When you?re at Watches & Wonders and meeting up with other watch writers, talking about the show, the chit chat naturally goes to some flavor of ?What?s the best watch you?ve seen"? We?re all on different schedules and taking meetings at different times, and it?s interesting to observe a buzz building for a watch that your colleagues have had a chance to handle but for you is still a few days away. One watch that I was particularly looking forward to after a few of these conversations was a piece that certainly isn?t normally something I?d go for, but became very interested in after some gobsmacked early reviews from trusted sources. Let me tell you about my time with the Hublot Big Bang Tourbillon Automatic Purple Sapphire.
I?m not putting you on or exaggerating when I say this was absolutely one of my favorite watches of the show. The best" Hard to gauge, but I had a big dopey smile on my face for the entire time this watch was in my presence, let alone on my wrist. If you?re at all predisposed to the Big Bang?s bold aesthetic, this is a hard watch not to like simply for the novelty of the purple sapphire case and the impressive motion inherent in the dramatically skeletonized dial thanks to the tourbillon and the movement?s micro-rotor visible at 12:00. But there?s a tendency to write a watch like this off as being brash and loud just for the sake of being brash and loud. There?s certainly nothing wrong with that, but I think it?s unfair to dismis...