A little romantic whimsy

A moon-phase is an old complication, and perhaps one of the least useful for modern life, yet one that still holds a special place in the hearts of collectors for reasons we’re not quite sure of ourselves, despite owning several. A date is at least a bit more useful. We opted to combine the two and keep the old-school whimsy going by opting for a manual wind movement – once again, offering the enthusiast more opportunities to interact with their watch.

Integration, dynamism and inversion

Of course, being us, we scrutinized both moon and date to figure out a smoother presentation than the usual holes-in-a-dial style that was more suited to our design language. Our continuing use of multi-layered sapphire dials offered a solution: the apertures for date and moon lie in the lower layer dial, which is metal, textured and carries a midnight blue to black gradient reminiscent of the night sky, with a seamless sapphire dial above that carries the hour indices (laser etched, and filled with HyCeram) and a central mask for the moon to mirror our peripheral ring forms. A full moon thus forms a complete ring, which is luminous, with partial phases being portions thereof. The date window preserves symmetry at 6 o’clock, and is as subtle as possible with a background color-matched to the dial, and our usual font in light grey.

The net result can be seen in the accompanying images and is one of the most dynamic dials we have ever created: it inverts completely from a seamless silver mirror to a solid blue-black with moon and date displays. The transition is gradual and most of the time, the watch presents a bit of both: a calm, reflective serenity above and a lot more visual texture below. Naturally, there is also a lot of luminous material.

The right movement

We knew we didn’t want the semicircle moon aperture, but what we had in mind would require a centrally-driven moon disc to offer a sufficiently large display to allow the ring display to work. Only a custom module or the Sellita SW288 offered this possibility, and selection of the latter allowed us to improve overall accessibility of the watch. But to make it worthy of a display back, it was then further reworked in a similar style to the 7001.M1 used in the 27.01 and 27.02; it is skeletonized, matte-blasted and anthracite coated, with a contrasting portion on the main train bridge in circular-brushed rhodium.

Creating the next generation

The 37-series case family will form one of our core product lines, spanning from entry level to Special Projects and everything in between. It is a highly refined case design that has complex compound curves – such as the line from case side to lug tip – and multiple finishes. We have also increased the visual presence of the case with a significantly larger dial opening than the 17-series and domed front and rear crystals. However, wearability and comfort for a wide variety of wrist sizes is maintained with the same 38mm maximum diameter and 20mm lug width. In short: it looks bigger than a 17-series, but feels the same on the wrist.

We of course continue our partnerships with Manufacture Schwarz-Etienne for construction, production and assembly; Jean Rousseau Paris for straps, and Studio Koji Sato for the pouches.