a dual-time watch – though restricted to 12-hour scales – still uses the GMT time-zone system to make its distinction between the time at two or more locations. Presumably, as well, you could set the local hour hand more than 12-hours apart from the hand tracking home-base (which is a little confusing as there’s no AM/PM indicator or 24-hour scale, but you could certainly do it).
Maybe this all comes down to semantics, and you can correctly call this complication both a 12-hour GMT and a dual-time complication. I like my nit-picky distinction, so I will stick with my literal translation of BiTempo as DualTime for now.
Just to be clear: both hour hands on the PAM01467 revolve every 12-hours. The one with the arrow is fixed to the crown, while the solid one leaps forward and backward using the crown pulled out one click (also used for quickly setting the date). When the two hour hands are aligned, they become indistinguishable, and the tip of the arrow seems to become the tip of the local hand. Very nicely done.
I really like dual-time complications. I’ve never quite adapted to 24-hour time as an American, and dual-time displays offer at-a-glance time-telling unlike 24-hour GMTs. I’ll also suggest that adhering to 12-hour scales is perhaps a clever – if unintentional – nod to NYC as the gateway to America. Perhaps that’s a symbolic stretch, but I’ll take it.
As with all modern in-house Panerai movements, the P.9010 operates with a uniquely smooth buttery action via the oversized crown. Many watches are joyful to wind and adjust, but no crown I’ve ever cranked feels as smooth and pleasant as a modern Panerai crown. Panerai deserves more credit for their amazing suite of in-house movements. Perhaps the design language is so strong with Panerai that the mechanics remain secondary, but that shouldn’t be the case.
Unexpected Elegance
The PAM01467 objectively represents a harmonious and successful design.
Part of this success is, obviously, the very reserved colorway and the lovely fade on the dial. The strap, too, contributes to the PAM01467’s serenity and understatement. And that’s saying something for a Panerai, as they’re more typically known as large timepieces with a measure of bravado on offer. I expected this dark Panerai to feel macho on my wrist, but it just feels elegant and sophisticated. What a versatile format the Luminor 44mm is!
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