Women’s Watch Wednesday – Rolex Daytona Rainbow Everose Gold 116595RBOW – Deliberately Flamboyant
What happens when the iconic Daytona runs into a tutti-frutti trove of precious gemstones? The Rainbow Daytona: a spectacular watch that combines the thrill of the racetrack with the thrill of vibrant gemstones. The Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Ref. 116595RBOW, aka the Rainbow Daytona, is a “wow watch”. Exuberant and downright flamboyant, it’s either yes or no, love or hate, but you can’t help reacting to it. Now in its third iteration, the model unveiled at Baselworld 2018 comes in a warm Everose gold case and the hour markers are highlighted in gradated sapphires to match those set on the bezel. Warmer and more harmonious than its white and yellow gold predecessors, the 2018 Cosmograph Daytona recreates the colours of the rainbow with extraordinary beauty and showcases the superlative skills of Rolex’ gemmologists and gem-setters.
Gender-fluid. If you were born yesterday or became acquainted with pop culture only last year, you could be forgiven for thinking – based on the excitable talk among style-and-social commentators – that it’s a newly minted concept. Not so. The 1970s: boys wearing their hair longer than girls; 1966: Yves Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking … and so on, back through time. And watches: Cartier’s Tank, Rolex’s Datejust and Day-Date – those designs were always androgynous. And so to a watch that easily makes my Top 10 for the year: Chanel’s Boy.Friend Squelette or Skeleton if you prefer. Intentionally gender-neutral, it’s pitched as a women’s watch but it’s a world away from girly. And it’s equally far from butch: its Y chromosome is expressed as a very Parisian and urbane type of masculine elegance. The lines of the octagonal case – more accurately, a rectangle with its corners clipped off – is derived from Chanel’s first watch, the Premiere, but in Boy.Friend mode (which first appeared in 2015) the lines look tauter and sleeker. That’s largely thanks to its stepped bezel and svelte dimensions – the Squelette comes in at a shade under eight-and-a-half millimetres thick. Held inside that frame is a…
It’s easy with any brand’s new release catalogue to get swept up with the drama and complexity of the halo pieces. In the case of Glashütte Original that glory goes to the flashy green of the Sixties Panorama Date, or the bells and whistles of the Senator Cosmopolite. But sometimes you crave something simple, clean and pure. That’s where this latest take on the Senator Excellence Panorama Date comes in. If you’re not au fait with the watch, it’s one of the less complex models in the Senator family and was first introduced, with its lunar sibling, back in 2016. A well-sized 42mm by 12.2mm watch, cased here in sensible and utilitarian steel, it’s powered by the calibre 36-03, a big date-equipped take on the very impressive Calibre 36. This is one very impressive movement, a 4Hz automatic, with 100 hours of power reserve (all coming from one barrel no less), and tested to standards that meaningfully exceed COSC standards. It also looks great too, what with that double ‘G’ skeletonised rotor. But for me, this watch is all about the dial. The design of the Senator Excellence Panorama Date is quite restrained to start with, with those arrowhead hour…
Look back at Baselworld predictions over the last few years, and you’re likely to see a GMT from Tudor topping the list. Sure, some of us may have expected to see that little extra hour-telling-hand added to the Pelagos. But with the ever growing – and hugely popular – Black Bay collection proving to be the perfect base from which to begin, particularly after the introduction of the chronograph last year, I think it’s safe to say that we were all pleasantly surprised when Tudor unveiled a bicoloured Black Bay GMT this year at Basel. The Baselworld surprises didn’t stop there either, as parent company Rolex also released a Pepsi GMT. But having said that, this Heritage Black Bay is its own watch, with its own look and feel. Vital statistics Essentially, it’s a Black Bay. A stainless-steel 41mm case with polished sides and a satin-brushed top. The water resistance remains at 200 metres, and a black, domed dial features a mix of triangle, circle and rectangular hour markers. The differences begin at its bidirectional bezel. An even split of burgundy and blue, it’s a combination of the original colours of the first two Black Bays, except now the aluminium insert…