Although yellow gold is perennially on the verge of being the next big thing, it has never been trendy, because it has been trending...
Although yellow gold is perennially on the verge of being the next big thing, it has never been trendy. This might be because it has been trending all along…When, in 1963, Hans Wilsdorf was finally succeeded by Andrew Heiniger, the new boss of Rolex knew he had to shake things up. He needed a watch that made a statement for being unlike anything Rolex had made before.
“The gold watch defined the success of Rolex for many years. It was a commodity you could take anywhere with you and exchange for cash,” notes Edouard Meylan, the CEO of H. Moser and Cie, who says the watch he wore most last year was the brand’s black-dialled Streamliner in gold – not that he is planning to go on the run soon. “I would have felt uncomfortable wearing a gold watch before, so I’m not sure if I’ve changed or gold has. But there’s an intuitive feeling that gold is right again now.
Certainly, the draw of gold has been deeply human for millennia – the Egyptians and Aztecs both delighted in the metal even though it was relatively abundant compared with more prosaic but useful base metals the likes of iron which were more highly prized . Gold resonates from the Christian nativity story to the flakes sprinkled on otherwise pedestrian dishes and cocktails to warrant stupid prices.
Bowman-Scargill argues the cycle may now be shifting in yellow gold’s favour. “There’s still a feeling of glamour, decadence and luxury in rose, red and pink golds without the overtones of yellow gold,” he says. ”Because the 1980s were all about yellow gold , it came to represent success. It went away in the 1990s. But now I think yellow gold is working again as a response to the market saturation of rose gold and steel. Of course, some yellow-gold watches are unashamedly brash.
Even the colour gold has pulling power: Rado, known for its ceramic pieces, has developed a PVD coating in yellow and rose gold, and a golden Ceramos, its proprietary composite material developed precisely to retain the hardy properties of ceramics without losing the lustre of metal alloys. Golden Ceramos Dia-Star and Captain Cook models are among its latest.
Can a watch brand act on just a feeling? For some brands, gold is a step too far not for reasons of its image, so much as for its cost. Gold signifies wealth, after all, precisely because it is expensive. That, as Edouard Meylan stresses, has meant that for most manufacturers committing to making a model in gold, it requires more than taking the cultural temperature of the metal.
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