This week, the Palexpo facility in Geneva, Switzerland, will become the center of the watch world for the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH, a luxury watch show rivaled only by BaselWorld in relevance and prestige. We’ve got a team on the ground, there to bring you the most exciting releases. Follow our coverage here, and also be sure to check out Instagram. We’ll be posting to our feed throughout the week.
When the statue of liberty was unveiled in 1886, it wasn’t green, it was brown, which is the color of copper, before it oxidizes. By the time Lady Liberty had taken on her distinctive green hue, in 1906, the US government, convinced the oxidation was a problem, determined to paint over it. The public outcry was enormous, as Ian Frazier writes in this excellent New Yorker essay about her iconic color. As Frazier reports, a New York Times story at the time quoted the country’s largest bronze and copper manufacturer, who declared, “By architects and artists generally this color effect is considered the type of perfection for this kind of metal.” Repainting the statue never happened, obviously, and as Frazier explains, “the statue has been left its own, irreproducible color,” though many have since tried to reproduce it.
Add watchmakers to the list of those who have tried. At this year’s SIHH, we’ve seen a number of watches updated with bronze cases, a trend from previous years, with the added touch of a light green dial color. It’s part of a large movement toward incremental releases, where references that were unveiled in prior years get updated and re-released with new colors and combinations (according to one veteran of the watch world, there’s even a name for this movement in French: “habiller,” from the French meaning “to dress”).
It’s a reasonable tactic, giving watchmakers the opportunity to tweak previous designs given feedback from the watch-buying public, which seems thus far to be pleased with these not-so-new watches (though watch design and the industry itself do seem to be reaching a point of “re-issue saturation”). This process, explained that same watch industry veteran, is also born out of the fact that completely new movements and designs often take up to three years to develop and produce, and in the meantime, one needs something that significantly “lower lift” (to borrow a millennial-ism) to release. Such as a bronze and green version of something one released the year previous.
The most notable of these bronze and green watches so far have been from IWC’s Spitfire Collection, which lends a new, not-so-historical take on the brand’s traditional-leaning pilot’s watches; and Montblanc’s update to its 1858 line. Last year, we saw a similar bronze-and-green pairing in a special 80th anniversary edition of the Oris Big Crown Pointer Date and the Big Crown Pointer Date Bronze some time after the new Pointer Dates were released at Basel. You can probably expect more watches like these in 2019 and 2020, because it’s a good look.
