Blue-mauve is a strange color to name and a stranger one to put on a sports watch, and it is the only dial finish in the LineSport range that does not have an obvious counterpart elsewhere in the collection. This is the Automatique Reserve in platinum, on a platinum bracelet developed specifically for it with a matte hammered finish, at 44 mm. The dial is silver, guilloche worked and finished in that blue-mauve tone, with matte white gold numerals applied on top. Platinum makes it the heaviest execution of the line by a wide margin, which is either the joke or the appeal depending on the buyer. It is a current reference and the case is offered in one size only.
Platinum at 44 mm and 11 mm deep, hammered matte across the case and every link of the bracelet, which is the finish that lets a precious metal sports watch exist at all. A polished platinum case at this diameter would be unwearable in any setting the watch was designed for. The bracelet was developed for this version rather than adapted from the titanium one, with articulated links at the case so the watch tracks the wrist and a folding clasp with roughly five millimeters of adjustment. The bezel is ceramic. On the dial, silver is guilloche worked and then finished in blue-mauve, a color that reads blue in daylight and shifts toward purple under artificial light, which is the reason for the compound name. The numerals are applied in matte white gold rather than printed, and the seconds counter at six is whitened guilloche silver. The hands are matte rhodium plated steel, chosen so nothing on the face reflects. At one o'clock the very large date sits in its aperture. Everything on the watch is matte except the sapphire. Weight is the consequence of all this and it cannot be designed around. A platinum case at 44 mm with a platinum bracelet is heavier than most people expect a watch to be, and the hammered surface does nothing to change that; it only stops the watch from looking as heavy as it feels. Owners tend to describe the first week as an adjustment.
The movement in the platinum LineSport is built in solid 18K rose gold, as it is in the gold versions and unlike the titanium ones, which use an aluminum alloy. Journe changes the material to suit the intention of each execution rather than building one movement for the whole family, which is unusual and adds work at every stage. Winding is unidirectional through the off-center 22K gold rotor on a self-locking ball bearing system, the same arrangement the automatic base has used since 2001. The calendar jumps instantly and the very large date at one o'clock is the dominant indication. Hours and minutes run from the center rather than from a subdial, which is what separates the LineSport visually from every dress watch in the catalogue. A small seconds counter sits at six and a day and night indication at seven thirty on the precious metal versions. All corrections are made from the crown, with no pushers in the caseband, which keeps the case sealed and simple. The movement is visible through the back and finished to the same standard as the dress references. That consistency is the quiet argument for the whole line. A sports watch from most houses gets a simpler movement and a plainer finish, on the reasoning that nobody looks at the back of a watch they wear to the gym. Journe declined that logic and built the same thing he builds for the dress references.
The LineSport started as the Octa Sport in 2012, an aluminum watch at 42 mm with rubber bumpers, and became what it is now in the 2018 rebuild that moved it to 44 mm grade 5 titanium with a ceramic bezel and matte surfaces throughout. Precious metal executions came afterwards and changed the character of the line. In titanium the argument is weight; in platinum the argument is the opposite, and the watch becomes a demonstration rather than a tool. Journe is not the only maker to have done this, but he is one of very few to have developed a dedicated bracelet in the metal rather than fitting a rubber strap and calling it done. The blue-mauve dial belongs only to the platinum version, so the color and the metal cannot be separated. Within the collection the LineSport remains the only family built around a bracelet at all, and this is the version that takes that idea furthest. It is worth noting how recent all of this is. For the first thirteen years of the house there was no sports watch and no bracelet at all, and the collection was entirely thin dress watches in precious metal on leather. The LineSport is the single largest change to what the catalogue covers, and the platinum version is the point where the two halves of the range meet, since it is a sports watch built to dress watch standards in the metal the dress watches use.
This is the heaviest thing in the catalogue that is not a grand complication, and the weight is the first and most important consideration. Anyone who has not handled a platinum bracelet should do so before ordering, because the experience does not translate from photographs or from a gold example. What the watch offers is a sports design executed without any of the usual compromises: a solid gold movement, an applied-numeral guilloche dial, a bracelet built for the metal, and a color that exists nowhere else in the collection. The 44 mm case is fixed and there is no smaller option. As a current reference the questions are allocation and delivery rather than condition, and sizing is worth taking seriously at the outset, since a heavy bracelet fitted badly is uncomfortable in a way a light one never is. The blue-mauve dial is the other thing to see in person, since it is the kind of color that photographs as one thing and looks like another, and the decision between this and the blackened gold version usually turns on that alone.
