Vincent Perriard, the CEO ofHYT, is clear: “giving a pre-existing caliber a more or less skull shape and presenting it as a new piece is not exactly our style.” True, his thing is to break pre-established rules, and you don't need to be an expert in watchmaking to realize at first glance that theHYT Skullis not an exception. Faithful to what has been called the DNA (and which should be translated as “essence”) of the brand, HYT once again uses a fluid in the new Skull to mark the hours, not the minutes, but going one step further this time it has had to rethink the entire mechanism so that the angular shapes of the skull do not influence the precision during the 12 hours it marks.
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The use of a capillary tube to mark the hours is a concept that HYT and its partners master, but that does not mean that everything is done, and bending a tube less than a millimeter thick up to almost 90º to give it that skull shape is not only arduous and delicate work but for the watch to have a minimum of reliability it is necessary to recalculate the force and pressure that will be delivered by the two tiny bellows that give life to the fluid: “Its vertical structure, developed for the HyT1, gives us However, it served as a starting point for him.HYT Skull“We had to re-study how to generate enough force to move the fluid through those very closed angles while ensuring that it kept the correct time, graduating its speed but above all its regularity.”
Recovering the essence of time
In keeping with the apparent primitiveness of the skull, theHYT Skulldispenses with the minute indication. This has the effect of concentrating the gaze exclusively on the flow of the fluid through the perimeter capillary and on the forceful shapes of the non-existent sphere... Furthermore, and contrary to what has been common in HYT (can we talk about "habit" in this brand?) the mechanism that is almost hidden precisely by the skull with the exception of the two
bellows, which in this version move constantly like a tiny heart. And those eyes speak: the right one gradually darkens as the 65-hour power reserve nears its end while the left one shows – very little – a few continuous seconds that say the watch is “alive”. It is the first time that you do not look at the time on a wristwatch: it is time that looks at you. As if that were not enough, it is announced as retrograde hours: the truth is that I really want to see it live.
A family air
While preserving the essence (or DNA) of HYT, with the Skull we wanted to go one step further: not only has the movement been innovated, but a new 51mm case with angular and sharp lugs has been designed and built for it. The crown guard (now located between 2 and 3 o'clock) has been removed and inserts have been added to the case, allowing for multiple combinations in the future.
Two very limited series make up theHYT Skull: 50 units in titanium with DLC treatment and green fluid and 25 units combining rose gold with titanium with DLC and red fluid. Available from May 2015. Price at the moment "on request", but I will update it after Baselworld.
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