Unusual watches: when telling the time becomes a design choice

A watch can look unfamiliar without making time harder to read. That distinction matters when comparing Ressence’s orbiting displays, the rotating rollers of the Behrens Orion One and the sculptural machinery of MB&F. These are not simply decorative variations on a round dial. They represent different answers to what a wristwatch should actually do.

Our take: unusual watches deserve to be judged on more than their ability to stop someone scrolling. Some ask you to learn a different visual language; others keep the familiar hour-and-minute arrangement but surround it with spectacle. The useful question is not how strange a watch looks, but whether its design gives you something worth living with.

What happened

Across these makers, the conventional central handset is no longer treated as compulsory. Behrens’ Orion One puts hours and minutes on a pair of rotating rollers. Ressence uses discs that travel around the dial, separating indications that would usually share one central axis. Both change the display, but they do not demand the same reading process.

Elsewhere, the disruption is about shape or visual attention rather than a new system. Cartier’s Crash distorts the outline of a conventional watch. Corum’s Golden Bridge puts its exposed mechanism on show. Roger Dubuis produces designs in which elaborate movements compete with the time indications for your eye. Looking complicated and being complicated to read are separate things.

H. Moser & Cie.’s Swiss Alp Watch Final Upgrade takes another route. Its dark, rectangular face resembles an inactive smartwatch screen, with a detail at six o’clock recalling a loading indicator. The joke depends on recognising the visual language of electronics in a mechanical object. It is a design argument, not just an exercise in removing numbers.

There is no single launch or industry-wide change behind this collection of approaches. Nor does the existence of dramatic watches prove that buyers are abandoning straightforward dials. What it establishes is a broader design vocabulary: rollers, moving discs, exposed workings and irregular cases can each give a watch its identity without doing the same job.

The background

Mechanical watches store energy in a mainspring and release it through a regulated mechanism. Their displays translate that movement into information we can read. The familiar pair of hands is one solution to that problem, not the definition of mechanical watchmaking itself. Changing the display need not mean abandoning the underlying craft.

It also helps to separate accuracy from legibility. Accuracy concerns how closely a watch keeps the correct time; legibility concerns how easily you can read what it shows. A beautifully regulated movement cannot rescue an indication you struggle to identify. Equally, a radical-looking face is not automatically inaccurate or impractical.

Minimal does not always mean clearer

A stripped-back watch can present its own challenge. The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF uses small indices and a restrained dial, demonstrating that visual quietness does not necessarily produce the quickest glance. Contrast, marker size, reflections and the distinction between indications all matter. Removing clutter helps only if enough useful information remains.

That gives buyers a better framework than simply choosing between classic and futuristic. Ask what has changed: the case, the mechanism on display, or the method of reading time? You might love an irregular silhouette while wanting entirely conventional hands. Our approach to autumn/winter menswear trends applies here too: take the element that suits you, rather than buying the complete proposition.

Clothing adds a physical constraint that photographs often conceal. A tall case or protruding structure may catch a fitted shirt cuff, while an expansive watch can sit awkwardly on a smaller wrist. Try it with the clothes it will actually accompany. For particularly formal occasions, understanding what morning dress requires is more useful than assuming any expensive accessory belongs with it.