The two ombre grounds in this range mirror each other exactly across the temperature line. Green ombre is offered on yellow gold and nothing else; blue ombre is offered on platinum and white gold and nothing else. Each of them reaches both case sizes in its plain form. Each of them contracts to 36mm the moment stones go into the dial. Same structure, same restriction, opposite metals, and no overlap between them at any point. This configuration is the warm half of that pair in its restricted state: a green gradient set with diamonds, on a yellow gold case, at the only size it is made in.
An ombre ground is one color laid down so its density rises continuously from the middle of the dial to the rim, with no visible step anywhere in the transition. Green takes the treatment differently from blue. A pale green and a deep green read as further apart than a pale and a deep blue do, so the gradient here is more conspicuous, closer to two related tones meeting than to one color gaining weight, and the effect at the rim is nearly black in poor light. On a yellow gold case that darkness at the edge is what keeps the dial from being swallowed by the metal around it. Hour markers are set into gold surrounds with baguette-cut stones at six and nine, and their placement interacts with the gradient in a way worth noticing: the settings sit in the middle band where the ground is still light, while the baguettes sit further out where it has darkened, so the same stones read at different intensities depending on where they fall. The case is 36mm in yellow gold, the bezel is set with diamonds around its full circumference, and the President bracelet completes it. Judging an ombre dial comes down to the evenness of the transition, and green makes that judgment easier than blue, because the eye will catch a step in a green gradient that it would miss entirely in a blue one. Any unevenness shows up immediately as a band at a fixed radius.
The calendar sits inside the gradient rather than beside it. The day arc at twelve is cut high on the dial where the ground is already deepening, and the date window at three sits at a comparable radius, so both openings are surrounded by green at close to its darkest. The discs behind them are printed a single flat value, because no rotating disc can carry a gradient that would align with the dial at every position, and the frames mark that boundary firmly enough that the eye reads two deliberate insets rather than a match that failed. The day is spelled out in full rather than abbreviated, which is what the model exists to do and the reason its upper aperture is as wide as it is. Both indications change instantaneously at midnight rather than turning gradually through the preceding hour. The movement runs roughly seventy hours off a full wind, and everything is set through the crown, with no correctors interrupting the case band. Eight grounds are offered at this reference and the display is identical beneath all of them. Green ombre is one of two grounds here that the catalogue lists both plain and set, champagne being the other, and its set version takes framed hour markers with baguette-cut stones at six and nine.
Yellow gold at 36mm is the most self-contained corner of the model. Ten grounds are offered on the metal at this size and seven of them exist nowhere else, green ombre in both its forms among them, alongside champagne in both forms, dark grey set, bright green set and carnelian set. Only white, mother-of-pearl set with diamonds and the paved dial travel outside the metal. Three references carry the roster in full, 128238 with a fluted bezel, 128348RBR and this one, with identical dials across all three and the bezel as the variable. What separates green ombre from most of its neighbors on that list is that it is the only green in the range offered as a gradient. Bright green is set only and flat; olive green is plain only and belongs to the cool metals, never touching yellow gold at all; plain green is a 40mm yellow gold dial and appears at no smaller size. Four greens, four different rules. There is one further variable, and it exists on only one of the three references. 128348RBR is offered with either the standard President bracelet or a diamond-set version of it, which doubles its configuration count, while 128238 and this reference carry the plain bracelet alone. So a yellow gold buyer at this size is choosing along three axes that do not all apply at once: the ground, the bezel across three treatments, and on one reference the bracelet as well. It is worth mapping before settling on anything, because the same dial can appear on six or more distinct watches depending on how far the specification runs, and the ground is the only axis that stays constant across all of them.
Green ombre set with diamonds is the most distinctive dial the yellow gold references make, and it is bought by collectors who want a gold Day-Date that is unmistakably a modern one. The gradient is a recent kind of decision in this model, and it reads that way on the wrist: nothing about a green that deepens toward the rim resembles the champagne and white dials that defined the reference for decades. Against yellow gold the color is also doing something a cool case would not permit, since green and gold sit close enough in the spectrum to read as related rather than as opposed, and the watch holds together as one warm object with depth in the middle of it. For a collector choosing between this and the plain version of the same ground, the trade is straightforward. The plain dial reaches the larger case and shows the gradient unbroken; this one keeps the gradient and adds the stones, and gives up the choice of size to do it.
