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Oris Sets Lab-Grown Diamonds into Aquis Date 

Oris sets lab-grown diamonds onto the dial and bezel of its Aquis Date to create the new, stylish Aquis Date Diamonds.

The new Oris Aquis Date Diamonds.

With a rich cherry red sunray dial, the new model is the first watch from Oris with this particular gem setting. The brilliant-cut lab-grown diamonds, indistinguishable from an Earth-mined diamond of equivalent quality, frame and add luster to the already luxurious dial.

 

Oris has utilized the Aquis Date collection in the past to highlight other unusual dial options. You might recall the watchmakers eye-catching Aquis Date Upcycle or its spiffy New York Harbor Limited Edition, each of which offered unusual dials that also signaled the brand’s ongoing attention to environmental awareness.

The 41.5mm steel watch is set with a total of 1.2 carats of diamonds. (See specifications below for more details). Inside you’ll find a Sellita-based Oris Caliber 733 automatic movement protected with an impressive 300-meter water resistance rating. Oris offers either a steel bracelet or a matching cherry red rubber strap.

Price: $5,500. 

Specifications: Oris Aquis Date Diamonds
(Reference no. 01 733 7766 4998-07 4 22 68FC / 8 22 05PEB) 

Case: 41.5mm multi-piece stainless steel, set with 48 Top Wesselton E-G, VS1, brilliant-cut, lab-grown diamonds. The crystal is sapphire, domed on both sides with anti- reflective coating inside while the caseback is stainless steel, screwed, with see-through mineral glass. Water resistant to 300 meters.

Movement: Automatic Oris 733 (Sellita-based) with hours, minutes and central sweep seconds hands, date with quick setting, stop second device, date window at 6 o’clock. Power reserve: 38 hours.

Dial: Sunray cherry red set with 44 Top Wesselton E-G, VS1, brilliant-cut, lab-grown diamonds and Super-LumiNova. Applied indexes.

Strap Multi-piece stainless steel metal bracelet with folding clasp with extension, or cherry red rubber strap with stainless steel security folding clasp. 

Price: $5,500

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The Watches

Franck Muller Adds Damascus Cases to Vanguard 

New in 2023, Franck Muller’s new Damascus Steel collection celebrates the art of metallurgy as it extends its best-selling Vanguard collection with sporty, skeletal and dressy editions, each using Damascus steel cases.

One of two models in the new Franck Muller Vanguard Damascus Steel Dial collection.

Originating in the Near East with steel likely imported from India, extra-strong Damascus steel features a wood-grain-style pattern. Artisans in Japan are perhaps the best-known Damascus artisans for their Damascus work on Katanas, the emblematic swords of the Samurai warriors.

The blackened example from the new Franck Muller Vanguard Damascus Steel Racing collection.

Franck Muller creates its own style of Damascus steel made using two types of non-magnetic stainless steel (which allows a watch movement to function). Its grain design is naturally revealed when immersed in an acid bath, and each piece offers a unique pattern.

The new Franck Muller Vanguard Damascus Steel Skeleton.

Within the barrel-shaped Vanguard collection, all models measure either 45mm or 46mm across. Within each style, Franck Muller offers a model with blackened surfaces and a lighter, natural Damascus-grain surface, each framing a Franck Muller manual or automatic movement. On all watches, even the buckle is made of Damascus steel.

The three-hand with date Vanguard Damascus Steel Dial models arrive with a grosgrain leather strap ($13,100). The Vanguard Damascus Steel Racing series exposes its movement with slanted, open-work markers and an inner seconds dial ($24,200).

The darker version of the Vanguard Damascus Steel Skeleton.

The most dramatic series here, the Vanguard Damascus Steel Skeleton ($44,200), echoes the existing, contemporary Vanguard Skeleton series, but with Damascus bridgework that matches the case around it. Inside you’ll find a Franck Muller manual-wind movement with seven-day power reserve.

 

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The Watches

Krayon’s Solar Art

Krayon’s stunning artisanal complication, the Anywhere Métiers d’Art Azur, is cased in platinum, and indicates hours and minutes via two hands in the center of a dial that appears to be suspended in the center of the watch.

The Krayon Anywhere Métiers d’Art Azur

The time display is surrounded by a sun-icon solar display that indicates the time over 24 hours. The ring-shaped display is divided into the diurnal sector (sky blue) and a nocturnal sector (midnight blue). These displays indicate the sunrise and sunset times, a read on the inner bezel.

The date and month are seen on a subsidiary dial at 6 o’clock.

The new watch echoes the Swiss independent watchmaker’s superb Krayon Anywhere Edition Only Watch 2021. The exceptional dial is created by an enamelist who has deposited, by hand, a dot of lacquer until the desired blue color obtained, producing a truly unparalleled result.

