The Surprising Depth and Significance of A. Lange & Söhne’s New Lange 1 Daymatic

This year, A. Lange & Söhne has presented an exceptional set of novelties, kicking things off at Watches and Wonders and harnessing its partnership with the Concours of Elegance as a launchpad for a slew of new releases throughout the year.

The Maison is rounding out 2025 with what might be perceived as a whisper rather than a bang at first glance. Today, the brand introduces the newest version of its Daymatic within the Lange 1 family.

The Daymatic model has all the hallmarks of a staple in A. Lange & Söhne’s catalog with the unmistakable design cues. It could be easy to overlook this watch that perhaps lacks the immediate wow-factor we’ve seen in other launches this year, from the highly complex Minute Repeater Perpetual to the striking Odysseus Honeygold. Yet, at the end of the day, quiet luxury is what A. Lange & Söhne has always been about, long before quiet luxury was a thing.
 

“We’re a collector’s brand,” confirms Tony De Haas, A. Lange & Söhne’s Director of Product Development. “But the collectors who buy a Lange, they are not the ones who want to show the world they’re successful and rich. They buy our watches purely because they like them, they have discreet taste – money talks but wealth whispers,” he continues. “They appreciate that our watches are very simple, even the complex ones.”
 

So, here we have a “simple” Lange 1 Daymatic in Honeygold, but in my conversation with De Haas and Tino Bobe, A. Lange & Söhne’s Production Director, I came to realize that this model is not quite as simple as you’d think.

If you know anything about A. Lange & Söhne: it’s that the brand does everything with purpose. The new Lange 1 Daymatic launched on December 7, a day of significance to the Maison since its beginning in 1845.

“This was the day Ferdinand Lange founded the brand,” explains De Haas. “Then, when Walter Lange re-registered the brand in 1990, he did it again on the 7^th of December – this was important to him, and these traditions are still important to Lange.”
 

The Daymatic also holds a deeper meaning within the A. Lange & Söhne catalog. This model marked the first automatic watch in the Lange 1 family. “The Lange 1 is very clear in terms of design,” affirms Bobe. “And right away, when we decided to do an automatic version, we knew that we did not want it to be exactly the same, but with a different movement.”

What you’ll immediately notice about the Daymatic design is that it’s a mirror image of the classic manually wound Lange 1, with the hours and minutes oriented on the right at 3 o’clock as opposed to 9 o’clock, the seconds following suit at 7 o’clock, and the signature outsize date nestled around 11 o’clock.
 

“Back when I first joined Lange, one of the pieces of feedback collectors would give me about the Lange 1 was that when the watch was peeking out from their shirt cuff, the hours and minutes would be covered on the left side,” remembers De Haas. “We already knew we were going to have to design a new movement, so we thought, why not solve this problem and mirror the orientation of the dial?”

The final piece to tackle was the power reserve indicator opposite the hours and minutes – in an automatic watch, this isn’t really needed. “We had a movement designer at the time who suggested a retrograde weekday indication,” De Haas continues.
 

“This was really aligned with our philosophy,” Bobe adds. “We don’t like doing things just for the sake of it. We always try to do things with purpose, to add useful innovations. This also helped us to find the right name for the model. The Daymatic was born.”

The significance of the Daymatic in A. Lange & Söhne’s catalog doesn’t end there. It ultimately spurred the development of the Lange 1 Tourbillion Perpetual Calendar that came two years after the inaugural Daymatic.
 

“We thought to ourselves, we now have a weekday, we also have a moonphase – we need to find something for the month, and we found this inspiration in the Timezone,” recalls De Haas. “In the Timezone, you have the peripheral ring with the cities, and we replaced these with the months, which was technically challenging, but we made it work.”

For the first time, the Lange 1 Daymatic makes its debut in Honeygold, the Maison’s proprietary 18-karat gold alloy that’s significantly harder than conventional gold alloys or platinum. “The creation of this alloy was another moment for us to do something useful and create something of lasting value,” Bobe describes. “So much of watchmaking is focused on longevity – when a movement is made, we expect it to last for many decades. So, when we began working on an alloy, we approached it with this same sensibility.”
 

The goal was something hard and scratch-resistant, but the fact that the metal turned out to be exceptionally beautiful was just a bonus. Thanks to its remarkable play with the light, dancing between white, yellow, and rose gold, the team gave it a name that perhaps feels in opposition to its hard exterior, but something about the warm golden shades felt sweet like honey.