A few years ago, the watch industry was feeling blue—literally, not emotionally. Practically every brand had introduced a watch (or several) featuring a bluish hue on the dial, the bezel, the strap, or all of the above.
The following year, the color du jour was green in all its life-affirming glory.
This year marked a change. While both blue and green were prominent in the collections introduced at Watches and Wonders Geneva earlier this month, a new color grabbed the lion’s share of attention.
Whether it was crimson, orangey, or a deep, dark burgundy, shades of red stood out not only because they are inherently eye-catching (not for nothing is red the universal color for stop signs), but also because the largely conservative watch industry has traditionally embraced neutral shades.
The rationale for zhuzhing things up this year varied from brand to brand. For its new Spring Drive Chronograph GMT (honoring the 20th anniversary of the 9R Spring Drive movement series), Grand Seiko opted for what it described as “a color-changing dial that expresses the changing colors of summer mornings in Shinshu,” the region in central Japan where all Spring Drive timepieces are made.
Montblanc used a similar rationale to explain the burgundy tone of the glacier-patterned dial on its new Iced Sea Automatic Date, meant to evoke “the deep red color of the evening sun” as it hits the Mer de Glace (“Sea of Ice”), the main glacier of the Mont-Blanc massif.
TAG Heuer, meanwhile, chose to accent its ambitious new Monaco split-seconds chronograph with a red lacquered rattrapante hand and a bright racing red strap, perhaps no surprise for an automatic chronograph originally introduced in 1969 to commemorate the Monaco Grand Prix.
Zenith went with a bright, reddish orange for the Defy Revival A3648, a reinterpretation of a vintage dive watch, also born in 1969. Nomos Glashütte used an orangey red (nicknamed “Rambazamba”) for the dial of one of the new watches in its kaleidoscopic Tangente 38 series.
Let the five timepieces highlighted here serve as a red alert for consumers considering buying a new wristwatch: Models with scarlet, ruby, and cherry hues are red-hot.
Top: A clos-eup of the new Caliber 9R 20th Anniversary Limited Edition SBGC275 by Grand Seiko
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