This is the darkest dial the reference makes wearing the brightest specification it offers. Reference 278341RBR is the 31mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold with a domed bezel set with diamonds, and this configuration carries an aubergine dial with a full Roman sequence whose large VI is set with diamonds, on the Jubilee bracelet. Nothing else on the reference opens this wide a gap between its brightest and darkest points. The bezel is a curved band of stones, the Jubilee returns light at short intervals along the whole wrist, and between them sits a ground mixed deep enough to read as near-black in most rooms. The watch spans almost the entire range available to it, and it does so inside 31mm.
The range between the brightest and darkest points on this watch is the widest the reference produces, and all three elements are working at once. The bezel is a dome rather than a flat ring, so its stones sit at continuously varying angles and only an arc is lit at any moment, the bright section traveling as the wrist turns. The Jubilee runs roughly twice the component count of the Oyster across the same width, with polished Everose rows down the middle and brushed steel to either side, so the wrist returns light almost continuously and at a fine grain. The dial does neither. Aubergine is an opaque lacquer laid in thin coats to hold an even tone across the curve, mixed deep enough that no pale version of it exists at any angle, and it absorbs most of what reaches it. Set into that are Everose numerals, which separate cleanly from a dark ground where they would vanish on a matched one, and a large VI holding stones. Those stones are the only element on the dial behaving the way the bezel and the bracelet behave. Everose is alloyed with platinum so its tone holds rather than drifting toward yellow over decades, and every gold element on the watch is solid rather than plated or capped. Steel takes the case body and the outer links.
For a watch covering this much visual ground, the mechanism is a single function. The date advances in an instant at midnight instead of drifting through the surrounding hours, which is what the Datejust brought to the market in 1945 and what its name refers to. Rolex matches the disc behind the window to the aubergine ground so the aperture reads as part of the dial rather than a hole cut into it, which matters more here than on a pale dial, since an unmatched disc would be the brightest thing inside the crystal and would compete with the stones for attention. The frame is proportioned for a 31mm dial instead of scaled down from a larger one, keeping it clear of the numerals to either side, and the Cyclops lens above it has been part of the model since 1953 and enlarges the printed numeral roughly two and a half times. Setting the date runs through the winding crown at its own position and leaves the hands untouched. The movement is self-winding with a power reserve of approximately 55 hours, designed around this case width rather than adapted down to it, since a narrower barrel holds less energy and a lighter rotor collects less from the same motion. The crown screws down and the Jubilee closes on a concealed clasp folded into the links.
The Jubilee was made for the Datejust and introduced with it in 1945, and the two have stayed associated in a way the bracelet never managed anywhere else in the range. The watch was the first self-winding wristwatch to display the date in a window and has been produced without interruption since. The 31mm case falls between the 28mm Lady-Datejust and the 36mm original, and the 278000 generation replaced the 178000 series in 2018 with a revised case and bracelet. Rolex registered the name for its steel and gold construction in 1933. Everose arrived in 2005 and the colors built around it since have mostly been warm ones, which leaves aubergine as an outlier that has nonetheless stayed in the catalogue. Within the generation, 278341RBR is the steel and Everose reference with a diamond-set domed bezel, and this configuration takes every available option upward except the dial, which is taken as far down as the reference allows. That is an unusual way to specify a watch. Most fully appointed pieces pair a bright case with a bright dial, on the reasoning that decoration ought to be consistent, and this one does the opposite deliberately. Both bracelets are offered against every dial the reference lists, so the Jubilee here was chosen rather than inherited.
The buyer for this wants a watch with a genuine dark center and does not want a plain one. Those two things are usually in tension, since dark dials tend to be specified alongside restrained cases, and this configuration refuses that pairing. What comes back is a watch that reads as very bright at a distance and as surprisingly sober close up, because the dial is most of the visible area once the watch is in the hand and almost none of the impression from across a room. The Jubilee is the element most likely to be reconsidered, since three broad links under the same dial and bezel produce something noticeably more formal and slightly less busy. Both are worth seeing. Buyers arrive here from the chocolate dial wanting a cooler dark ground, and from the plain-bezel aubergine wanting the watch to be visible before it is examined. The dial rewards the second group more slowly than they expect and usually wins them over anyway. The one thing a photograph will not show is how little of the dial registers from any distance.
