Watches: Dialled Up To The Max – Why Watches Suddenly Look So Different

Not so long ago, those of us whose job it is to talk about luxury watches would give an inordinate amount of consideration to three principal areas: the movement that made the watch tick, the case in which it sat and the heritage from which it sprang. It seems strange to look back now and realise what a minor part of the story was taken up by the main thing you see when you look at a watch: its dial. That’s partly because a lot of the time there really wasn’t that much to talk about. Colour was rare, embellishment was painfully considered and rules – about how a watch should look, what traditions and genres it cleaved to, how it was expected to be worn – were heavily presumed and dutifully followed. Which is not to say there weren’t arrestingly beautiful designs, but in terms of what gave a watch its character, its talking points, its currency as a piece of fine watchmaking and even its sense of creative expression, the dial was often surprisingly low down the list.

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