Slate is the coolest dial Rolex offers on an Everose gold Day-Date, and putting it inside a diamond-set bezel produces the most deliberately unresolved configuration on the reference. Reference 128345RBR is the 36mm Day-Date in Everose gold with a factory diamond bezel, and this version pairs it with a grey sunray dial set with diamonds in gold settings and baguette-cut diamonds at six and nine o'clock. Warm case, cool dial, white bezel. Nothing on the watch agrees with anything else, and the diamonds are what stop that reading as an accident, because the stones bridge the rose gold and the grey by carrying the case metal into the dial as points of light.
The 36mm case is Everose gold, the alloy Rolex introduced in 2005 with its copper content stabilized so the pink tone stays fixed rather than drifting toward yellow over decades. The bezel carries diamonds in place of the fluting the Day-Date normally wears, which removes the model's most identifiable feature and substitutes a continuous ring of white stone. The slate dial is a sunray, brushed radially from the center so it runs from a light grey at one angle to a deeper charcoal at another, and that movement is essential on a dial carrying no color: without it a neutral field reads flat and the setting has nothing to sit against. Hour markers are diamonds in gold settings around the perimeter, and baguette-cut stones replace the markers at six and nine, so the dial carries two stone geometries and a vertical axis. Because the marker settings are gold rather than white metal, each stone sits inside a warm ring, and that detail is the mechanism by which a grey dial and a rose gold case are reconciled at all. The day is spelled in full at twelve, the date at three under a magnifying lens. The President bracelet is Everose gold with semi-circular three-piece links and a concealed folding Crownclasp. A grey sunray carries no color to disguise an inconsistency in the brushing, so a flat patch reads as a defect, and each diamond sits inside a warm gold ring distributing dozens of rose gold points across the field.
Two indications and nothing more: a day of the week spelled in full and an instantaneous date, with secure rapid-setting for both and a stop-seconds function for exact time setting. That has been the whole Day-Date since 1956, when it became the first wristwatch to display the day as a full word, a problem that required a disc larger than existing calendar layouts could accommodate and around which the movement was designed rather than adapted. Both indications jump instantaneously at midnight rather than creeping through the change. The day disc is available in a wide range of languages and is fixed to the individual watch at manufacture rather than selectable afterward, making the language a permanent characteristic of the piece. Adjustment runs through a screw-down crown with a double sealing system, with no correctors on the case flank and nothing needing a tool. The self-winding movement carries approximately seventy hours of power reserve, so both calendar indications hold through a weekend unworn. There is no second time zone and no chronograph. Eleven grounds are built at this reference and that display is identical beneath every one of them, so the dial and its markers are the whole of the difference between one configuration and the next.
Grey and slate dials have been in the Day-Date range for decades and have consistently been ordered by a smaller share of buyers than the warm neutrals, which is precisely why they retain a following among collectors who track the less obvious configurations. The pairing with rose gold is more recent than the dial color itself, because Everose gold only arrived in 2005 and the model's warm references before that were predominantly yellow gold. Rolex has offered factory diamond bezels on the Day-Date since the 1960s as standing catalogue options. Within the Everose gold 36mm range this sits above the fluted-bezel 128235 and below the 128395TBR, and the same slate dial is offered on this reference with a diamond-set bracelet as well. Slate takes framed hour markers with baguette-cut stones at six and nine, an arrangement shared here with brown ombre, rose and mother-of-pearl, while three grounds take ten baguette cuts, two take Roman numerals at six and nine, and the paved dial takes sapphires. Only three of the eleven grounds can be had without stones at all, so a set dial is the normal condition of this reference rather than an upgrade to it. The plain grounds sit at the edge of the roster rather than at its center, and two of the three are never offered set at all.
This configuration suits collectors who find tonal watches boring and fully white ones sterile. A cool dial inside a warm case with a white bezel gives the eye three distinct things to read, and buyers who choose it are generally choosing complexity over harmony. It appeals to established collectors who already own the rose-colored and mother-of-pearl configurations and want the one that argues with itself, and to buyers who want a gem-set Day-Date they can wear with a wider range of clothing than a warm dial permits. Slate is ordered less often than white, silver and champagne across the whole model line, so it surfaces less frequently than its catalogue position suggests, and collectors who want it generally take one when it appears rather than choosing their moment. One further point bears on the configuration, and it concerns wearability. A cool dial widens the range of clothing a warm-metal watch works with, which is the practical argument for slate over the rose-colored and mother-of-pearl configurations on the same reference, and it is the reason collectors who own several Everose Day-Dates often reach for this one most.
