Mint green takes Roman numerals on Everose and applied markers on everything cooler. At 36mm the three Everose references carry the ground with a full set of characters while the steel reference and the two white gold combinations carry it with batons, and the three yellow references do not build it at all, which holds at every other size the ground reaches as well. The same split appears at 41mm in the same direction, so the marker set on a mint dial identifies the case metal without anything else being known. Reference 126231 is the 36mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold, carrying a fluted bezel, and this configuration pairs a mint green dial with a full set of Roman numerals and an Oyster bracelet.
The case is thirty-six millimeters in steel with an Everose gold bezel, crown and center links, and the rim is fluted, cut into repeating angled facets. The dial is mint green, a pale cool green light enough that at any distance it reads as an off-white, and the color only asserts itself close up or in direct light. Roman numerals in gold stand at the hours. A pale green against rose gold is the widest temperature gap this reference produces, wider than anything the yellow or white gold cases at this size manage: chocolate and rose were built to agree with the alloy, slate and the shell sit alongside it without argument, and mint is the one ground that is actively cool inside a warm case. The numerals are what hold the two halves together, putting warm metal inside the crystal where there would otherwise be none. The Oyster is built from three-piece links with the gold as one continuous center line between broad flat sections of brushed steel, so most of the wrist is cool and the gold is concentrated in a rim, a crown and a single stripe, which suits a cool dial better than a distributed bracelet would. The three-piece link is also stiffer across its width than the five-piece alternative, so the bracelet holds a fixed curve and the watch sits squarer on the arm rather than following it.
Hours, minutes, running seconds and a date changing in one step at midnight rather than easing into the following day. The self-winding movement in the 36mm case holds roughly seventy hours of running time, the same reserve the 41mm cases carry and considerably more than the smaller ones, which run a movement of their own. The date sits at three under a magnifying lens and takes a position that would otherwise hold a numeral, so the Roman set runs to ten characters. On a pale ground the window is close enough in value to the dial that only the frame marks the break. What the numerals give a light dial is weight: twelve applied batons on a ground this pale would leave the surface almost undivided and the watch would read as a wash of color, while ten full characters break the dial into sections and give the eye something to measure the color against. That is the argument for the arrangement on this ground specifically, and the references building it that way are the warm ones, where the characters are gold and carry enough presence to do the work. The seventy hours the movement holds are the other specification worth knowing, and they belong to this generation of the case rather than to the dial: a weekend in a drawer and the watch is still running on Monday.
Mint green is a recent addition and it is distributed unevenly. It appears at 31mm on five references, at 36mm on six, at 41mm on four and at 42mm on one, and at none of those sizes is it built on a yellow case. Within this reference it is one of nine grounds across eleven configurations, and one of the few that is neither the alloy's own color nor a neutral. Chocolate and rose belong to Everose and are built on the three Everose references alone at this size; mint is borrowed from the cooler end of the range and behaves differently in this case than it does in the ones it was drawn for. The nine references at 36mm divide one per metal and bezel with nothing repeated, and this is the fluted Everose one, with 126201 domed and 126281RBR set with diamonds carrying the same nine grounds, so a mint dial in this alloy at this size exists in six watches across three rims and two bracelets. That is a wider field than most grounds get at this size, and it exists because the two warm combinations are the only ones at 36mm built with all three bezels; the steel reference has one and the white gold one has two.
This suits a buyer who wants a warm two-metal watch with a cool dial in it, which is a narrower proposition than it sounds and the reason the ground is built here at all. Mint is pale enough to pass for white at conversational distance, so the piece reads as a conventional Everose Datejust until it is looked at directly, and the Roman numerals keep it from reading as casual. On an Oyster the balance tips further toward the cool side, since the bracelet keeps most of its surface in brushed steel. Anyone who wants the watch warmer should take the Jubilee, or the chocolate ground, which was made for this metal rather than borrowed into it. Anyone who wants the same dial with applied markers will have to leave the Everose references entirely, since all three of them build mint with numerals and nothing else. And anyone who wants the rim quieter should take the domed 126201.
