This ground changes temperature as the case grows. At 28 mm aubergine is offered on Everose gold and on the steel and Everose construction and on nothing else, a warm-metal dial without exception. At 31 mm it adds solid white gold and the steel and white gold construction, so both temperatures are available and a buyer chooses. At 36 mm the warm cases are gone and the ground survives on the steel and white gold construction alone. Two references carry it at this size and this is one of them. This variant pairs that dial with an Oyster bracelet, under a fluted bezel, with gold Roman numerals at six and nine set with stones.
An Oyster is the flatter and more literal of the two bracelets and it suits a ground this ambiguous. Aubergine reads as near-black across a room and resolves into purple only at closer range, so the watch has a delayed disclosure built into it, and a bracelet that adds its own detail would compete with the moment the dial declares itself. Three-piece links carry a single sweep of light and stay out of the way. What is left above them is a dark surface, a ring of settings, two gold numerals brighter than the rest, and the fluted white gold bezel that holds the only precious metal on the exterior since fluting is never cut into steel. The case sides, lugs and bracelet are steel throughout, and the date sits at three beneath its magnifying lens. There is a practical consequence to a dial that keeps its color in reserve. A watch which reads as dark from any distance is a watch that behaves differently depending on who is looking at it and from where, and on this ground that is not a subtlety but the central fact of the design. Across a table it is a steel watch with a black set dial. On the wrist of the person wearing it, at reading distance and turned toward light, it is purple. Owners of this reference consistently describe that as the reason they chose it, and it is also why the configuration is almost never chosen from an image, where only one of the two appearances can be shown at a time.
The dial plate is worked at each hour position for the settings and twice more for the numerals, which are anchored differently and sit at another depth, and it must still lie flat beneath the hands. That is why the 28 mm version of this ground has the ring alone and no numerals: the smaller plate has no reserve for both. Behind the dial the movement is self-winding and holds roughly 70 hours off the wrist against close to 55 in the 28 and 31 mm cases, the difference being barrel volume in a physically larger movement. The date jumps in a single instant at midnight rather than sliding into place over the surrounding hour, and the rotor winds as the wrist moves. The numerals also carry more weight on this ground than they would on a pale one. Against a surface that reads as near-black in most conditions, the gold at six and nine is often the only thing visible on the dial from a distance, so the two positions establish the entire layout until the viewer is close enough for the settings to register. On a silver or champagne ground the same numerals sit within a field of comparable brightness and never take on that role. Here they do the work of the whole dial for most of the time the watch is being seen.
A ground that migrates from warm cases to cool ones with size is not something the collection does elsewhere. Most dials either hold their metal family throughout, as champagne and chocolate do, or widen from a narrow base as dark grey does when set. Aubergine does neither: it starts on Everose, opens briefly to both at 31 mm, and finishes on the steel and white gold construction alone. Whatever the reasoning, the effect is that the same dial name means a warm watch at the smallest size and a cool one at the largest, and a buyer moving between sizes is not moving between versions of one watch. That has a consequence worth planning around. A buyer who owns the 28 mm version on Everose and later wants the same dial at 36 mm cannot have it on a warm case at all, and one who starts here and moves down cannot have it on a cool one. The ground exists in both temperatures only at 31 mm, which makes that diameter the single point of overlap in a range of five sizes. Anyone building around this dial should understand that the case decision is being made once rather than being available again at another size.
The argument for this configuration is that it puts a ground with no plain form and no equivalent elsewhere into the most restrained case available to it. Steel body, flat bracelet, one ring of white gold at the bezel, and a dial that is doing something no other dial in the collection attempts. Collectors who choose it are usually buying the ground and treating everything else as a frame for it, and the Oyster is the version of that frame which contributes least. Among the arrangements this reference offers it is the most particular, and the one whose absence would be hardest to substitute for anywhere else in the range. It is also the version of this ground that sits furthest from where it began, since the same dial at the smallest size arrives on Everose gold and reads as a warm watch entirely, and nothing about the two suggests they are the same design.
