Wear your art on your sleeve: New watches with graphic dials
Perhaps Instagram is to blame but whatever the reason, even the more dyed-in-the-wool watch nerds aren’t above an exuberant graphic dial these days. Here are three of our favourites.
ROLEX OYSTER PERPETUAL CELEBRATION
Just when you thought Rolex’s 2020 spectrum of five Perpetual models in five respective ‘pops!’ was jazzy enough for the premiere practitioner of horological utility, comes a dial rendered in all five colours, as… bubbles? Furrowed brows switch immediately to joyous grins (then slight sadness at the realisation ‘Celebration’ is undoubtedly earmarked for the most ‘A’ of A-list waitlists). Candy pink, turquoise blue, yellow, coral red and green, floating above all the super-precise mechanical seriousness you’d expect.
£5,400, rolex.com
BELL & ROSS BR 03 GYROCOMPASS
Another spectacular riff on a fighter jet’s cockpit, from the choice of the French naval air arm. Bell & Ross’s squared-off ‘Instrument’ line was originally drawn from the instruments facing a military pilot, corner screws and all, and those four sides now frame a more obscure read-out than the radar, artificial horizon and altimeter watches that precede it. Namely, the gyrocompass, which allows your aerial position to be realigned on a magnetic compass if necessary.
£3,990, bellross.com
TAG HEUER CARRERA SKIPPER
The Carrera is having a big year chez TAG Heuer, the ‘original and best’ motor-racing watch’s golden anniversary already marked by countless specials. This is the one that’s getting collectors and #watchnerds properly worked up, though, for sheer cult obscurity, exactly 40 years after it disappeared from the Heuer catalogue. For captains, not drivers, a subdial tracks your 15-minute countdown to the start-gun of a regatta, in three beacon-like, 5-minute sectors of teal, green and orange.
£5,900, tagheuer.com