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29 March 2024

Dream of a watch can be yours

(SUPPLIED)

Published
By Reena Amos Dyes

The world-famous Baselworld 2008 conference has just concluded and like every other luxury watch manufacturer in the world, Hublot went to great lengths to display its best and brightest.

Baselworld is the leading event for the global watch and jewellery industry, held in Basel, Switzerland, every spring. The expo is a showcase for specialists in watches, jewellery, precious gems and related brands to display their latest bling to people in the industry – and it is where trends for the year are set.

Among the exquisitely crafted watches presented by Hublot was the smallest member of the Big Bang family, the Day Dream, which has a red gold case and is set with 0.87 carat diamonds.

Its 38mm diameter is in line with the Big Bang’s proportions, and its classic dial rests on a chocolate-brown stamped carbon-effect back. The red gold case is graced with a bezel set with a double strand of 126 round diamonds, and is complemented by a chocolate-brown rubber strap.

Jean Claude Biver, CEO of Hublot, Geneva, told Emirates Business: “It’s been called Day Dream because it is a dream of a watch. It is a wonderful timepiece for the day and for the night. Its most unique features are its perfect proportions, the colour of the gold, stones set in the bezel and the brown rubber strap.”

There is a lot of history behind the trademark Hublot rubber strap. The company defied every convention in 1980, when Carlo Crocco created a gold Hublot watch with the first natural black rubber bracelet in the history of watch making. The magnificent porthole-shaped watch, with its combination of polished and brushed metal and minimalist black dial became the perfect showcase for Hublot’s inimitable natural black rubber strap, which has now become the inspiration for a watch making style famous everywhere.

It took Hublot three years of research to create this unique strap and reveal the remarkable properties of natural rubber, which seemingly regenerates in daily contact with the skin.

The two halves comprising it are placed on the customer’s wrists and tailored to fit, adapting instantly to their contours with softness and ease and offering the wearer unique, unparalleled comfort.

Giving more details about the Day Dream, Biver said: “The Day Dream, has been priced at Dh110,192 and its design has been inspired by the Big Bang 44mm. The Day Dream is the smallest Big Bang made by us.”

The Big Bang is the most celebrated watch to come from the Hublot atelier. Twenty-five years after Carlo Crocco invented the rubber strap, Hublot went back to its roots when Biver relaunched the “Fusion” concept.

 It was the fusion of materials like gold and ceramic, tantalum and pink gold, and even magnesium and titanium, and the fusion between the Swiss watchmaking tradition and the watchmaker’s art in the 21st century.

The Big Bang was a result of this fusion and Biver presented the Big Bang in Basel in April 2005. The Big Bang scooped up a number of tributes in the shape of the prestigious “2005 Design Prize” in the “Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix” the “Sports Watch Prize” at the “Watch of the Year” ceremony in Japan, and the Middle Eastern Prize for the “Best Oversized Watch” at the Editor’s Choice “Watch of the Year” in Bahrain.

The Day Dream, in true Big Bang style, has shared the success story of its predecessors.

Biver said: “We had been planning to produce this watch for two years, but it was getting delayed. But in the end we produced it after relentless pushing by people from the Middle East.

“Even though it was made for them, but in the end, we tasted success in every country. It is the first product from Hublot that has been initiated by the Middle East and has had worldwide success.”