Hermès has always carved out a distinctive space in watchmaking, drawing on complications, materials and shapes to create timepieces with their own character and narrative. The H08 embodies this perfectly: a watch that blends sporting energy with urban refinement, reflecting the more masculine side of the house's universe while bearing no resemblance to anything that came before it. From the moment it launched in 2021, it carved out a place of its own in the contemporary watch landscape. Too dynamic for a dress watch, too refined for a pure sports piece, it inhabits the grey area that Hermès navigates so naturally, the space where form shapes function. Over the years it has grown through new iterations: three-handers, chronographs, fresh colourways. Now comes the skeleton version, proof that the H08 can open up without losing its identity, baring its inner workings while holding its composure.
A Shape as a Starting Point
Nothing at Hermès happens in isolation. Each year, artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas sets a creative theme that runs through every craft within the house, providing both direction and inspiration. For 2026, watchmaking has taken "mysterious mechanics" as its guiding idea. The theme appears to have taken root early: Philippe Delhotal, Creative Director of Hermès Horloger, already explored it with the recently unveiled Slim d'Hermès Squelette Lune, which offers a fresh perspective on the passage of time. The H08 Squelette continues along the same path, presenting the movement's architecture as something closer to a living, shifting composition than a static display of engineering.
At Hermès, every creative journey starts with a shape, and the H08 is no different. Its cushion case, with its gently rounded corners sitting somewhere between a circle and a square, has become one of the most recognisable silhouettes in contemporary watchmaking. In this skeleton iteration, that shape takes on an even greater importance. The 39mm titanium case, finished in satin, works like a frame around a picture: it holds the visual complexity of the openworked dial in check and anchors the whole composition. Titanium was the natural choice here, lending the watch a lightness that can be felt on the wrist and seen through the dial, giving the movement room to breathe.
Skeletonisation Without Excess
The material conversation continues with the structured rubber strap, its woven-effect texture adding tactile depth, while its turquoise blue tone, echoed in the indices, reinforces the watch's athletic personality.
Skeletonisation is one of watchmaking's most unforgiving disciplines. Strip away too much and the dial becomes unreadable; leave too much and the whole point is lost. Hermès has walked this line with evident care. The dial is open, but never chaotic. A clear central architecture brings order to the space, leading the eye naturally from one element to the next. The various layers of the movement are on display, but arranged in a way that makes sense visually, each aperture and surface contributing to the overall coherence of the piece. The H08's characteristic indices, slightly rounded, paired with a typeface that is distinctly its own, remain unchanged. Rendered in turquoise blue with Superluminova, they stand out crisply against the anthracite tones of the case and movement, fulfilling a dual role: they are at once a design statement and a genuinely practical aid to reading the time at a glance.
A Movement Staged for the Eye
Powering the watch is a brand new Hermès manufacture calibre, the H1978S — an automatic mechanical movement built predominantly in titanium, which here becomes as much a design element as a functional one. Engineered to be appreciated from both sides, through the dial and through the caseback, it has been thoroughly reworked to sit in harmony with the H08's visual language. Every component has been considered in terms of how it communicates with the watch's exterior. As Hermès puts it: "For this first skeleton, we didn't want something thin. Even though the open-working is very much present, we wanted the skeleton to retain a certain structure, like a metal scaffolding. It has a pleasing interplay of reflections, of voids and solids, which allowed us to highlight different textures and finishes." The movement is not laid bare as a statement of technical prowess; it is presented thoughtfully, allowing itself to be discovered gradually, as if the watch reveals a little more of itself with every passing moment.
The H08 Squelette is not a reinvention. It is an exploration, a deeper look into what this particular model is capable of. Its lines are unchanged, its legibility intact, yet it now carries a new visual richness and a sense of layered complexity. The skeletonisation was conceived as part of the whole from the outset, adding a strongly graphic dimension without unsettling the watch's equilibrium. In doing so, Hermès makes its point quietly but clearly: progress does not always require a clean break. Sometimes, it simply means knowing exactly how far to go.
