Bright blue never touches a warm case. In every form the collection makes it, plain or set with diamonds, at every size from 31 mm through 42 mm, the ground appears on steel, on solid white gold, on platinum, on the steel and white gold construction and on the steel and platinum one, and on no yellow or Everose reference anywhere. Most locked grounds are locked warm, with champagne on yellow and chocolate on Everose; bright blue is locked the other way and locked completely. This variant is the set version at 36 mm, in a case of steel and white gold, under a fluted bezel, with a ring of diamonds in gold settings, on a Jubilee bracelet.
The set form also arrives late. Plain bright blue is available from 31 mm and the version with stones begins only at 36 mm, appearing on solid white gold, on platinum and on this construction, then continuing to 41 mm and stopping. So a buyer at 31 mm can have the ground and cannot have it set, which is the same shape of restriction bright black carries and the opposite of olive green, whose set form occupies the small sizes and disappears above 36 mm. Here the stones sit in gold collets at each hour position with no numerals among them, and against a saturated blue they read as points of white on a field that gives back very little of its own. The white gold of the construction is in the fluted bezel alone, since fluting is never cut into steel, and everything else is steel. There is a further consideration in how a saturated ground carries stones. A black dial gives diamonds maximum contrast and they read at full strength from any angle; a pale dial gives them competition and they appear and recede as the light moves. Blue sits between the two, dark enough to hold the settings clearly and colored enough that the ground stays visible rather than becoming a backdrop, so the dial reads as blue with stones on it rather than as a set dial that happens to be blue. That distinction is the reason to choose this ground over black on the same reference, and it holds only at a size with enough surface for the color to assert itself. Below 36 mm the collection does not offer the combination at all, which is the same threshold olive green and slate both show.
The plate is pierced at every hour position and nowhere else, which is a lighter load than the dials carrying numerals as well, and the reserve matters on a ground this saturated because a deep even surface shows any deviation beneath it as a change in tone rather than as a shadow. At 28 mm the ground does not appear at all and at 31 mm it appears only plain, so this is the smallest case in which the combination exists. Behind the dial the movement is self-winding and runs for roughly 70 hours away from the wrist against close to 55 in the smaller references, the difference being barrel volume in a physically larger movement. The date advances in one step at midnight and the crown screws home when the watch is not being set. There is also a reason the arrangement carries no numerals. Blue is one of the few grounds where applied gold would sit at an awkward value, brighter than the surface and duller than the stones, introducing a third level of light to a dial that works better with two. The settings and the ground are enough. The same holds on the solid white gold and platinum versions, none of which receive numerals at any size, and it is one of the few treatment decisions in this collection that appears to follow from the ground rather than from the case. The plate is pierced only at the hour positions, which leaves it more rigid than the numeral-carrying dials on this reference.
Cool-locked grounds behave differently from each other under a setting, which is worth knowing before assuming this one is typical. Pink gains size and platinum when set and never a warm case. Dark grey gains a warm case, reaching solid yellow gold at 31 and 36 mm. Bright blue gains neither: the stones extend the ground upward in size and leave its metals exactly where they were. Three grounds of the same temperature, one intervention, and three different outcomes, none of which can be predicted from the others or from anything the catalogue states directly. There is a further asymmetry at the top of the range. The set version of bright blue stops at 41 mm while the plain version continues to 42, so the ground outlives its own setting by one size, the reverse of what happens at the bottom where the plain version starts first. The stones occupy a window in the middle of the range rather than extending from either end of it, and a buyer moving in either direction from 36 mm loses them before losing the ground. Very few treatments in this collection are bounded at both ends that way, and none of the other grounds on this reference is.
The argument for this configuration is that it is the most saturated ground on the reference presented without any structure imposed on it. No numerals, no second marker form, a ring of settings and a field of blue, on a case that is steel apart from one ring of white gold. Collectors who choose it usually want a dial with real color that still reads as serious, and the cool construction is what keeps it there. The Jubilee adds movement below the case without adding detail to compete with the ground. Among the arrangements this reference offers it is the most direct, and the one where the ground is doing the greatest share of the work. It is also the configuration most likely to be bought on sight rather than from a specification, since a listing records a blue dial set with diamonds and conveys nothing about how much blue remains visible once the stones are in place.
