Setting a slate dial means setting two numerals and leaving ten alone. The reference uses two different arrangements on the grounds that carry stones: on black, chocolate and shell the diamonds replace all twelve markers, while on slate and rose only the Roman characters at six and nine are worked in gold and set. Those are opposite ideas about what a set dial is, and slate takes the narrower one. What results is a watch that reads as unset until the eye reaches the vertical axis, which on a grey ground is a longer delay than it would be on black, where any stone announces itself immediately. That delay is the entire character of the configuration, and it is why two set numerals on grey and twelve set markers on black are not points on the same scale but different propositions altogether.
The ground is a flat mid-tone grey, applied with no metallic component and no gradient, holding one value in any light and from any angle. Against Everose it sits deliberately cool, since a warmer grey would be absorbed by the case and the two-tone construction would collapse into a single reading. The markers are Roman numerals applied in gold, and at six and nine the characters themselves carry diamonds set into the gold. Setting a numeral is a different problem from setting a dial: the character is narrow, so the stones follow its strokes rather than filling an area, and each seat is cut along a shape drawn to be read rather than to hold anything. The numeral has to survive as a numeral, and here it does, registering as a six or a nine before it registers as a setting. The bezel is fluted, and the case is 36mm with the Oyster bracelet running from it in broad three-piece links, the outer two in steel and the middle in Everose. The gold on this watch is distributed across four elements of quite different sizes: a fluted rim, a broad strip down the bracelet, twelve applied numerals and the settings inside two of them. That range of scales is what keeps a two-tone watch from reading as a metal sample, and it is also why the smallest of the four, the stones in the numerals, register as a detail rather than as the point of the piece.
The date at three is the whole of what the model does beyond the time, and on a dial with a numeral at every hour the window has to take one of their places. The character at three gives way to it and the remaining eleven stay at full size rather than being compressed to fit, which is the better of the two available solutions even though it costs a numeral. A printed disc matches a mid-tone grey adequately and never exactly, so the frame carries more of the boundary than it would on a dark or a pale ground. There is no day aperture and no second indication, and none has ever been added to a Datejust across the model's run. The date sits beneath a lens set into the crystal and the movement runs roughly seventy hours off a full wind, with the calendar advanced by running the hands rather than through a corrector cut into the case band. Set numerals also read more consistently across angles than set markers do. A stone standing alone on a dial can flare or go dark as the wrist turns, while one seated inside a gold character has the metal around it holding a fixed outline, so the marker keeps its shape whatever the stone is doing.
Slate carries three arrangements on this reference, more than any other ground here, and the three Everose constructions are the only places in the 36mm range where that is true. Six of the nine references offer slate in a single arrangement and nothing else. White follows with two treatments here, and everything else on the roster arrives fixed. Chocolate and rose are Everose exclusives at this size and appear on no other metal, which gives this case a palette the yellow and white constructions do not share. Across the size the nine references divide by metal and bezel with no combination repeated. Chocolate and rose are exclusive to the Everose references and appear on no other metal at this size, so the palette here is not the one the yellow or white constructions carry, and slate is the only ground shared across all of them that gets more than one arrangement. A buyer comparing the two setting approaches on paper sees two dials at similar counts of stones; comparing them in the hand shows one watch that declares itself and one that does not. Slate and rose are the two grounds here whose set versions take the Roman characters at six and nine.
Two set numerals on a grey ground is the most restrained way this reference puts diamonds on a dial, and it is chosen by people who want the stones present rather than visible. A fully set dial commits the watch to being read as jewelry from any distance; two set characters are invisible until the wrist turns and then register as a detail. On slate the restraint compounds, since the ground gives the stones less to reflect against than black or white would, and the result is a watch that carries diamonds and does not look as though it does. The Oyster holds the whole piece still and lets those two points be the only thing that moves. For a buyer who wants an Everose Datejust with stones and no announcement, this is the arrangement that manages it. The fully set grounds on this reference, black and chocolate and shell, are the alternative for anyone who wants the opposite, and the gap between the two approaches is wider than a specification suggests.
