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As the corporate that both invented or popularized the dive watch, the GMT watch, the primary waterproof watch, the primary computerized watches, and far more moreover, you might hardly downplay Rolex’s affect on watchmaking historical past. However whereas its iconic sports activities watches, just like the Submariner, Daytona and GMT-Grasp are endlessly imitated, Rolex just isn’t seen as a trendsetter, preferring to disregard passing horological fashions. It does its personal factor, iterating rigorously and minimally on its age-old templates.
5 years in the past, nonetheless, Rolex launched a set so avant-garde that’s nonetheless influencing artistic selections throughout your complete watch trade, and it did so in one in every of its least-heralded fashions: the Oyster Perpetual. The thought was so easy that we’ve barely observed it turn out to be the trade norm: As a substitute of slowly rolling out new dial colors one after the other over a interval of years—which was normal watch world habits till that time—Rolex launched a complete set of coloured dials in a complementary palette abruptly.
They had been vivid, daring and virtually childlike of their purity: coral crimson, inexperienced, turquoise, pink and yellow. Rolex-watchers instantly hailed them as a tribute to the so-called Stella dial Day-Date watches of the late Seventies and Eighties—equally vivid and sudden, and evocative of a louche, sybaritic age. However there was one thing extra primary, extra important and, not less than theoretically, extra attainable in regards to the Oyster Perpetual assortment.
It sparked imitators left, proper and heart—and nonetheless does. Ultimately week’s Geneva Watch Days 2025, Zenith’s collaboration with Swiss furniture-maker USM would qualify as a textbook instance: a full set of daring, block-colour dials in in any other case conventional chrome steel sports activities watches.
Earlier this yr, Oris’s Large Crown Pointer Date hit an analogous notice. In 2023, arch-rival Omega debuted a set of Seamaster Aqua Terra fashions with comparable hues to Rolex’s opening salvo; different mid-level manufacturers together with Breitling and TAG Heuer have all created multi-colored households of chrome steel, time-only spherical watches in an analogous mildew.