Hermès’s Arceau timepiece, designed by its longtime artistic director Henri d’Origny in 1978, is perhaps the watch that best expresses the brand’s historical roots as a saddle maker: its asymmetrical lugs are shaped like stirrups and the sloping font of it hour numerals evoke the silhouettes of galloping horses. This year, Hermès unveils a new edition of the Arceau that also elegantly demonstrates the maison’s watchmaking expertise: the Arceau Squelette.
The Arceau Squelette’s rounded, 40-mm steel case houses a skeletonized self-winding movement and frames a smoked, sapphire dial through which that mechanism can be glimpsed. The dial is deep black on its outer edges, gradating to a transparent center, and features a beaded minute circle and silvered, openworked numerals in the signature Arceau style. Visible beneath the slim, lance-shaped hour and minute hands are the movement’s bridges, its wheels with anthracite treatment, and its openworked oscillating weight.
The Hermès Arceau Squelette is attached via its hallmark stirrup lugs to a matte-black alligator leather strap from Hermès’s own atelier and fastens to the wrist with a steel pin buckle. It is priced at $8,600 and available via the Hermès website as well as authorized dealers.
