Roman numerals and a set bracelet almost never meet. Across the Day-Date range the marker treatment is dictated on most grounds rather than chosen: every ombre dial takes Roman numerals and nothing else, bright black and slate take applied markers and nothing else, and only five grounds in the whole model offer both. On yellow gold at 36mm that narrows to two dials carrying Roman numerals, white and green ombre, and green ombre carries them by default rather than by decision. Since the diamond-set President exists on three references in the entire range, this configuration is one of a very small number of ways a buyer can put Roman numerals on a Day-Date with a set bracelet, and the only one where the numerals were actually chosen.
The dial is flat white, opaque and unchanging, holding a single value regardless of the light, which is the quality that lets everything set around it be judged against a constant. The numerals are applied in gold rather than printed, tall and narrow with fine serifs and polished faces standing proud of the surface. Against a fixed white ground they hold their edges at any distance, which matters here because they are competing with two set surfaces rather than one. The bezel carries stones around its full circumference and the bracelet carries them through the center link of each three-piece section, laid on a compound curve and tapering toward a concealed clasp, so a band of light runs from the wrist up to the edge of the dial and stops. The day aperture at twelve and the date window at three are framed in gold on a surface the printed discs behind them match exactly, which is possible on flat white and on very little else in the roster. The case is 36mm in yellow gold with the low band and wide flat lugs standard across the model. The bracelet setting is not a straightforward addition to a standard President. The center link of each three-piece section is the narrowest and most curved surface on the whole watch, so stones set into it sit on a compound curve rather than a flat plane, and each has to be seated with its table parallel to the surface at that point or the line of light breaks where one tilts. The outer links stay polished and unset.
A set bracelet changes nothing about how the watch works, and the fact that it changes nothing is itself the achievement. The links articulate as they do on the standard President, the clasp closes flat and concealed with no additional thickness, and the taper toward the buckle is unaltered, so the watch sits and moves exactly as an unset one does. The function set is unchanged as well: the day spelled out in full at twelve in words rather than shortened to three letters, the date at three, and nothing beyond them. Both discs jump instantaneously at midnight rather than turning gradually through the hour before. The movement carries roughly seventy hours off a full wind. Setting runs entirely through the crown, and the absence of correctors in the case band matters more on this configuration than on a plain one, since an opening cut into the flank would sit between two set surfaces and the eye would find it before anything else. Eight grounds are offered at this reference and white is the only one of them without stones on the dial, while champagne and green ombre come both ways and the other five exist set alone. Every ground is available on either bracelet.
Ten grounds are offered on this case and seven exist on yellow gold alone; white is one of the three that travel, alongside mother-of-pearl set with diamonds and the paved dial. It is also the only unset ground on the reference offered in two marker treatments, so it produces four configurations across the two bracelets while champagne and green ombre produce two each. Three references carry the roster, 128238 with a fluted bezel, 128398TBR with a set one, and this one, which alone offers the bracelet as a choice, and all thirteen of its dial configurations are available either way. The set bracelet is confined to this reference, 128345RBR in Everose and 128349RBR in white gold, all at 36mm; platinum and the 40mm case never receive it. The other two references offering the bracelet carry different palettes, since each metal keeps its own grounds. 128345RBR is Everose, with rose, brown ombre, blue-green and green aventurine among its exclusives, while 128349RBR is white gold and takes the pastels and the blues. Only the three colorless grounds appear across all three references, so white is one of very few dials that can be specified with a set bracelet in any of the three metals. The marker treatment narrows it further, since only five grounds in the whole model offer a choice between applied markers and Roman numerals, and of those five only white and champagne appear on this case, with champagne offered here in a single treatment.
The combination is a genuinely unusual watch, and it works better than the description implies. Roman numerals carry a formality that ordinarily sits at the opposite end of the range from a set bracelet, and putting them together produces something neither element would have produced alone: a decorated watch that still reads as serious, and a formal watch that is unmistakably not conservative. Collectors who want the set bracelet but find the stone and paved dials too committed usually end up here or on the applied-marker version, and the difference between those two is real. Applied markers move in the same direction as the setting and produce a more unified watch; Roman numerals pull against it and produce a more interesting one. For a buyer who wants the bracelet without the watch becoming purely ornamental, this is the dial that holds the line. And because the marker treatment is a decision the range withholds on all but five of its grounds, choosing it here is one of the few places a Day-Date buyer gets to shape the dial rather than simply accept the one that comes with the ground.
