The six references at this size split evenly on the rim, three smooth and three fluted, but only two of them actually offer a choice. The steel reference is built smooth and nothing else, the white gold combination fluted and nothing else, and it is the two warm combinations that appear twice, once each way, on identical dial rosters. Reference 126331 is the 41mm Datejust in a combination of stainless steel and Everose gold, carrying a fluted bezel, and this configuration pairs a bright black dial with a full set of Roman numerals and a Jubilee bracelet. It is the fluted half of the Everose pair.
The Jubilee is built from five-piece links with the gold running in three narrow inner strips, which multiplies the number of edges across the wrist and makes the bracelet flash rather than glow. The fluted rim does the same thing at the bezel, cutting a single band of gold into a repeating series of angled facets that catch and lose light as the watch moves. Between them the two components are doing the same job at opposite ends of the case, and this configuration is the only one on the reference where both are working at once. The dial underneath is bright black lacquer, glossy rather than sunray or matte, closer to a mirror than to a surface. Gold Roman numerals stand at the hours and read at very high contrast against it. What results is a watch with no still surface on it anywhere: the rim moves, the bracelet moves, and the dial reflects whatever is in front of it. That is the most active thing the reference builds, and none of the activity comes from a stone. Whether it is too much depends on the wearer, and the Oyster version of this same configuration exists precisely for people who find that it is, since broad brushed steel gives the eye somewhere to stop. The two bracelets also sit differently, because a three-piece link is stiffer across its width than a five-piece one and holds more of a fixed curve, while the Jubilee follows the wrist and moves with it.
Hours, minutes, running seconds and a date changing in one step at midnight. The self-winding movement in the 41mm case holds roughly seventy hours of running time, more than the smaller Datejust cases carry, and it is the specification here most likely to be noticed in ordinary use, since it covers a weekend in a drawer. The date sits at three under a magnifying lens and occupies the position a numeral would take, so the Roman set runs to ten characters. On a black ground the window is the one element working against the dial: a white disc on black lacquer is brighter than the gold numerals surrounding it, and the eye finds it first every time. Everything else about the arrangement pulls the other way. Roman numerals identify their own positions rather than merely marking them, which means the dial can be read from the characters without reference to the hands, and gold on black needs less light than any other pairing the reference offers. The result is a watch that reads instantly in a dim room and badly in direct sun, where the lacquer returns the source and the flutes add their own highlights across the crystal. The seventy hours the movement holds are the other thing to know, and unlike the dial they apply to every reference in the family: a weekend in a drawer and the watch is still running on Monday.
Bright black at this size comes two ways and the split follows the metal exactly: Roman numerals on the two Everose references and applied markers on the steel one, both yellow combinations and the white gold one. That pattern holds on every ground this reference borrows from the wider range. Chocolate and sundust, the two colors developed alongside the alloy, take applied markers instead; slate takes an arrangement built for it alone, with a baton standing in at nine. Across the range black is absent from the smallest cases entirely, appearing first at 31mm and running through 36mm, 40mm, 41mm and 42mm on twenty-nine references, with Roman numerals only at the smallest of those sizes and applied markers only at the two largest. Within this reference it is one of eight grounds and one of six carrying no stones. The smooth twin 126301 builds the same eight, so between the pair the rim is the only variable, and on a lacquered dial that variable does more than it does on any matte ground, because both surfaces are returning light and the rim decides whether they do it in one piece or in many. Six grounds are built at this reference and only chocolate and sundust are also offered set, so bright black sits with mint green, slate and white among the four the catalogue never sets.
This is the most emphatic watch the reference can be specified as. Cut gold at the rim, gold strips across the bracelet, and a dial that reflects everything in front of it, with the only restraint coming from the fact that nothing on it is set with stones. For a buyer who wants a two-metal watch to look like a two-metal watch, this is the configuration that says so most clearly. Anyone who wants the same dial with less happening around it should take the Oyster, where broad brushed steel absorbs some of the light the rest of the watch is throwing. Anyone who wants the rim to hold still should take the smooth twin 126301. And anyone who wants a dial that does not reflect its surroundings should take the slate or the white, both built on this reference and neither of them lacquered. Between those three grounds the reference covers most of what a buyer can reasonably want from an unset dial, and the lacquer is the only one of them that changes character with the room.
