If someone pictures a Datejust without being told which one, this is close to the watch they picture. Reference 278274 is the 31mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and white gold with a fluted bezel, and this configuration carries a bright black dial with applied Roman numerals, on the Jubilee bracelet. A fluted rim, a five-piece bracelet designed for this model, a date at three under a lens, and a dial with characters rather than strokes. Every element is the one the model is identified by, and there is no component on the watch that a person would have to be told about.
Being the reference version is a real property rather than an absence of ideas. The fluting began as a functional device, giving a tool purchase to screw the bezel down onto the case, and is now cut and polished purely for the way it catches light, which means the most recognizable detail on the watch is a former mechanism kept for its appearance. The Jubilee was designed for the Datejust in 1945 and has been fitted to it ever since. The Roman numerals are the oldest marker set still in the model. Black is the ground that has stayed longest without interruption. Assembled together these produce a watch with no element younger than the others and nothing that will date at a different rate. The applied numerals are polished white gold, drawn narrow for the 31mm diameter and cut back further where they meet the date frame, and against bright black they read as the brightest things on the face at nearly every angle. The Jubilee runs five-piece links, three polished rows down the middle flanked by brushed outer rows, closing on a concealed clasp folded into the links, and at 31mm those links are among the finest Rolex assembles. The case is polished on the flanks and brushed across the lug tops, the lugs are short relative to the case, and every gold element is solid rather than plated. The bracelet tapers continuously from the end links, so the widest point of the whole watch is the bezel and everything below it narrows toward the clasp.
The watch does one thing beyond telling the time. The date changes instantaneously at midnight rather than creeping through the hours around it, the function the Datejust introduced in 1945 and the one the model takes its name from. On a Roman dial the window replaces a numeral rather than interrupting a ring of identical markers, and the characters on either side are drawn narrower again to clear the frame. The disc is black to match the dial rather than left white, since a pale disc against bright black would be the highest-value element on the watch. The window and its lens together take up proportionally more of a 31mm dial than of any larger case in the range. The Cyclops lens, fitted to the model since 1953, enlarges the numeral roughly two and a half times, and along with the fluted rim it is the other detail people picture without prompting, which makes this configuration the one carrying both. Correction runs through the winding crown at a dedicated position and leaves the hands where they are. The movement is self-winding with a power reserve of approximately fifty-five hours, the figure the smaller cases carry rather than the longer one fitted to the 36mm, so the calendar survives a weekend off the wrist and returns still running and still correct. A stop-seconds function allows the watch to be set against a reference rather than approximately, which is the only other demand the movement makes of an owner. The crown screws down and the bracelet closes flush against the case.
The Datejust arrived in 1945 as the first self-winding wristwatch to show the date in a window, and the 31mm case sits between the 28mm Lady-Datejust and the 36mm that has always been the model's central size. Rolex registered the name for its steel and gold construction in 1933. The steel and white gold pairing is the least demonstrative of the two-tone combinations, since the metals read as one to most people and the watch announces nothing about its construction, which suits a configuration whose appeal is familiarity rather than novelty. The same reference is offered with a diamond-set rim in place of the flutes, and buyers comparing the two usually settle it on whether they want the watch to be recognizable or to be noticed. Those are different aims and the fluted version serves the first. It is also the version that has been in continuous production longest in some form, which matters to anyone thinking about service and parts over a long ownership, since a configuration the company has built without interruption for decades is one it is equipped to keep building. Nine grounds sit at this reference and black is one of four the catalogue offers plain only, alongside bright blue, mint green and white. Three more come in both plain and set form, and two exist with stones alone.
The buyer for this is not looking for a variation. They want the Datejust, in the size that fits, in the version the model is known by, and they are untroubled by the fact that a great many other people have reached the same conclusion. It is the configuration least likely to be regretted and least likely to be described as interesting, and the two facts are related. The Jubilee is the more comfortable of the two bracelets at this size and follows a small wrist more closely than the Oyster does. Buyers arrive here from the Oyster version having wanted the bracelet the model was designed around, and from the colored grounds having decided black was the one they would not tire of. A lacquered dial shows dust more readily than a metallic one, and the flutes hold dust in their grooves in a way a smooth rim does not, which a soft brush deals with and which is the only maintenance the bezel ever asks for.
