H. Moser and Azuki Partner on a New Collaboration
It’s hard to believe, but with Labor Day just over the horizon, the first days of tolerable weather breaking into the mix, and the whole world picking up pace, there’s no denying that we’re fast approaching the end of summer. For many, the end of summer also marks the end of dive watch season, but we at Worn & Wound aren’t quite ready to pack up one of our favorite styles of watch for the year, and neither is one of our favorite brands, H. Moser & Cie. In fact, they’re doubling down with the release of what just may be the best collab dive watch of 2025, in partnership with anime-inspired digital art collective, Azuki.
Their latest collection — which Moser and Azuki have dubbed the “Elements of Time” — draws from Azuki’s Elementals NFT Collection, with four new dial designs inspired by the elements of Azuki’s Element Universe: Fire, Earth, Water, and Lightning. Playing host to these elemental dials — each of which boasts a unique blend of guillochage and fumé finishing — is the Pioneer Centre Seconds Rotating Bezel, a dive watch–esque sports watch that has long been one of Moser’s great under-the-radar offerings.
Though not technically a dive watch by the strictest ISO definitions, the Pioneer Centre Seconds Rotating Bezel certainly plays all the dive watch hits, and plays them well. First introduced as a stainless steel 42mm watch in 2019, the Centre Seconds RB has been subject to several reinterpretations over the years, including in collaborations with Collective Horology and, in 2022, with Govberg Jewelers in Philadelphia (who, in their new guise as The 1916 Company, have also partnered with Azuki and Moser for this release to offer an in-store experience for buyers).
This latest collection builds on that Govberg collab, which saw the model downsized to a more manageable 40mm and introduced a new titanium case and bracelet. That’s a very good thing, because that 2022 watch was great. I was working at WatchBox (Govberg’s sister company) at the time, and was fortunate to spend a lot of time with that watch around its launch, and I’m thrilled to see the format make its way back into the Moser catalog, albeit in exceedingly limited fashion.
Like the 2022 model, these latest Pioneers are powered by Moser’s in-house caliber HMC 200, an automatic time-only movement, and are slim and well-sized, at 11.4mm thick and about 47.7mm lug-to-lug. Plenty of other details hold consistent as well. The uni-directional ghosted bezel is 60-click, and assuming nothing has changed from the earlier model, is as tactile and solid as bezels come. Ceramic Globolight lume is bright and abundant, and the tapered H-link bracelet (incidentally, my favorite way into a bracelet from the Moser catalog) is comfortable and comes with an easy-to-use micro-adjust system built into the clasp.
As I mentioned, these watches are exceedingly limited, with just 24 pieces of each colorway slated for production. Of course, that only gets you to 96 watches total, so to bring it up to a nice even 100, Moser will also produce four one-off watches, which swap the HMC 200 movement for Moser’s HMC 804. Now, the downside here is that you lose the centre seconds, but in its place, you do get a visible tourbillon at 6 o’clock, all in a package with the same external dimensions, the same 120m of water resistance, and the same impressive dial options.
If you’re interested in any of these watches, Moser and Azuki have put together a special website where buyers can register their interest for any of the eight models in the “Elements of Time” collection. Registered interest does not guarantee purchase for any of these watches — which retail at $25,000 and $75,000 for the Centre Seconds and Tourbillon respectively — but Moser is recommending early registration for those with a strong pull towards any model.
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