Purple Thrills: Avant-Garde Brands Are Rewriting Their Stories with Violet-Colored Timepieces
New limited editions from Chronoswiss, MB&F, De Bethune, H. Moser, and Kollokium are using purple hues to rewrite their classics.
By Rhonda Riche
Editor-At-Large
Purple watch dials and cases may not be the most popular options on the market, but for enthusiasts, they certainly evoke a lot of passion. Call the color raisin, amethyst, violet, lavender, or lilac, it is a niche taste.
Moreover, the color’s relative rarity also means that they’ll never be considered trendy. Still, the tone’s historical association with nobility lends it instant elegance.
Purple is created when you mix cool blue with hot red, so there’s also a kind of alchemical reaction when the two ends of the spectrum meet. That is why it’s not a surprise that design-forward brands are choosing violets to evolve their offerings. Here are five of our fave recent purple watches.
The Chronoswiss Opus Chronograph Purple Rain
Visible wavelengths of light create all colors. To illustrate just how powerful a pop of color can be, Chronoswiss is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its signature Opus openwork chronograph by rendering it in a Grade 5 titanium case with a striking purple CVD coating.
Now, three decades later, Chronoswiss is again emphasizing wrist presence with a colorful case and a skeletonized dial that is also finished in radiant purple. The effect is fascinating, providing a play of light across the exposed bridges and gears.
It also gets an extra touch of fun; the leather strap reacts to Ultraviolet light exposure, turning from crisp white to glowing purple. The Opus DNA remains intact with its signature onion crown, coin-edged bezel, and titanium 41mm case, ensuring it stays true to its origin while boldly charging into the future.
Limited to just 30 pieces, the titanium and ultraviolet Opus Purple Rain is available via the Chronoswiss website.
The H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Centre Seconds Concept Purple Enamel
As a brand famous for its color-saturated fumé dials, H. Moser & Cie.’s Endeavour Centre Seconds Concept Enamel is not the brand’s first foray into purple (the burgundy Pioneer Tourbillon springs to mind), but there’s something about the way this grape-colored face pairs with the Endeavour’s minimalist aesthetic that makes us look at this watch in a new way because the simplicity of the three-hand display means that there’s no place for a subpar enameling to hide.
The hammered texture of the Grand Feu enamel dial also creates a captivating accent of light and shadow. Most importantly, between the dial’s exquisite fumé and texture, the brand doesn’t let the deep purple overwhelm the watch, keeping everything balanced within a 40mm steel case.
Lastly, it all comes matched to a purple Kudu leather strap. Intoxicating!
The Armin Strom Orbit Purple
While other brands are exploring ways to reimagine their classic collections through violet-tinted glasses, independent Swiss watchmaker Armin Strom is using the hue to launch the world’s first on-demand pointer-date indication located on a bezel – the Orbit Purple.
In the mission statement for this timepiece, Armin Strom says that they didn’t just rethink the date function; they wanted to create a whole new experience, and its striking deep purple fumé dial is a big part of accomplishing this. The date pointer and the date on the ceramic bezel match the dial’s color, for a seamless design.
Limited to just 20 pieces, the Armin Strom Orbit Purple is also completely hand-finished, honoring traditional craftsmanship with a passion for forward-thinking mechanisms. Plus, for extra wrist presence, the dial is housed in a black DLC case, which is set on a rugged black fabric strap.
The Kollokium Projekt 01 Varient "F"
When Manuel Emch, Barth Nussbaumer, and Amr Sindi founded Kollokium in 2020, they declared that it was not a brand as much as a design platform. The signature timepiece is the Projekt 01 watch, which marries industrial style, die-cast cases, with a unique 3D dial composed of cylindrical pegs.
The freedom of thinking of a design as a platform means that the Kollokium team isn’t too tied to past success. This new model – Variant “F” – breaks down the original Projekt 01 visual signatures by redefining the use of lume in a watch. The base of the dial is deep purple with a matte metallic sheen that shifts in tone subtly depending on the light.
The pixelated time display is made up of 488 cylindrical pins formed from Lichtblock – a ceramic-resin hybrid packed with ultraviolet light-emitting Super-LumiNova. To match the glow of this new dial, the hour and minute hands have been redesigned and carry thick, lozenge-shaped chunks of Lichtblock.
By using purple as well as the concept of UV light, the Kollokium Projekt 01 Variant “F” takes luminosity to a new level.
The MB&F HM8 Mark 2 in Purple
Color can push nostalgic buttons. I confess that my personal passion for purple comes from a beloved childhood bicycle with a purple, metal-flecked finish. MB&F’s connection to speed racers is closer to supercars than a four-speed with a sparkly gold banana seat, but the appeal of metallic finishes is universal.
The HM8 made its debut in 2016 and has been hailed for its speedometer-style display on the side of the case that recalls the daring and futuristic automotive design of the 1970s. In 2023, MB&F pushed the retro-futuristic design into the present with a series of supercar-inspired limited series called HM8 Mark 2.
The case of the limited-to-33-pieces HM8 N°8 Mark 2 pays tribute to the technical artistry of luxury car paints. These purple panels of the streamlined case are made up of a translucent resin material infused with mineral-based metallic pigments. A sporty and comfortable rubber strap completes the piece.
The De Bethune DB28xs Purple Rain
Still, creating a nice, nuanced violet watch requires a magical, alchemical process. The DB28xs Purple Rain from De Bethune is a perfect example of transforming metal into color, which uses the process of thermal oxidation of titanium to release natural colors onto both the dial and the case.
If you remember ROYGBIV – the acronym for the sequence of hues commonly described as making up a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet – you’ll know that purple falls at one end of the spectrum. There’s something magical in knowing that each watch had to journey through the whole light spectrum.
At 39mm, this DB28xs model is also smaller in diameter than previous models, but the nobility of this magical metal means that it punches far above its weight. One of just 33 pieces, modern-day tech emperor Mark Zuckerberg famously wore this $99,000 timepiece in an Instagram post announcing Meta’s new Oakley glasses collaboration last month.