Big Bang Original Soft Touch: When Rubber Takes Over the Dial

This time, textured rubber with a soft-touch feel covers the entire watch, from the case to the dial, bezel and strap. The brand offers it in two colors: red and black. The idea is neither surprising nor simply a stylistic whim. It extends the history of the manufacture, for which rubber is not just one material among many: it is the material that gave the brand its start. There was just one place it had never reached: the dial. That has now changed with the Big Bang Original Soft Touch.

Rubber: A Family Affair and a House Specialty

Some perspective is needed to understand what this new kind of Soft Touch represents. We need to go back to 1980, to be precise. That year, Carlo Crocco presented a gold watch fitted with a rubber strap, which the brand describes as the first of its kind in watchmaking history. The combination of a precious metal and a material then considered commonplace was striking, but ultimately became a benchmark: it was the founding act of what the brand would call the “Art of Fusion,” which would become its motto and powerful DNA.

The strap reportedly took three years to develop, as well as a small fortune to produce a rubber compound capable of regenerating itself upon contact with the skin. What initially seemed unconventional soon became the norm: within a few years, almost every brand had entered the rubber-strap segment. Hublot turned this gesture into a signature, and rubber into one of its iconic materials.

Since then, the material has gradually made its way onto the various components of the watch. The strap came first; then the crown, overmolded with rubber on the Big Bang; followed by the bezel, covered in rubber, notably on the King Power in the late 2000s. Fiber by fiber, rubber gradually took over the exterior of the timepiece, with the exception of the dial, which until now had remained the domain of metal, lacquer and other composite materials. The Soft Touch now crosses this final frontier with flying colors.

All the Way to the Dial

The principle is straightforward: a textured rubber compound with a “velvet effect” covers the case, bezel, dial and strap in their entirety. The process relies on dedicated overmolding, with the rubber molded onto the titanium, using specialized tooling that imprints the texture into the material during the manufacturing process itself rather than afterward.

Hublot emphasizes this point because the result is neither a varnish nor a surface treatment, but rubber worked throughout its mass. Its structure, made up of thousands of micro-elements, creates this particular softness without compromising the resistance expected of the material.

The case is made of titanium but is also covered with this rubber skin, while the dial finally embraces the material as well. The result is a Big Bang on which the time is read from a supple surface. The softness of the material is unmistakable, but that does not mean the relief has been sacrificed. Far from being flat, the dial is built up in several layers: the base features a carbon texture, the counters stand out in relief, and the rehaut matches the overall color. This is a watch that invites you to touch and experience it just as much as to look at it.

All Red: Red at Your Fingertips

The “All Red” version pays tribute to another of the brand’s bold achievements: bright-red ceramic, presented in 2018 as the first of its kind in watchmaking. Here, Hublot takes that red from the visual realm into the tactile one.

The titanium is overmolded with red velvet-effect rubber, extending from the 43 mm case to the dial: a red carbon pattern on a red background, satin-finished rhodium-plated hands providing contrast, and polished titanium bezel screws in the shape of an H. The two silver-ringed counters and the date window punctuate this fiery monochrome. The strap combines black and red rubber and is secured by a titanium folding clasp.

The All Black as a Counterpoint

The second version, the “All Black,” plays the same tune in a different key. It pays tribute to the monochrome manifesto of 2006, when Hublot turned the absence of color into a way of revealing form.

Here, only the color—or rather its absence—changes. Otherwise, the piece features the same construction as the “All Red”: titanium overmolded with black velvet-effect rubber, a black rubber dial, satin-finished black hands, and a clasp combining black ceramic and treated titanium. Once again, the novelty of this Soft Touch is more sensory than visual.

The Art of Fusion: A Materials Laboratory

Once again, the Soft Touch does not come out of nowhere. Since 1980, Hublot has made material innovation a discipline in its own right, to the point of maintaining its own foundry and metallurgy laboratory.

The brand is responsible for Magic Gold, an 18-karat gold made scratch-resistant; brightly colored ceramics that were long considered impossible to produce; and cases carved from sapphire. Hublot has built its identity around this “Art of Fusion.” It knows like no other how to take a material that watchmaking thought it knew and push it into territory where it was not expected.

Velvet-effect rubber extends this logic even further, with an innovation that is judged not only by sight but also by touch, feel and the sensation it creates.

The Mechanics Beneath the Skin

Beneath the rubber beats Hublot’s in-house Unico caliber, an automatic column-wheel chronograph with a flyback function, offering approximately 72 hours of power reserve. Its skeletonized tungsten rotor forms the brand’s H.

Precise to one-eighth of a second and equipped with five patented innovations, it is developed and assembled at the Hublot manufacture in Nyon. The strap features the “One Click” system, allowing it to be changed with a simple gesture and without tools. The watch is water-resistant to 100 meters.

The Soft Touch is unmistakably a Big Bang, mechanics included, to which the brand has given a new skin.

From the 1980 strap to the 2026 dial, rubber has taken nearly half a century to cover the entire watch. By pushing it this far, Hublot is not changing the material; it is opening up even more possibilities for it, taking its founding material to the point where it becomes a sensation.