Let’s get the obvious out of the way. These aren’t the first red-gold and Vantablack watches from H. Moser & Cie. The first time we saw this space-age material in a red-gold case was in 2019, when the brand released their Venturer Concept Vantablack watch. Later that year, the Only Watch submission from H. Moser & Cie. utilised the same materials, this time in an Endeavour model with the ultra-precise Perpetual Moon complication. If you’re not picky about having the entire watch case in red gold, the limited edition that Moser created with The Armory also has a dial of Vantablack, encircled by a ruddy halo thanks to its red-gold flange (or rehaut).
Then there’s last year’s Streamliner Tourbillon Vantablack in red gold, which I promptly nicknamed “Black Hole Sun” — a name that any self-respecting Gen X-er will recognise as the biggest hit single of criminally underrated grunge band Soundgarden. This is my way of saying that as far as H. Moser & Cie. have come in the past decade, they’re still not as well-known as they ought to be. That’s the deeper explanation of why I picked that nickname, because the obvious explanation is that the three words of that name directly correlate to the dial material, the tourbillon at 6 o’clock, and the watch case material.
Clearly, the guys in the product development team at H. Moser & Cie. know a good thing when they see it, because this year they’ve come out with two new Endeavour models in red gold with Vantablack dials. One of them has a tourbillon, preserving that aura of swirling, unfathomable power that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand whenever I see NASA images of black holes. The other one, though slightly less intimidating in its mechanical and conceptual aspects, has the edge in terms of innovation.
“What innovation?” you ask. I’ll tell you, my dear inquisitive WorldTempus family. The Endeavour Centre Seconds Vantablack has hour indexes.
This may sound pretty anticlimactic to you, because what the hell is so innovative about putting hour indexes on a dial? It’s purely because of the material of the dial. Vantablack, despite its impressive and tough-sounding name, is kind of a delicate flower. Being made of extremely tiny carbon nanotubes which help it to absorb 99.965% of all incident light, it is very fragile. A fly making a clumsy landing on a Vantablack surface could crush the nanotubes and ruin the effect. The slightest tap of a finger on a Vantablack dial would render it aesthetically unusable. People in my circle frequently make fun of the fact that I don’t like to be touched — they’d have a field day cracking jokes at the expense of Vantablack.
The question we need to ask ourselves now is: How do you set hour indexes on a surface that can’t be touched without being effectively destroyed? We can take exactly two seconds to ask ourselves that, but then after that the best way to actually get an answer would be to ask the H. Moser & Cie. people that.
Stay tuned, WorldTempus family, because that’s exactly what I’m going to do right now.
