And that makes two! After the success of the "Smiling Mickey" timepiece unveiled in 2021, Bulgari is once again bringing Mickey Mouse to the forefront of the watchmaking scene. The famous mouse now occupies the centre of a dial where, for the first time, he shows off his skills with a football. This rare triple complication watch (retrograde date and minutes, jumping hour) is powered by self-winding Manufacture Calibre BVL300 with a 42-hour power reserve.
The playful and technical Arena Bi-Retrograde Mickey Mouse pays tribute to a longstanding tradition of atypical watches designed by Gérald Genta. The famous designer created his own Manufacture in 1969, within which he laid the foundations of the contemporary watch.
Gérald Genta was however also a man of boundless creativity, endowed with a playful spirit and a humorous outlook on life. When he became the first designer to enter into a partnership with Disney, he integrated Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck into timepieces featuring a subtle blend of creativity and technical sophistication. Today, the Maison preserves and perpetuates his genius through rare creations that remain highly sought-after collectors' items...of which the Arena Bi-Retrograde Mickey Mouse is the latest instalment. Playing football is not Mickey Mouse's first introduction to the world of sports, as he is known to have been a motor-racing driver and even a golf player in the past, notably with the golf clubshaped hand for the retrograde minutes indication on historical Gerald Genta watches.
Discerning collectors will find in this new limited edition the aesthetic vocabulary with which they are familiar. At the centre of the timepiece is Mickey Mouse. The little creature introduced by Walt Disney in 1928 continues to surprise with his inherent modernity: endowed with a contagious smile and laughing eyes, this clever and amazingly flexible character is an incredible pencil stroke as well as an outright stroke of genius.
Mickey Mouse appears on a dial whose design reveals an exceptionally masterful craftsmanship, since it is neither made of metal nor lacquered, as is usually the case, but rather of mother-of-pearl, a living material expressed through a series of micro-relief effects that endow it with singular depth.
Each dial is thus the result of 14 clichés (plates) used to create the colour pattern of the design based on the pad printing technique. Some areas of the motif are then coated with transparent lacquer in order to add brilliance, brightness and volume to very specific details. In all, more than 20 manual operations are required to bring the Mickey Mouse to life, and each be fundamentally unique.
This dial featuring a red minutes track picking up the colour of Mickey Mouse’s shorts also matches the textured rubber strap. In accordance with tradition, his mobile arm counts off the minutes.
On the half-hour, a football flies over his nose. Mickey Mouse stares at it: he is probably about to perform an acrobatic backward ‘bicycle’ kick that will follow the curve of the iconic 41 mm steel Arena case, Gérald Genta's aesthetic signature. Above his left foot sits the jumping hour window. But that's not all: next to his other foot, a 180° retrograde date is swept over by an openworked hand.
Directly descended from the Fantasy collection launched in the 1980s, the Arena Bi-Retrograde Mickey Mouse preserves the distinctive characteristics that forged its success: the imaginary Mickey Mouse, the Arena case, the bi-retrograde display, the Manufacture movement, as well as the limited-edition production (of only 200 timepieces) safeguarding its rarity. More than 25 years after the first calibre with jumping hours and retrograde minutes launched in 1996, Bulgari reaffirms its watchmaking expertise thanks to Calibre BVL300, further enriched with a retrograde date.
Moreover, providing a chance to pursue childhood dreams a little longer, Bulgari treats the 200 lucky owners of the Arena Bi-Retrograde Mickey Mouse to an exclusive presentation box for their watch.
