Loading...Among vintage watchcollectors, brown or as they call it tropical dials are currently the absolute hit. Tropical dials fetch sometimes several times that what a regular black dial would fetch.
So it comes to no surprise that brown dials are finding their way into modern watches. Now combine this with a rosegold case, and you have a stunner like this Zenith Elite Classic.
Housed in a 39mm flat rosegold case, this watch exudes elegance in its most timeless fashion.
Baselworld 2017 is possibly the greatest opportunity for bloggers to get to see watches first hand, touch them, strap them around the wrist and shoot pictures to fill their blogs. As my blog is just a work of passion and not my profession, at least not to date, I usually take the rest of the year to show the watches I got to see during Baselworld.
Zenith did something quite unexpected this year. The had a full photobox with professional lighting in their pressrooms which allowed me to shoot much better pictures than I usually do. Many other manufacturers have either darkrooms, or overly bright rooms and it is very difficult to shoot good pictures unless you bring a lot of equipment with you or a whole team. I am alone, and I do not like to bring more equipment than my camera and smartphone.
Due to the photobox setup, the pictures turned out quite nice. Some may consider them nearly sterile, but that is up to you, the readers of this contribution.
This watch is not easy to capture in terms of its natural dial colors. But the pictures are close.
I would wish more manufacturers receive us bloggers with photoboxes in the future. The quality of our photos would go way up, and that potentially means it may attract more customers in the future. Couldn’t it?
As Jean Claude Biver was leading Zenith for a while as interims CEO, he elected Julien Tornare as the new CEO to hear the manufacture. Zenith is one of the finest true manufactures along the lines of names like Jaeger LeCoultre and Audemars Piguet. Zenith is by many considered to have introduced the first automatic winding column wheel movements, called the “El Primero”. The name speaks for itself, however, collectors around the globe are fighting over the “facts” and if Zenith was truly the first, or if it was Seiko, Bulova or Heuer. Well, I do not want to embark on this road.
Zenith was founded in 1865 by Georges Favre-Jacot. The manufacture has been in continuous operation since. While the Quartz crisis provided problems, and different owners tried to realize their own agendas, the recent history was quite challenging. The stories about it would lead to far here. However, I visited the manufacture in Le Locle in 2016 and wrote about it.
What I like about this watch is that it is continuing the heritage of fine timepieces as Zenith made them in the 1960s. A classic extra thin case, and there is a choice of 5 different models, 3 in steel cases and 2 in rosegold cases. The size is just perfect, and while I had the watch on my wrist, I forgot to shoot a picture of it. But it felt wonderful on the wrist, very comfortable. True class.
Below I am showing you the main details about this timepiece, I took the pictures from the Zenith homepage.
Overview on the case and dial of the Elite Classic in Rosegold:
(picture derived from the Zenith homepage)
And last but not least, the movement details:
(picture derived from the Zenith homepage)
I will cover more Zeniths soon. Stay tuned.