Last year, Rolex debuted a brand new family of watches called the 1908. They are serviceable, fine-looking dress watches that, until today, came in white or yellow gold with either a black or white dial. Roger Federer wore one to the Met Gala! Frankly, it wasn’t the type of design I was necessarily looking for from the Crown, which is best known for its stable of historic and category-defining sport watches like the Submariner, GMT, Explorer, and Daytona.
Well, it took Rolex all of one year and a major new color to turn me into a 1908 convert. The new version of the watch comes with a fierce, icy blue dial that helps the tuxedo-ready dress watch loosen its bowtie. And while last year’s dials were smooth, this year it carries a rice-grain pattern that seems to vibrate. The case is made out of platinum, the only material Rolex typically pairs with this color dial. This is the new Rolex: putting emojis in its date window, turning out stone-dial Daytonas, and remaking its dress watch in glacier blue.
Your favorite specialty sport watches, now in gold
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For 2024, Rolex casts the Deepsea and two versions of the Sky-Dweller in gold. Let’s start with the Deepsea: The watch was launched in 2008 as the even sportier brother to the Sea-Dweller. The Deepsea was designed to let divers go deeper than ever before with a Rolex on their wrists, and over the decades it’s only pushed into that idea further. A special edition was released in 2014 to commemorate the 10,908-meters-deep dive James Cameron took to the Mariana Trench. So, it’s a surprise to see the watch for the first time ever in full yellow gold—more likely to get 10,000 likes on Instagram than go 10,000 meters underwater.
Article written by Cam Wolf #GQ
