A. Lange & Söhne Saxonia Ultrathin

Two hands and nothing more.  For years that’s been the basest requirement of a dress watch. And for years — ever since the manufacturer’s reestablishment in 1990 — no one has done dress watches as well as A. Lange & Söhne. Still, the question of what makes a fine timepiece has befuddled collectors for decades. In watch collecting, particularly in the world of haute horlogerie, there’s the mistaken notion that a watch must be complicated to be considered a work of art. But sometimes there’s beauty in simplicity — not a stark, antiseptic kind of simplicity, but the kind of austere beauty that comes when watchmaking is distilled to its simplest elements. The Saxonia Ultrathin is one such watch. At a perfectly modern 37mm in diameter, it consists of nothing more than a manually wound movement powering two thin hands around a simple dial. No date, no power reserve indicator — no seconds hand, even! (Who needs to time something to the second when decked out in white tie, after all?)  The