Baselworld/SIHH

Baselworld 2010: Oris

 

Despite being a traditional Swiss watch brand, Oris until now managed to escape your Basel reporters' attention. This year, female charme changed that. We were simply unable to resist beautiful Ms Ang's invitating smile, so she lured us into the booth, and ..... showed us watches (what did you think??).

This year, Oris presented many limited editions, mostly results of cooperations with individuals, companies or even military units.

The "Col Moschin" is a massive diving watch (49 mm), rated to 1,000 meters, featuring a unique power reserve display and diving bezel mechanism. It is dedicated to a special unit of the Italian armed forces.


The "TT3 Darryl O. Young" is the result of the cooperation with multiple Porsche Carrery Cup Winner Darryl Young. The semi-skeletonised dial quotes the design of Porsche's wheel rims, and the case is DLC-coated.

 

To remain in the field of motorsports, Oris continues its cooperation with the AT&T Williams formula one team and shows a corresponding watch:

 

In my eyes a much more pleasing novelty is the limited edition RAID chronograph, dedicated to the RAID classic car rallye, organised annually in Switzerland and France. The dial of this Artelier series chronograph was inspired by the dashboard of a Jaguar XK 120. Diameter is 43.50 mm.

 

A tribute to Oscar Peterson is a limited edition, consisting of an automatic three hands/date watch, and a chronograph. The hour markers are shaped like piano keys, and the caseback shows a lion, claimed to have been OP's logo.

 

The BC3 is already a classic watch series made by Oris. This year, the sportive watch has been refreshened a bit, by placing date and weekday together at 6, and giving it a new case with 42mm diameter. Also new is the name: "BC3 Sportsman".

 

A limited edition of the new BC3 is called "Advanced" and features a black DLC-coated case and a dial coated with black SuperLuminova (which is not very different from not being luminous at all).

Not in the press kit is this highly attractive watch in the BC4 case: Black case and matte black dial, on which the glossy black outlines of a cat are visible only when the light hits them in the right direction.

 

 

EDITOR'S NOTE:

I have to take the blame for dragging Marcus along to the Oris booth as a favour to the lovely Ms Ang who is also a resident of Singapore like your Editor

Whilst I was busy chatting to the Oris VP, Philipp Käser, about their brand image, Marcus was taking all the photos and taking notes about the watches! Raher like the Formula 1 Grand Prix team that they sponsor, Oris has been steadily doing their job......making quality but affordable watches. As you can see from Marcus's nice photos, some of them are very attractive.

Since Omega has joined the ranks of expensive watches that are out of reach of mere mortals, maybe we should be asking our young starter PuristS to look to Oris watches as their introduction to real, sporty watches?

Melvyn Teillol-Foo

 

This message has been edited by MTF on 2010-05-13 07:38:46