Watches & Wonders 2025: A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus in Honeygold
"I've never seen more Honeygold in one place than what I see right now on your wrist." A. Lange & Söhne CEO Wilhelm Schmid is talking about the watch he just produced from under his own cuff to let me try on. It happens to be sized perfectly for my wrist, and it's one of the brand's three major announcements for Watches & Wonders 2025: the sporty-ish Odysseus rendered in the brand's proprietary alloy, Honeygold, and matched to a rich brown dial.
This is the fifth extension of the Odysseus line (including 2023's chronograph), the fourth color/material variant, and the first A Lange & Söhne watch ever to feature a bracelet produced in Honeygold. We feel confident calling it the most scrumptious Odysseus watch to date.
When the celebrated German brand releases a new watch, it's never "merely" a new color or material variant. Each watch being handmade naturally limits the brand's production capacity (which can't even match demand). So you're unlikely to ever see A Lange & Söhne taking the approach many brands do and flooding their catalog with dozens of options attempting to cater to the tastes of every watch collector out there. No, as anyone who's ever handled one knows, every "Lange" feels very carefully conceived and, well, kinda special.
Honeygold is, first of all, used with considerable restraint. While the exclusivity factor is surely a bonus, "we only use it for limited editions for technical reasons," says Schmid. "It's a very hard gold, a lot harder than normal gold. It's very difficult to machine and to work with," he says. Not harder than steel or titanium, but "you can't press the material. Tiny things like that which are easy with steel, easy with white gold, you can't do with Honeygold. It would break." This model is only the 15th yet to feature the material since it was introduced 15 years ago in 2010.
A certain corner of the watch collecting world loves the idea of high-end luxury watches that are sporty and produced in steel rather than precious metal. The Odysseus seemed to initially be something like an answer to this demand — as well as just a Lange watch you could wear in more casual situations. It was first offered in steel, but subsequently in other metals such as titanium and white gold. Each of those more or less produced a similar chromatic effect and a consistent character. But the new Odysseus represents the first time for it to be offered in a colored gold.
In pictures, it's just a color gradient. But it's worth going out and finding a boutique in order to experience Honeygold's pale and changeable luster in person if you can. According to Schmid, the material was chosen for its comparative subtlety over the blingy, in-your-face effect the likes of yellow, rose or other gold alloys have. "We don't want to create that immediate impact," he says, "it should come on a second or a third view, not on a first."
The dial's brown, too, is just a matter of a color variant, but it's also rare among Lange watches (though not unprecedented). Heck, it's even uncommon among watches in general and often associated with the faded vintage "tropical" look. Paired to Honeygold, the warmly monochromatic look cherry-topped with a tiny note of red (the "60" at the top of the dial, as found on other models) is killer.
Put the various iterations of the Odysseus side by side, and you'll notice that there's a certain dial execution associated with precious metals. Here, as on the white gold models, the indices and subdial tracks feature something like a fluted texture surrounding matte centers. On the steel and titanium models, the same sections of the dial are rendered as concentric grooves with grained centers. It's perhaps natural that the precious metal variants include that little extra touch of pizzazz.
While even updates to existing models from A. Lange & Söhne tend merit fresh consideration for the brand's many fans, this is still the Odysseus you know aside from its case material and dial color — same case measurements (40.5mm x 11.1mm), characteristic digital day and date displays, 120m water resistance, automatic movement (L155.1) and other specs. It shows how the initial concept can evolve while remaining conceptually consistent: "it's meant to be used," Schmid insists, as he's steadfastly done since the Odysseus debuted six years ago.
Only 100 examples of the limited edition A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus in Honeygold will be produced and the price is "on request."
To learn more, visit A. Lange & Söhne, here.
