Slate swaps its case temperature when it gains stones. Plain, the ground belongs to platinum and white gold at 40mm and appears on no warm metal at any size. Set with diamonds, it belongs to Everose at 36mm and appears on no cool metal at all. The two versions therefore have no case in common, no size in common and no marker treatment in common, which makes them different watches sharing a name rather than two treatments of one ground. There is a third, slate ombre, which is Everose again at 40mm with Roman numerals. Three grey dials, three unconnected placements, and this is the cool one: flat slate on platinum with applied markers and nothing set anywhere on the watch.
The ground is a mid-tone grey with no metallic component and no gradient, holding a single value from any angle and in any room, and that constancy is the whole of its character. It is also the hardest neutral to execute, because a grey has no natural reference point the way a white or a black does and can drift warm or cool by a small amount and read as an error rather than a decision. This one sits slightly cool, which is what lets it hold its own against platinum rather than dissolving into it, since the metal reflects close to neutral and a warm grey would have separated badly. The markers are applied in white gold, standing proud with polished faces, and slate takes them and nothing else; the ground is never offered with Roman numerals and never set on a cool case. The case is 40mm with the flat wide lugs and low band the model uses throughout, the bezel is fluted, and the President bracelet runs from the lugs in polished semi-circular three-piece links closing on a concealed clasp. The bezel matters less on this configuration than on any other in the roster, and that is a point in its favor. A fluted ring on a grey dial produces very little event at the perimeter, since the lines it throws are close in value to the ground they fall against, so nothing draws the eye outward and the dial holds attention by default. On a bright or a dark ground the same bezel would have registered as a frame; here it registers as the edge of the watch and nothing more.
A mid-tone ground sits between the two easy cases for a calendar and inherits neither advantage. A dark dial swamps small discrepancies in a printed disc and a white one matches exactly; grey does neither, since it has no depth to absorb an error and no brightness to overwhelm it, so the frames carry more of the work of making two flat inserts sit convincingly on the surface. The day is spelled out in full at twelve in words rather than three-letter abbreviations, and at 40mm the arc occupies proportionally less of the dial than it does at the smaller size, which leaves the ring around it more open. The date sits at three under a lens set into the crystal. Both discs advance instantaneously at midnight rather than turning gradually through the preceding hour, and the movement carries roughly seventy hours off a full wind, the same at both diameters. Setting runs entirely through the crown, with no correctors cut into the case band. What the model declines to do is part of the same argument. No Day-Date has ever carried a second time zone, a chronograph or any indication beyond the calendar, so there is nothing on this dial except two windows, a ring of markers and the hands. On a ground with no color, no gradient and no material effect, that leaves a watch with almost nothing to look at, which is either the whole point or a reason to buy something else.
Thirteen grounds are offered on platinum at 40mm and only five cross to the platinum roster at 36mm: blue ombre, white, mother-of-pearl set with diamonds and ice blue in both its forms. Slate is one of the eight that stay, along with bright black in both forms, bright blue, meteorite, olive green, silver set and the paved ground with sapphires. Slate is also one of only two grounds in the entire range whose markers are fixed to applied and nothing else, the other being bright black, and both of them are 40mm dials on cool or neutral metals. Everywhere else the model either offers a choice, on the five neutral grounds, or dictates Roman numerals, as it does on every ombre. Two references carry this roster, 228236 with a fluted bezel and 228396TBR with a set one, and the fourteen configurations are identical across both. Slate also has an exact twin in white gold. Every ground on this roster except ice blue appears on at least one other metal, and slate is one of five shared specifically with white gold, alongside bright blue, meteorite, blue ombre and the paved dial with sapphires. So the same grey dial, the same applied markers and the same fluted bezel exist on a case that is visually close to indistinguishable at any normal distance. The difference is density and nothing else, which for a certain kind of buyer is precisely the transaction being made.
Slate on a fluted platinum case is the most anonymous watch the Day-Date makes, and that is what it is for. A grey dial on a grey-reflecting metal with a textured rather than a bright bezel gives an observer nothing to catch, and the piece reads at a distance as a plain steel watch, which no Day-Date has ever been. The weight is the only thing that gives it away and it only gives it away to whoever is wearing it. Collectors who already own the bright black or the white version of this reference tend to describe slate as the one they reach for most, because it is the least dependent on light and the least tied to any particular way of dressing. For a buyer who wants a 40mm platinum Day-Date and wants no part of the attention that usually comes with one, this is the configuration that gets furthest out of the way.
