The Rolex Perpetual 1908 in platinum with ice blue dial.
The word on Rolex’s new introductions last week at Watches and Wonders, the annual Geneva watch fair, is that the brand has come back down to earth after last year’s groovy Day Date Puzzle watch and the whimsical Oyster Perpetual with a colored bubble dial.
Rolex GMT-Master II with gray and black Cerachrom dial and Jubilee bracelet.
This year we have instead the incremental tweaks and improvements we’ve come to expect from Rolex: a new Jubilee-braceleted GMT-Master II with a black and gray Cerachrom bezel, and a Deepsea (no longer part of the Sea-Dweller collection, but now a collection on its own) in a yellow gold and blue dial combination with a new Ringlock compression ring. So far so good, and nothing too off-the-charts.
The Rolex Deepsea in yellow gold with blue dial and ringlock bezel.
But wait. There is also a new platinum version of the Perpetual 1908 that was introduced last year to replace the Cellini, but mostly overshadowed by the groovy, off-brand surprises mentioned above. The 1908 is a classic, minimalist, beautiful and not-at-all tool-watch-y timepiece, and it sometimes seems hard to believe it’s a Rolex. In a good way.
Rolex Perpetual 1908 with ice blue guilloché dial in platinum.
Like all of Rolex’s platinum watches, the Perpetual 1908 has that stunning ice-blue dial that is reserved only for that metal. But there’s more: a classic guilloche dial in a rice-grain pattern that gives it an extra sheen. Even without the guilloché, this dial is a winner: minimalist and elegant, with long, needle-thin indexes and circle-tipped hour hand. The bezel follows suit, with discreet fluting only on the lower edge. And the color that Rolex has long used on its platinum watches happens to be a trend at the moment.
The Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona with mother-of-pearl dial and diamond bezel.
Also on the surprise spectrum this year is the new Cosmograph Daytona, with mother-of-pearl dials and a bezel set with gems in sizes we normally associate with Chopard or Cartier jewelry watches. There are two versions: one with a white mother-of-pearl dial and black mother-of-pearl subdials, and the other in reverse, with black mother-of-pearl dial and white subdials. The mother-of-pearl, by the way, has a more three-dimensional texture than usual, because the material used here is taken from a different part of the shell than conventional mother-of-pearl.
The Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona with mother-of-pearl dial and diamond bezel.
The result is a look that is somehow rugged and yet flashy—which seems appropriate for the Daytona—because the textured verson of MOP reflects more light. The 40mm case is 18k white gold, and the bezel is set with 36 large round diamonds totaling 3.26 carats, which is a generous gem weight. This is one of those truly gender-neutral watches that can be defined as either a sporty jewelry watch or a jeweled sports watch—depending on who’s wearing it. It has a first-class chronometer movement that runs 72-hour without winding. The white mother-of-pearl version comes on an Oysterflex bracelet (Rolex’s proprietary rubber-like material), and the black mother-of-pearl on an 18k gold Oyster bracelet. You should expect to wait in line for this one.
