HANDS-ON: Grail Watch 3 Trilobe Une Folle Soirée ‘Wild Night’

Early last year Wei Koh launched his ‘Grail Watch’ concept. A watch project focused on small limited edition pieces made by independent brands, today’s post is about the third piece that has come out of these collaborations, the first two being with Ressence and Franck Muller.

The ‘Une Folle Soirée’ takes on Trilobe’s ‘Une Folle Journée. Released last year – it took the patented three ring concept (one each for hours, minutes and seconds, all rotating counter clockwise with fixed indicators) and literally lifted them up, with the rings flying at 10.2mm and balanced by nine pillars.

The case is grade 5 titanium and measures 40.5mm with a thickness of 17.8mm because of the domed bezel/ sapphire crystal. It has a mix of mirror-polished and satin-brushed finishing. The crown is push-down.

The Une Folle Soirée ‘Wild Night’ is powered by the automatic Calibre X-Centric³, developed with Cercle des Horlogers. Featuring a micro-rotor, it beats at 28,800 VPH and has a power reserve of 48 hours. There is lume on the edges of the plates and bridges.

How does the new watch differ from the original Une Folle Journée? Well the lume on the plates and bridges are a hint, as is the name. It’s about luminosity (unfortunately I saw the watch in the day time so I was unable to take lume photos) – the titanium rings on the dial have DLC coating and the pad-printed numerals on them have Super-LumiNova, as does the pointer.

In wearing the watch, the domed crystal is obviously the biggest concern both size-wise and in terms of accidental damage. Its owner has had no problems with the latter, but with regards to the former, when I tried it, I did not find it to feel too high, and the protrusion did not make the watch feel too big. It is, simply, a fun cool thing, and that’s what it’s intended to be.

If you have the funds, getting a Grail Watch with such a small run may seem like an impossibility for the ‘average person’ but it’s not, so don’t give up hope – the owner of this watch simply heard about the release in time.

Coming on a leather strap with a titanium pin buckle, the 25-piece limited edition Grail Watch 3 was EUR 22,000.



Categories: Hands-on, Limited Editions, Trilobe, watches

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