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 would 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 shouldn’t be seen as a trendsetter, preferring to disregard passing horological fashions. It does its personal factor, iterating fastidiously 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 choices throughout your entire watch trade, and it did so in one in every of its least-heralded fashions: the Oyster Perpetual. The concept was so easy that we’ve barely observed it turn out to be the trade norm: As an alternative of slowly rolling out new dial colors separately 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 unexpectedly.
They had been brilliant, daring and nearly childlike of their purity: coral pink, 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 Nineteen Eighties—equally brilliant and sudden, and evocative of a louche, sybaritic age. However there was one thing extra fundamental, extra important and, at the least theoretically, extra attainable concerning 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 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 analogous be aware. In 2023, arch-rival Omega debuted a set of Seamaster Aqua Terra fashions with related 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.
