I?ll be perfectly honest: I don?t really know how to talk about the Maurice Lacroix Aikon. It?s a line of watches I don?t have a ton of personal experience with (maybe 10-15 minutes total) and that reminds me of something very specific whenever I see one. I bet you can guess the watch that it conjures in my head. It rhymes with ?Boil Cloak.? It?s also, I?ve been made aware many times, a watch that many enthusiasts in our community have a strong affection for, due to the modern design language and relative value proposition these watches offer. The newest watch in the Aikon lineup appears to be a genuine technological leap forward for Maurice Lacroix as a brand, and offers something genuinely different and, I have to say, aesthetically impressive, even if the new dial layout has me thinking of a particular German watch that rhymes with ?Dang Son.? 
The main draw of the new Aikon Master Grand Date is the newly developed ML331 movement, which features a dual windowed big date display in what we?d normally call the 10:00 position, and a dramatic oversized balance bridge revealed through a partially skeletonized dial at 8:00. The balance bridge is designed to appear as if it?s floating between the sapphire crystal and the display caseback, and also serves to frame the interior dial used for time telling that sits at 2:00. There?s a natural symmetry between the exposed balance and the dial diagonally across from it, and the prevalence of circular shapes throughout the ...