There’s no use trying to tell me that brands shouldn’t evolve or tha they should stay exactly the same over the decades. If your brand is known for the type of watch that takes pride in incorporating new, technical materials; if its known for some of the most disruptive mechanisms and displays to appear in modern watchmaking; if you are Ulysse Nardin — you actually do have a duty to bring new stuff to the table continually, and to dare to surprise your audience.
The Ulysse Nardin Blast, launched at Geneva Watch Days, unites the audacious design of the Freak collection with classic high watchmaking mechanics, combined with a selection of colours that conveys the forcefulness of the new series.
A completely skeletonised movement, characterised by symmetry, with micro-rotor at 12 o’clock and Ulysse Nardin’s iconic lightweight silicon escapement, encased in a tourbillon, at 6 o’clock. A case composed of unexpected angles and lines, dictated by the profiles of stealth aircraft — although there is nothing under-the-radar about the Blast.
Accordingly, the four versions of the Blast, the Blue Blast, the Black Blast, the White Blast and the Rose Gold Blast, come in titanium, rose gold or ceramic, materials chosen to showcase and highlight the openworked movement within.
Unusually — in fact, for the first time known in watchmaking — Ulysse Nardin have incorporated a red balance wheel, created by electro-galvanic processes to turn the whirling heart of the tourbillon into a crimson storm. The Blast is instantly recognisable as a Ulysse Nardin creation, with the brand iconography placed front and centre within the watch. The rectangle, crossed with an X, that we got familiar with from the Skeleton X collection, strengthens its presence within the brand repertoire and reiterates the openness and extreme (or X-treme) aesthetics that have defined this new era of Ulysse Nardin.
