Hublot Launches New Big Bang Tourbillon Automatic Orange Sapphire
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NYON, Switzerland, Jan. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ Transparent, black, yellow, blue, red – Hublot has mastered the creation and machining of sapphires with exclusive shades for its watchcases. With the new Big Bang Tourbillon Automatic Orange Sapphire, the brand has once again achieved a world first by adding a completely new colour to its palette of through-tinted sapphires. This unprecedented technical and aesthetic feat is combined with an entirely new tourbillon movement not only equipped with self-winding (a rarity for a tourbillon), but also with a reinvented architecture with its micro-rotor visible on the dial side and three sapphire bridges. A new fusion of daring and transparency, in a limited edition of 50 pieces.
In another time, no doubt Hublot chief executive Ricardo Guadalupe would have flown to Tokyo to be at his striking “Hublot Tower” boutique in Ginza for today’s launch of the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami All Black as part of LVMH Watch Week 2021. As it was, he appeared as a hologram, beamed in live from the Swiss watch company’s headquarters, just outside Geneva.
Alongside him, in the flesh, stood the diminutive Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, whose greying beard and floating lilac beanie called to mind a pop art wizard – which in many ways, given the prices his artwork commands, is precisely what he is. The two had crossed time zones to announce their first collaboration, a piece conceived around Murakami’s trippy smiling flower motif.
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Hublot added to the growing list of contemporary artists it works with this morning when CEO Ricardo Guadalupe, who appeared as a holographic projection from Switzerland at the Ginza launch, revealed the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami All Black.
Japanese artist Murakami has used his signature Smiling Flower motif on the dial of an All Black Classic Fusion with a fixed central ‘face’ mounted on top of the watch’s sapphire crystal and 12 petals set on a ball bearing-mounted carousel forming a spinning dial. In total the two elements are set with 563 brilliant cut black diamonds.
At the launch, Murakami explained that the thing he most enjoyed when he visited Hublot’s manufacture in Nyon, Switzerland, was the wine at lunch (as it pointed to the brand’s attention to detail) and that his friendship with independent Japanese watchmaker Hajime Asaoka first kickstarted his interest in watches and led to a collaboration between the pair.
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ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss luxury watchmakers Hublot and Zenith, both part of French group LVMH, expect sales to rebound in 2021, after a difficult 2020 and a challenging start to the new year, their chief executives said on Monday.
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Swiss watchmakers’ sales slid last year as stores were affected by pandemic-related closures and as tourism, an important driver of the luxury watch business, collapsed.
Some companies, which have a strong presence in mainland China, have benefited from a rebound in demand, such as Richemont, which returned to growth in the final quarter of 2020.
“For Hublot, we expect 15-20% sales growth this year . In China, we still have a lot of potential, we expect very strong growth of 30-50% there,” CEO Ricardo Guadalupe told Reuters in a phone interview during LVMH watch week.
LVMH's Hublot watch brand expects to see sales improve this year after a difficult 2020 and a challenging start to the new year, its chief executive said on Monday.