Ulysse Nardin

The whole movement turns once an hour, and its long arm points to the minutes while a pointer on a disc below shows the hour. To set it, you lift a lock at six o’clock and turn the bezel. One watchmaker assembles each watch. The Freak ONE won the Iconic Watch Prize at the 2023 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.

Ulysse Nardin set 211 colored sapphires, 13.33 carats in all, into the white gold case, bezel, crown, dial, and clasp, and graded their colors so the rainbow wraps all the way around the watch. The invisible setting hides the metal that holds each stone, a technique the company says only a handful of artisans can do. Inside, the tourbillon movement of the Blast Tourbillon keeps the time. The company makes only eight.

The Freak S averages the timing of two tilted balance wheels, which steadies its timekeeping. For this edition, Donzé Cadrans, Ulysse Nardin’s own enamel workshop in Le Locle, enameled the turquoise hour disc. A ruby red version exists too, and each color comes in 50 pieces.

The sun and the moon circle a globe of the northern hemisphere, the way they appear to move as seen from Earth. The dial also shows the phase of the moon, the strength of the tides, a second time zone, and the time in world cities. Ulysse Nardin built it to follow Ludwig Oechslin’s three astronomical watches. The company makes only 20 of this rose gold edition, which sets the globe over a dark aventurine dial flecked with sparkles.

Ulysse Nardin calls the Super Freak the most complicated time-only watch ever made. Two tourbillons, each tilted 10 degrees, turn with the whole movement, and the watch averages their timing to keep steadier time. The movement has 511 parts and took four years to develop. Ulysse Nardin makes only 50, all in white gold.

Urwerk and Ulysse Nardin had never worked together before they built this watch. Three of Urwerk’s numbered hour markers turn with the Freak’s rotating movement, and the marker for the current hour points to the minutes on a scale at the right. Ulysse Nardin made the movement in its own workshops. The edition stops at 100.

Ulysse Nardin built this movement without the bars that usually hold the wheels in place, so the tourbillon and the wheels seem to float. A raised crystal, cut from one block of sapphire, shows the movement from the sides too. The company made the dial from maillechort, an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel, and it develops its own patina over time. A full wind lasts about seven days. It comes in an edition of 50.

A tourbillon, held only from below, spins at six o’clock under an open dial built around a large X. Ulysse Nardin says this model paired rose gold with blue for the first time.

Ulysse Nardin cut the case and the movement’s frame from sapphire, so you can see through the whole watch and watch its tourbillon from any angle. A full wind lasts four days, and the watch weighs just under 72 grams. Ulysse Nardin limits it to 18 pieces.

By Ulysse Nardin’s account, no mechanical dive watch weighs less than the Diver AIR, at 52 grams with its strap. The company cut away so much of the skeleton movement that it weighs under 10 grams, and the case mixes titanium with lightweight composites. You can dive with it to 200 meters.