You Freak! Are you crazy?!.. That’s not how it’s meant to be done! Has straight thinking ever got anybody anything? And if it hasn’t then why is creative insanity met with suspicion?
Switzerland’s watch industry has befriended insanity, to survive the quartz crisis that fell out of Japanese assembly lines in the 70s and more recently, to challenge the abundance of half eaten apples that has turned the world into one, big orchard and all its residents into willingly errant Adams and Eves. Pasts were thus renamed heritage and the future was promised to robotics and astronomy, the present these watches were telling, where was it? Let’s find the present, this time inside Ulysse Nardin’s Freak Cruiser.
The third in the Freak series from Ulysse Nardin, after the Diavolo and the Phantom, the Cruiser is the only variant that doesn’t have a pin that runs through the movement to secure it. Other than being an aesthetic advance, this has left its carrousel-tourbillon, free to float, lending poetic fluidity to its industrial parts.
Unlike the first Freak, this one is water resistant to 30 metres, which means you can afford to be playful around it (don’t). There aren’t any crowns to set the movement, what the Cruise has is a tab on the bottom, the press of which unlocks the bezel and makes it rotatable. This is how one can fidget about with the watch’s avant-garde workings. Firstly, there is no dial, no mother-of-pearl-slash-polished–steel floor, upon which the hands slide and stretch. A Tourbillion cage tickers away tirelessly, it’s the beating heart of the Cruiser.
The bezel, which doubles up as the time-setting crown has the nautical motif of an anchor on it and this is what tells time. Polished in rose gold, it floats above black vulcanized rubber. The ring with Arabic numerals is as deliciously readable as a number strip on a Roulette wheel. The Freak has a power reserve of up to eight days. Complications are usually true to their name, but the Freak has made itself user-friendly. To check if the watch needs to be wound, it can be flipped around. The back exposes the main spring, which is a rough indicator of the watch’s energy levels.
What makes the Cruiser interesting is its mechanical parts are left open-worked and are still neatly organized and definable, unlike in other heady skeleton watches where a hundred coloured screws sit over two or three bridge trains, encrusted with diamond drops wherever possible. The patented Ulysse Nardin 205 movement that features 19 jewels can be viewed through the sapphire crystal. One can see the way the parts move, how the regulating power interacts with the transferring power and the bridges and the gears turn at different rates, swaying the symbolic minutes hand once and once more.
Each watch is individually numbered on the plaque. This is not a limited edition, phew! But hold on, there’s that $87,500 price of Ulysse Nardin watch, to ensure it’s pretty darn limited.
It should be known that the Freak was the first to employ silicon in a movement in 2001. At that point, the industry questioned and ridiculed the idea, because the material isn’t a metal. Experts professed the brand will be back to the drawing board real soon. Today, brands like Patek Philippe, Rolex and Breguet too incorporate the silicon in their movements. In that sense, the Freak has done its bit in revolutionizing the way the watch industry tick-tocks ahead. The Cruiser can be encased in either rose gold or white gold and its chocolaty leather strap that resembles, in small, artistic proportions, the skin of an alligator, gives the Cruiser story a fine finish.
How easily can the distance between the present around you and eternity far far away be bridged by an assemblage of metal stuck onto the leather band of a watch? Trust us, this is what timelessness looks like.
Coming Soon: LuxuryVolt Review of the Greubel Forsey GMT
‘Ulysse Nardin Freak Cruiser Review: Pulse in Fury, Wrist in Peace’ is part two of a special series on ‘Watches the bosses Wear’ inspired from the impeccable styling of the big bosses of the Swiss watch industry, as seen here
Locations Courtesy: The Cigar Lounge at Leela Ambience Gurgaon, Conceptualised and Produced by Shilpa Dhamija, Words By Pallavi Kamakshi Rebbapragada, Watch by Swiss Promotions Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Suit Look by Ashish Soni, Black Suit look by Lav Trivedi, Black Leather Shoes: Dior, Cufflinks by Montegrappa, Cigars by Kastros-The Cigar Company, Stylist: Shruti Chawla, Make up: Kamal Gupta, Production Assistant: Kabir Nagpal IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT OF LUXURYVOLT
