“You want to make a watch look more modern, a bit cooler? Just add black,” says Romain Marietta, head of products for Zenith. “Even if you have a new piece generally inspired by the watches of, say, the 1970s, it doesn’t matter – add black and it looks contemporary. Black is back.”

Indeed, not just a touch of black. Not just a black dial. We’re talking total black out – dial, case, strap, sometimes the indices and the luminescent material used too. It’s the 21st century choice in a market in which stainless steel now feels rather classical. Some might see it as sacrilegious to apply this treatment to certain iconic watches or interpret it as just a trend that brands jump on, rather than attempting to creating genuinely new designs. In any case, there’s no disputing the fact that blacked-out watches, love them or hate them, have become something of a phenomenon.

 

The shadow-like Royal Oak Double Balance Wheel Openwork, courtesy of Audemars PIguet.

 

“Times change, and four decades ago the watch industry probably would have embraced making a black watch, but it didn’t have the knowhow. We do now, and in many different ways too,” says Renato Bonina, Chief Sales Officer at Carl F. Bucherer, which has followed this path. “What else has changed? That today what the customer wants is much more important in driving what watchmakers offer. And the customer wants black.”

Certainly, watchmakers have tried all manner of means to give their watches a touch of the night. The idea might first be attributed to the German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, who throughout the 1970s appeared wearing an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 5402 that, in an early example of watch customisation, he appeared to have simply painted over. “It would have been very Karl Lagerfeld to do that,” notes Michael Friedman, head of complications for the watch brand. “It was a cool thing to do.”

 

Karl Lagerfield’s all-black Royal Oak, courtesy of