A set bracelet gives a mother-of-pearl dial something it does not otherwise have, which is a fixed reference. Shell is the one ground in the range that will not hold a value, moving between white, cream and pale green as the wrist turns, and on most watches there is nothing nearby steady enough to measure that movement against. Here the bezel and the bracelet are both set with stones that return light the same way from any angle, so the dial is the only thing on the watch that changes and the change becomes obvious rather than subtle. This is the arrangement without gold on the dial: baguette-cut stones running the whole way around, nothing framing them, and the shell left to do everything else.
The material is the inner layer of a shell, cut thin and laid over a base rather than applied as a finish, and its stacked platelet structure splits light as it passes through and returns. Each slice is taken from a different part of a different shell, so the figure running across this one belongs to it alone. Against that the markers are uniform in a way the ground never is. Identical in cut, length and orientation, laid flat rather than raised, they return light in broad planes from one angle while the shell scatters it unevenly across the whole surface, and it is that difference in the character of the light rather than any difference in brightness that separates the ring from the field. Nothing accents the arrangement, so the dial has no axis of its own and the figure in the shell is the only thing giving it direction. The bezel is set around its full circumference, the bracelet through the center link of each three-piece section, and the case is 36mm in yellow gold with the wide flat lugs and low band the model uses throughout. Uniformity also changes what the bracelet contributes. With a ring of identical stones on the dial and identical stones down the center links, the two surfaces share a vocabulary that the bezel completes, so the setting reads as one treatment applied at three radii rather than as three separate decisions. The framed arrangement breaks that, since gold surrounds appear on the dial and nowhere else on the watch. Here nothing is framed anywhere, and the only variation between the three set surfaces is the geometry each one sits on.
Because the hour ring carries no accent, the two calendar openings become the only irregular shapes anywhere on the dial, and the eye goes to them directly instead of sorting them out from competing features. That is a practical advantage on a ground this active. The day is written out in full at twelve rather than shortened to three letters, which is the model reason for existing, and the date sits at three beneath a lens set into the crystal that enlarges the numeral without distorting the shell around it. Both openings are framed, partly because an unframed edge would show the laminate in section and partly because a flat printed disc needs a firm boundary against a surface that will not hold a single value for it to match. Both discs jump instantaneously at midnight rather than drifting through the preceding hour. The movement runs about seventy hours off a full wind, and setting happens entirely through the crown, with no correctors interrupting a flank that has set surfaces along both of its edges. Eight grounds are built at this reference, and mother-of-pearl is one of two offered in more than one marker arrangement, the ten baguette-cut stones here and a framed arrangement with baguettes at six and nine.
Mother-of-pearl set with diamonds is one of only three grounds reaching all four case metals and both sizes, and the other two are white and the paved dial. The marker treatment is where the reach ends: at 36mm both arrangements are offered on every reference, and at 40mm the gold-framed version disappears, leaving this one as the only mother-of-pearl at the larger size. So the arrangement here is the one the model carries everywhere, fitted to a bracelet the model offers almost nowhere, since the diamond-set President exists on three references in total, all 36mm, in Everose, yellow and white gold, with platinum and the 40mm case excluded. Every dial on this reference is available on either bracelet, and mother-of-pearl is one of only three grounds offered in more than one marker arrangement, so it produces four watches here before the bezel or the metal is considered. The other two references carrying the set bracelet are 128345RBR in Everose and 128349RBR in white gold, and each keeps its own metal-locked palette, so only the three colorless grounds appear across all three. Mother-of-pearl is therefore one of the few dials that can be specified with a set bracelet in any of the three metals, and the only one of those that changes appearance depending on which is chosen, since the shell picks up the tone of the metal around it. White looks identical on all three and the paved dial covers the surface completely. That makes this the ground worth seeing in the metal before deciding, and the one where the three references are not interchangeable.
Taking the gold out is what makes this the cooler of the two mother-of-pearl configurations on a warm case, and it produces a sharper watch than the framed version. Warmth still surrounds the dial on every side, in the case, the lugs and the bracelet links between the stones, but none of it crosses onto the dial, so the shell reads as a cool inset in a warm object rather than as part of a continuous whole. Collectors who want a fully set yellow gold Day-Date that does not read as entirely warm generally choose between this and dark grey, and the difference is that dark grey is flat and fixed while this dial keeps moving. That movement is what a set bracelet makes visible. For a buyer who wants the most decorated version of the reference and wants the dial to remain the most interesting thing on it, this is the configuration that manages both.
