I always look forward to checking out a new release from Direnzo. There?s always more than meets the eye, and the DRZ06 Wandering Star is no exception. The watch is a marriage of the familiar and the unexpected. In this case, the ?familiar? is an evolution of Direnzo?s retro-futuristic design language, including a dish-shaped dial, bold colors, and organic-feeling markers cut into a sandwich dial. The ?unexpected? is the presence of a mystery dial. It?s now some years since I wrote about the originals and heyday of the Mystery Dial here, but it?s still a feature I?d like to see more of. I guess many watchmakers might be deterred from attempting this as it?s difficult to avoid the mystery being the interesting thing about a watch and therefore becoming little more than a gimmick. Perhaps the reason it has been implemented successfully as part of the DRZ06 Wandering Star is that we just have a mystery sub-dial for the running seconds, with a lone red dot slowly spinning around against the lumed backdrop.
Last summer I spent some time with Direnzo?s previous release ? a reworking of one of their earliest models. The case of the new DRZ06 is similar in shape to that of the DRZ02 Aerolite, but with some subtle changes that blend to give a different character. For starters, the brushed steel bezel is larger in every way. Despite the main watch case being a soft square shape, this strong bezel makes the watch feel far rounder. The Wandering Star still pulls quite a neat ...