As the corporate that both invented or popularized the dive watch, the GMT watch, the primary waterproof watch, the primary computerized watches, and rather more moreover, you can 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 is just not 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 inventive 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 into the trade norm: As a substitute of slowly rolling out new dial colors separately over a interval of years—which was commonplace watch world habits till that time—Rolex launched a complete set of coloured dials in a complementary palette abruptly.
They have been vivid, daring and nearly childlike of their purity: coral purple, 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 Nineteen Seventies and Eighties—equally vivid and surprising, and evocative of a louche, sybaritic age. However there was one thing extra fundamental, extra important and, not less than theoretically, extra attainable concerning the Oyster Perpetual assortment.
It sparked imitators left, proper and middle—and nonetheless does. Ultimately week’s Geneva Watch Days 2025, Zenith’s collaboration with Swiss furniture-maker USM would qualify as a textbook example: a full set of daring, block-colour dials in in any other case conventional chrome steel sports activities watches.
Earlier this 12 months, Oris’s Big Crown Pointer Date hit an identical observe. 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 a similar mold.
