WRIST ART

Hublot partnered with British artist Samuel Ross on the limited-edition 44mm Big Bang Tourbillon Samuel Ross. CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS INFUSE WATCHES WITH IMAGINATION AND COLOR

While mechanical watchmaking is an art in and of itself, a handful of watch brands are collaborating with contemporary artists to bring a jolt of refreshing creativity to their collections.

More than a decade ago, Hublot launched its Hublot Loves Art initiative and has since partnered with a diverse array of contemporary artists, including American Shepard Fairey, French sculptor and neo-pop artist Richard Orlinski, Japan’s Takashi Murakami, and Maxime Büchi, a London-based Swiss tattoo artist known as Sang Bleu.

Following the launch of new pieces with Orlinski and Büchi last spring, Hublot unveiled its first collaborative piece with Samuel Ross, a 30-year-old British multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker, and fashion designer.

After becoming an official brand ambassador in 2020, Ross unveiled REFORM, a sculpture combining the ancient, organic material of granite with modern, manmade steel, using both traditional hand-finishing and cuttingedge machining in an expression of fusion evoking Hublot’s 40-year legacy.

This year, that work was reinterpreted in the 44mm Big Bang Tourbillon Samuel Ross ($116,000), limited to 50 pieces, exhibiting the artist’s signature use of color, stark geometry, and urban design influences. The stylized hexagonal case is embellished with a titanium honeycomb mesh on the sapphire dial, case, case back and strap. Ross selected orange—a shade that represents energy and optimism— for the strap and accents to contrast with the gray satin-finished case and bezel.

Hublot’s LVMH sister brand Zenith recently followed up a rainbow-themed Defy 21 co-designed with Argentinian/ Spanish artist Felipe Pantone with the Defy Extreme Desert, created in partnership with acclaimed nature photographer Kourosh Keynejad.

Limited to 50 pieces, the Defy Extreme Desert ($22,000) takes its cues from the barren desert landscapes captured by Keynejad’s lens. This artistic interpretation of the monolithic 1/100th-of-a-second chronograph in a 45mm titanium case has a symbolic flourish: the dodecagonal bezel and pusher protectors are made from falcon’s eye, a blue-gray opaque quartz gemstone named for the regal bird of prey that has accompanied desert nomads for centuries. The polished stone exhibits a reflective cat’s-eye effect that appears and disappears like a desert mirage, and makes each watch unique.

To accompany the launch of the Defy Extreme Desert edition last fall, Keynejad photographed a set of nine desert images taken in North America’s Great Basin, Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan deserts, exclusively for the brand.

Maurice Lacroix has taken a more casual, fun-loving (and affordable) approach with the colorful quartz AIKON #tide model with the Thai artist Benzilla. Though he studied fine and applied art at Bangkok University, Benzilla is best known for his playful, vibrant street art, which may come as a surprise since he is color blind.

The 40mm AIKON #tide Benzilla ($825) features Benzilla’s three-eyed alien character, LOOOK. The colorful artwork on the dial is framed by a black bezel and crown and an orange case fitted with a light blue rubber strap, which can easily be switched out with the brand’s Easy Strap Exchange system.

The Swiss watch brand has a longterm partnership with #tide, a company that specializes in upcycling plastic ocean waste. Plastic bottles—collected from the seas of Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines—are sorted, shredded into flakes, washed, and compacted into smaller granules, which are used to create a novel plastic material. Seventeen plastic bottles are upcycled to produce each watch, which uniquely fuses street art with sustainability.

Maurice Lacroix collaborated with Thai artist Benzilla, shown at bottom, for the colorful and playful #tide Benzilla watch.