Thirty-one millimeters is the only diameter at which this ground can be had on either temperature of case. Below it aubergine appears on Everose gold and the steel and Everose construction alone; above it, at 36 mm, it survives on the steel and white gold construction and nothing else. Here both are offered, solid Everose and solid white gold with their two-tone counterparts, so a buyer choosing this dial at this size is making a decision about metal that is unavailable to them anywhere else in the run. It is also the point at which the ground stops being a warm proposition and starts becoming a cool one. This variant is the arrangement this diameter receives, with an oversized VI at six, in a case of steel and Everose gold under a fluted bezel, on an Oyster bracelet.
A deep purple ground is unusual for this collection and the setting is what makes it legible. Aubergine sits between the dark grounds and the colored ones, dark enough to read as near-black across a room and saturated enough to show its tone at close range, and a plain version would leave that ambiguity unresolved with nothing on the surface to give the eye a reference. Stones settle it. The settings and the numeral establish known points of brightness, and the ground is then read against them rather than on its own, which is where the purple becomes purple rather than a very dark grey. The Everose of this construction sits in the fluted bezel, since fluting is never cut into steel, and the case sides, lugs and bracelet are steel. There is a further consequence to a ground that reads two ways depending on the light. A watch which presents as black across a room and as purple at reading distance behaves differently for the person wearing it than for anyone else looking at it, and on this ground that is the central fact of the design rather than a subtlety. Owners consistently give it as the reason they chose the dial, and it is also why the configuration is almost never selected from an image, where only one of the two appearances can be shown and the photographer has already decided which.
The plate carries settings at every hour position and the numeral at six anchored separately at another depth, and it must still sit flat beneath the hands, which is close to what a 31 mm plate will support. At 28 mm the same ground is given a ring of settings alone for that reason, the numeral arriving only once the case is large enough to carry both. Behind it the movement is built specifically to this diameter, self-winding, running close to 55 hours off the wrist against roughly 70 for the 36 mm references, the difference being barrel volume in a physically smaller movement. The date advances in a single step at midnight and the rotor winds as the wrist moves. The numeral also carries more of the dial here than it would on a pale ground. Against a surface that reads as near-black in most conditions, the gold at six is frequently the only thing visible on the dial from any distance, so it establishes the entire layout until the viewer is close enough for the settings to register. On silver or champagne the same numeral sits within a field of comparable brightness and never takes on that role. Here it does the work of the whole arrangement for most of the time the watch is being seen.
Where the ground sits changes as the case grows, which nothing else in the range does. At 28 mm aubergine appears on Everose gold and on the steel and Everose construction and on no other material. At 31 mm it adds solid white gold and the steel and white gold construction, so both temperatures are available and this is the only diameter where a buyer chooses between them. At 36 mm the warm cases drop away entirely and the ground survives on the steel and white gold construction alone. A dial that begins warm and ends cool is not a pattern the collection repeats, and this reference sits at the point of overlap. There is a practical consequence to that for anyone planning past a single purchase. A buyer who owns the 28 mm version on Everose and later wants the same dial at 36 mm cannot have it on a warm case at all; one who starts at 36 and moves down cannot have it on a cool one. The ground exists in both temperatures at 31 mm alone, which makes this the only diameter where the case decision stays genuinely open. Aubergine is one of four grounds at this reference that exist only in set form, and it takes the large Roman six with eleven stones, an arrangement chocolate and slate also carry here.
The argument for this configuration is that it is the least substitutable dial on the reference. Purple appears nowhere else in the range, the ground is never offered plain, and at this diameter it is available in both metal families for the only time in its run. Collectors who choose it are generally not comparing it against anything, because there is nothing close enough to compare it with. The Oyster keeps the watch flat and unassuming beneath a dial that discloses itself slowly, and among the arrangements offered here it is the one that will be recognized least often and remembered longest by anyone who does. A listing describing an aubergine dial set with diamonds conveys almost nothing of that, and gives no indication that the ground will read as black for most of the day. Buyers who have handled one describe it in terms of what it is not, since the tone sits between the obvious names for it, and that difficulty is a fair indication of why the ground keeps the following it has.
