December 17, 2019

LIFE IN MONOCHROME

by AHMED SEDDIQI & SONS

Add a little ‘je ne sais quoi’ to your watch wardrobe with a design that embraces the subtle complexities of light and shade.

Coco Chanel said many quotable things – ‘fashion changes, but style endures’ – but the most tangible of her observations were surely those on colour. One time, she concluded: ‘I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.’

Even now, nearly half a century on from her death, black and white dominate Chanel collections. For far longer the yin and the yang of the colour spectrum have also shaped watch design, providing a consistent, failsafe palette for watch dials.

Increasingly, they’re also informing cases as bolder brands experiment with light and shade. The results can be spectacular – or perhaps that should be enduringly stylish.

Here’s a selection of pieces that embrace the monochromatic black and white palette.

Bulgari Octo L’Originale Chronograph

Rome’s Basilica of Maxentius, built in 310 AD. Its extraordinary case geometry is the product of 110 facets, here all finished in black diamond-like carbon, a misty, highly scratch-resistant coating that gives the Italian jeweller’s watch an air of mystery. Inside it is a high-frequency mechanical chronograph movement, upgraded with a column-wheel mechanism that makes it more precise and robust, and a silicon escapement that’s resistant to magnetism, shocks and extreme temperature changes.

Tudor Black Bay Dark

While black and white deserve their style credentials, they’re more often adopted in watch design for their simplicity, and, critically, their legibility. Early diver’s and pilot’s watches had black dials with contrasting white detailing to make them as legible as possible, creating a look that now transcends their function. Utilitarianism, or functional style, is never out of fashion, which is why Tudor’s Black Bay Dark looks so timeless. Its steel case, bezel and crown are blackened with a PVD (physical vapour deposition) treatment, while the hands, hour markers and bezel dive time scale are all white. The watch looks great, but it’s also clear as day what time it is the moment you look at it. Other vitals include an in-house automatic movement with a 70-hour power reserve and water resistance to 200 metres.

Urwerk UR-EMC Black

Independent watchmaker Urwerk’s primary ambition has never been legibility. Its audacious watches, are designed to stretch the limits of what’s possible with mechanical watchmaking. The futuristic form of its UR-EMC Black is a bombastic shell for what it calls the ‘first high-end mechanical watch with artificial intelligence’. Essentially, it’s a watch with a mechanical engine that’s regulated by an electronic optical sensor charged by winding the crank in the case flank. As the wearer, this combination means you can gauge and adjust the watch’s accuracy, depending perhaps on your mood. The watch is so good, it picked up two gongs at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève the year it was released – an exceptional level of recognition for a watch.

Graff Slim Eclipse

Graff, one of the world’s leading diamond companies, only began producing Swiss Made mechanical watches just over a decade ago, and yet its designs already slot into that ‘immediately recognisable’ category. Key to that is the shape of its watch cases, which are based on a cross-section of a brilliant diamond. Other tropes that carry through the collection include the repeating pattern, based on the ‘Graff Icon’, that appears on many of its watches’ dials. Both are here in this blackened version of the Slim Eclipse, a 43mm time-only automatic on a black alligator strap.

Laurent Ferrier Galet Classic

Watchmaker Laurent Ferrier’s simple looking Galet Classic watches are masters of disguise, particularly when presented in understated monochrome, as here. Not only do their restrained round cases and Roman Numeral dials conceal an obsessive level of finishing, they also say little of the complexity of the mechanical movements beneath. In this case though, there is a clue – the words ‘Tourbillon Double Spiral’, inscribed in caps just above the small seconds display at 6 o’clock, point to the double balance-spring tourbillon conceived and built in Laurent Ferrier’s workshops. What does this do? The nub of it is that it makes the watch accurate enough to be precision rated by the esteemed Besançon Observatory. Galet, for the record, is French for ‘pebble’, which makes more sense when the watch is seen side on. Its elegantly rounded shape is reminiscent of a stone worn smooth by the crashing of the waves.

De Bethune DB28 Dark Shadows

Many of Switzerland’s new generation of independent watchmakers have already acquired cult status, becoming hugely collectible along the way. At the scene’s vanguard is De Bethune, whose other-worldly creations manage to look both old-school and at the extreme edge of avant-garde watch design. The spectacular DB28, which could have been lifted from the Star Trek props cupboard, is a typical expression of its cosmic creed. This limited edition Dark Shadows model casts its mesmerising ruthenium and hand-polished blackened steel Calibre DB2115 in a satin-brushed zirconium case. One tasty quirk is a spherical moon phase at 6 o’clock, a spinning palladium and anthracite zirconium hand-polished steel sphere that’s accurate to one day every 122 years.