At first glance, the watch looks like platinum, at least before you pick it up and feel the surprising lightness in your hand. With the weight and size being significantly reduced, the watch is comfortable to wear, and it certainly fits the bill of a Ressence watch that can be dressed up or down and worn with a suit—Cho’s reason for designing this collaboration. The use of salmon has seen a cycle of trends, from deep cuts to growing popularity, then overplaying, and now it’s being used more sparingly, fortunately. This is the right tone of salmon and the right use-case, i.e., an unexpected one.
The design of the fluted bezel as a functional minute track is a clever choice. To shrink the watch, you need to move the minute indication to the bezel, and this is an elegant and creative way to do so. But more than that, the play between highlight and shadow helps the watch from looking too over-polished or flat. Finally, the collaboration is about $3,500 more expensive than when the model launched last year, so I imagine people will have to decide how much they are willing to pay for the new bezel and dial. But I do think it works quite well.