Krayon explains that as a double calendar, for which all months last 31 days, the watch requires only five annual adjustments, easily and quickly made using the crown in both directions.

Krayon has equipped the Anywhere Métiers d’Art Azur with the in-house Caliber C030, entirely assembled by Rémi Maillat, Krayon’s founder and master watchmaker.

The manual-wind 39mm by 9.5mm watch offers an impressive eighty-six hours of power reserve. A limited edition of fifteen, it offers the purchaser the opportunity to set the watch to the city or location of his or her choice for the indication of sunrise and sunset.

Price: CHF 150,000. 

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The Watches

Diver Drums  

Louis Vuitton adds two new options to its GPHG-award-winning Tambour Street Diver collection.

 

The Louis Vuitton Tambour Street Diver Burning Rock.

Louis Vuitton’s year-long celebration of its bedrock Tambour case in 2022 pays homage to the design’s many variations on the inverted-drum shape, including its much-acclaimed dive models.

With its Diver’s Watch Prize from the 2021 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève in mind,  the global fashion brand and watchmaker recently added two new options to its Tambour Street Diver collection.

New within the collection are the orange-accented Tambour Street Diver Burning Rock and the Tambour Street Diver Urban Green. 

The duo borrows hues from Louis Vuitton’s own historical designs, and in one case (the orange model) recalls traditional dive watch coloring devised to ensure easy legibility under water and in darkness.

Both watches are 44mm steel-cased dive-inspired watches with ETA-based automatic calibers and luminescent white hands, numbers and indexes.

The Louis Vuitton Tambour Street Diver Urban Green.

Both offer screw-down crowns to ensure water resistance to 100 meters and each come with a Louis Vuitton-branded interchangeable rubber strap. Price: $7,805.

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American Brands

Tumbling Satellite 

The latest Wilbur watch is out of this world.

While the Wilbur LEO is round and rests on the wrist like a traditional watch, its sculptural, multi-part titanium case does not enclose traditional hour, minute and seconds hands. The LEO instead displays the time in an unusual manner on a dial that looks like a satellite tumbling its way around Earth’s orbit.

The Wilbur LEO

At the center of this 48.5mm by 46mm titanium puzzle the LEO displays the hour prominently – and digitally. 

The hour digit that appears in the LEO’s central aperture is actually a mash-up of two otherwise indecipherable symbols that meet once per hour.

One clear sapphire disks and another brushed-black sapphire disk rotate twice a day on either side of the hour display. When they meet, those ‘alien’ symbols form the correct hour digit at the dial’s center. 

To display minutes and seconds, the LEO returns to earth, displaying each at the end of fixed bridges that double as hands.

Wilbur’s other-worldly method of creating the hour digit is put into practice by Swiss movement engineering company Concepto, and is a global premiere.

Jason Wilbur, company founder and chief designer, explains that the LEO took him seven years to finalize. The idea originated from learning about the Roswell, NM, ‘alien’ stories.

Jason Wilbur in his design studio.

“I wanted to create something that sprang from learning in my youth about the Roswell incident with all its alien stuff,” he recalls. 

For the LEO, Wilbur created a type of coded language to feed the unusual jump hour display. 

“No one on Earth who saw those pieces would know what the Roswell symbols mean. So I created my own code. On the watch the hours come together with coded symbols,” he adds.

Limited Editions 

Wilbur will make fifty examples of the LEO in its initial JW 1.1 version, but he plans to eventually build three-hundred LEO watches in a variety of hues and with customized finishes and materials.

The LEO complements WILBUR’s existing lineup, which also includes the EXP watch and the Launch Edition, both of which are square-cased modular watches built with an artful mix of steel, ceramic and silicon components.

“We’ll make those in about 5,000 units per year,” he explains. “Two models are on the website now and two more are coming.” He notes that these modular designs offer him the creative leeway to create some ‘crazy’ Wilbur watches. 

The Wilbur LEO JW1.1 is priced starting at $32,500. 

Specifications: The Wilbur LEO JW1

Case: 48.50mm X 46.00mm X 16.50mm 8-part modular titanium (materials can vary by edition), sapphire crystals w/ anti-reflective coating, 30 meters of water resistance, hand finished , exhibition back.

Movement/Dial: In-house Engine One automatic jump-hour, made in Switzerland by Concepto,, hours displayed on proprietary sapphire & aluminum jump-hour disks shown under central window, minutes on hubless ring disc (fixed pointer on bridge) and seconds on small disc (fixed pointer on bridge). JW1 movement chassis,JW 1 rotor

Strap: Black silicone with Cordura option.

Base price: $32,500. 

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