This reference carries a flat green and a graded green, both with Roman numerals, so the gradient is the only thing separating them. That is a rarer arrangement than it sounds. Most colors in the model appear once per case and the comparison a buyer would want to run is unavailable, since the alternative treatment lives on another metal or another diameter. Here the two sit side by side on the same reference with the same markers, the same bezel, the same case and the same bracelet, and a buyer choosing between them is choosing whether a color should hold one value or move across the dial. Nothing else about the watch changes.
The ground is a single green laid so its density rises continuously from the middle of the dial to the rim, with no seam anywhere along the transition. Green takes the treatment differently from blue, and the difference is worth understanding before choosing. 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 at the rim it goes nearly black in poor light. On yellow gold that darkness at the edge is what keeps the dial from being absorbed by the metal around it, and it is also what the set bezel lands against. A ring of diamonds sitting on the deepest part of a gradient produces the sharpest perimeter contrast the dial can offer, considerably sharper than the same ring above a flat ground. The markers are applied Roman numerals in gold, tall and narrow with fine serifs, standing proud with polished faces, positioned where the ground has already begun to darken. The case is 40mm with the flat wide lugs and low band the model uses throughout, and the President bracelet closes it in polished three-piece links. Evenness is what an ombre dial is judged on, and green makes the 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 in the application shows immediately as a band at a fixed radius. The dials that pass are the ones where no point can be identified as the place the tone changed.
A graded ground creates one problem the flat greens never face, and it sits in the apertures. Both discs are printed in a single value and a dial whose color changes continuously offers no single value to match, so whatever is chosen agrees with the ground at exactly one radius and differs everywhere else. Both openings sit well out toward the rim where the gradient has deepened, so the discs read lighter than the ground immediately around them, and the frames mark the boundary firmly enough that the eye reads two deliberate insets rather than a mismatch. The day is written out in full at twelve in words rather than shortened to three letters, which fixes the arc's width across every reference in the model. Both discs change instantaneously at midnight rather than creeping through the hour before, the movement runs roughly seventy hours off a full wind, and setting is done through the crown alone. The numeral ring carries one interruption and the eye learns to expect it. The character at three gives way to the date window while the day arc at twelve sits above the ring rather than displacing anything, so the sequence breaks at a single point. On a graded dial that asymmetry is easier to absorb than it would be on a flat ground, since the surface is already changing across its width.
Green ombre belongs to yellow gold and to no other metal, in both its plain and its set form, and the set version contracts to 36mm while the plain version reaches both sizes. That mirrors blue ombre exactly on the other side of the temperature line, since blue is confined to platinum and white gold and behaves the same way, contracting when stones go into it. The four ombres in the range each belong to a single metal and none of them crosses. Eleven grounds are offered on yellow gold at 40mm across thirteen configurations, seven of them exclusive to the metal including both greens, and the two extra configurations come from champagne and silver being offered with a choice of markers. Three references carry the roster, 228238 with a fluted bezel and 228348RBR and 228398TBR with set ones. Every ombre in the range takes Roman numerals and takes nothing else, here and on all three of the others, so the marker treatment was never a decision available on this dial. It is one of the clearest rules the model follows and one of the few that holds without exception. Green ombre is one of four grounds at this reference the catalogue never sets, and only the President bracelet is offered across all nine grounds it builds.
A gradient under a set bezel is the more assertive of the two ways to have this dial and it suits green better than it suits most grounds. The transition runs unbroken because nothing has been set into the dial itself, so the gradient keeps everything that makes it worth choosing, while the case supplies a brightness that a graded green can lack in poor light where the rim has gone dark. The division is clean: the dial works up close and the bezel works at distance, and the two rarely compete because they occupy different radii. Collectors who find the flat green too declarative and the fluted reference too quiet tend to arrive here. For a buyer who wants the most interesting dial on the yellow gold roster with a case willing to acknowledge it, this is the pairing. The flat green on the same reference remains the alternative, and between them they cover both ways this model has learned to use the color.
