By emphasising the architecture of its movement, its decoration and its materials, which are amongst the most innovative ever used in fine watchmaking, Roger Dubuis continues to trace a unique technical and creative path.
By Michel Jeannot
Roger Dubuis has always nurtured transgression. Its guiding principle is to provoke strong new emotional reactions to watchmaking. The manufacture has been in the vanguard of fine watchmaking since 1995, its creativity tinged with extravagance drawing a large community of fans in pursuit of disruptive design and innovation. Roger Dubuis plays with materials (carbon, cobalt, etc.) and designs (skeleton movements, micro-sculptures, gemstones, etc.) by exploring different creative worlds. The brand abstains from none, pushing back aesthetic and mechanical boundaries. Its Excalibur model encapsulates this dynamic and this culture of boldness perfectly. From ancient medieval legends or a gemset garden to high-performance mechanics via collaborations with Pirelli and Lamborghini Squadra Corse, the brand has asserted its creative singularity – a sort of mechanical adrenaline – for a quarter of a century. Roger Dubuis is a driver of innovation and a catalyst for horological passion.
The manufacture’s latest design reflects this tension that fuels the brand. The Excalibur Blacklight. Or a lesson in how to combine opposites to serve disruptive design. Roger Dubuis connoisseurs will not be disoriented: the base of the Blacklight is none other than the Excalibur, the house’s flagship model. It has the same bevelled bezel and, above all, the same all-important calibre whose microrotor is designed around a star, with each arm acting as a bridge for the organs of the watch. It is this architecture that Roger Dubuis is now attempting to enhance in a brand new way. The manufacture has designed decoration using technology that is alien to the watchmaking industry. Sapphire micro-tubes transform the RD820SQ calibre into a mechanical sculpture that glows under UV light, revealing a motif that appears to float inside the case when the lights go out. Sculptural in the daytime, resplendent at night, the Excalibur Blacklight expresses the uniqueness of a brand bent on exploring the full artistic potential of its most famous movement.
Established
1995
Company status
Société anonyme (public limited company)
of the Richemont group
Senior Management
Nicola Andreatta, CEO
Number of employees
350
Flagship collection
Excalibur
Bestseller
Excalibur Automatic Skeleton
Retail prices
Undisclosed
Annual production
Undisclosed
Innovation cubed
The new Excalibur Spider Carbon3 – pronounced ‘Carbon Cubed’ – is most certainly beautiful to behold, yet it is also as technical as ever. It also adds a dimension that is uniquely its own: optimum comfort. For the first time, Robert Dubuis has equipped one of its timepieces with an all-carbon structure: the case, the movement and the strap, i.e. the three elements that are covered by the name ‘Carbon3 ’. Weighing 81 grams including the strap, this piece is pure Roger Dubuis: heightened performance through research. Lighter and more comfortable, this new Excalibur Spider imposes its credo of technology dedicated to aesthetics.
Roger Dubuis explores certain other avenues through its carefully selected partnerships. The Roger Dubuis/Lamborghini Squadra Corse duo is behind an entire collection: the Excalibur Huracán, named after the Italian car manufacturer’s latest super car. Today, the term ‘Huracán’ also designates a range of five Roger Dubuis timepieces that match the various Italian sports car models. There are three Excalibur Huracán watches and two Excalibur Huracán ‘Performante’ watches, with the latter named after the extreme-performance version of the Lamborghini Huracán. All are driven by a specifically designed engine: the RD630 calibre, which features a balance angled at 12° and positioned at 12 o’clock.
Excalibur Blacklight in white gold, dial with UV-sensitive micro-sapphire tubes, limited edition of 88 timepieces.
A star is born
Our personal favourite in the Excalibur Huracán collection is the tone-on tone grey version, where hexagons are omnipresent, inspired by Lamborghini’s emblematic air scoops and wheel rims. The timepiece’s bridges are reminiscent of the Huracán’s front strut bars, while the entirely openworked dial evokes the lightness of the Italian hypercar. The piece, built around a skeleton dial with black lower flange and rhodium-plated upper flange, features hour-markers filled with white luminescent Super-LumiNovaTM over which gold hands travel. The movement is coated in NAC, a stateof- the-art galvanisation process that took three years to develop. It showcases the finishes adorning the movement thanks to a subtle interplay of light. Another advantage of this model in shades of grey and anthracite is that it highlights the balance at 12 o’clock. Angled at 12° and the only gold-coloured component in the timepiece, it is the aesthetic signature of the Roger Dubuis/Lamborghini Squadra Corse collaboration. This is a subtle yet powerful timepiece for connoisseur collectors.