Rose gold has a quiet problem that most people never think about, and solving it is the hidden story of this watch. The warm pink blush of rose gold comes from copper, which is mixed into the gold to give it that colour. But copper is reactive, and over many years, with exposure to air, chlorine, sweat, and sunlight, it can slowly leach and oxidise at the surface, so that traditional rose gold has a tendency to fade, its lovely pink hue drifting paler and more washed-out with age. For a watch meant to last generations, that is a real flaw, and it is exactly the flaw Rolex set out to abolish. The pink metal on this Datejust is not ordinary rose gold but Everose, Rolex's own patented pink-gold alloy, and the clever trick is the addition of a tiny amount of platinum to the mix. That trace of platinum locks the structure of the alloy and stabilises the copper, so that the colour is held fast and simply does not fade. Everose keeps its warm, rosy glow for the life of the watch, as rich in decades to come as the day it was cast. It is a small, invisible piece of metallurgy, and it is the reason this watch will still look exactly like this long after an ordinary rose-gold watch would have gone pale.
That permanent pink is shown off here in one of Rolex's most enduring pairings, the two-tone combination the brand calls Rolesor. This is the marriage of two metals in one watch, the brand's hardy steel and its warm Everose gold used together, the steel for the bulk of the case and the outer links of the bracelet, the Everose for the fluted bezel, the winding crown, and the centre links that run down the middle of the band. Rolesor is a genuine Rolex signature, trademarked by the house decades ago, and its appeal is the way the two metals play against each other, the cool bright steel and the warm rosy gold alternating down the wrist, so the watch is at once sporty and dressy, understated and rich. It lets the wearer have the glow of gold without committing to a watch made wholly of it, the precious metal woven through the steel like a warm thread.
Against those two metals the dial is a deep, pure black, about the most versatile and legible background a watch can have, and it does something lovely with the Everose: the warm pink of the hands and markers glows against the black far more vividly than it would against a pale dial, so the gold seems to float and warm the whole face. Set into the black in place of the usual applied batons are diamonds marking the hours, small points of white fire that catch the light as the wrist turns, a discreet touch of luxury on an otherwise sober and classic face. The Everose hands sweep crisply over the black, and at three o'clock the date sits in its window beneath the small magnifying Cyclops lens on the crystal, that little bubble of glass that enlarges the date and is among the most recognisable of all Rolex features.
The bracelet is the Jubilee, the supple five-piece-link band that Rolex created in 1945 especially for the launch of the Datejust and named for the brand's own fortieth anniversary, its jubilee year. With its fine links and gentle drape it is the dressier of the Datejust's bracelet options, and rendered here in two-tone Rolesor, with the Everose centre links catching the light between the steel, it is the natural partner to this watch, flattering and formal and instantly recognisable. On the wrist it moves beautifully, the alternating metals shifting and glinting with every turn.
For all its elegance the watch is a Rolex to the core, built on the Oyster case with its screw-down crown and sealed back for genuine water resistance, and this is the classic thirty-six-millimetre size, the original Datejust dimension from 1945 and still, for a great many people, the perfect proportion, neither large nor small, equally at home on any wrist and under any cuff. Beneath the dial sits Rolex's current-generation self-winding movement, certified to the brand's Superlative Chronometer standard, with a long power reserve and the robustness and accuracy that define a modern Rolex calibre. The date still clicks over crisply at midnight, the complication the Datejust introduced in 1945 as the first self-winding wristwatch to show the date in a window, now driven by a movement far advanced over the one that started it.
That is what makes this Everose Rolesor Datejust so quietly special. Its warm pink gold is not ordinary rose gold at all but Rolex's own patented, platinum-stabilised Everose, engineered never to fade, so the glow that pairs so beautifully with the steel and the black diamond dial will stay exactly as rich for the whole life of the watch. Two-tone and timeless, dressed with a discreet scatter of diamonds and strung on the classic Jubilee, held to the original perfect size the model has worn since 1945, it is the everyday Rolex given a warm and permanent heart, elegant now and built to stay exactly this elegant for good.
