As a company that either invented or popularized the diving watch, the GMT watch, the first waterproof watch, the first automatic watches, and much more, you could hardly underestimate Rolex’s impact on the history of watchmaking. But while its iconic sports watches like the Submariner, Daytona, and GMT-Master have been endlessly imitated, Rolex isn’t considered a trendsetter, preferring to ignore horological formation. It does its own thing by carefully and minimally replicating its old templates.
However, five years ago, Rolex introduced such an avant-garde collection that it still has a creative impact on the entire watch industry, and it did so in one of the least heralded models: the Oyster Perpetual in the Region. The idea was so simple that we barely noticed it becoming the industry norm: instead of slowly rolling out new dial colors one by one year over the years – which had been standard watch world behavior up until that point – Rolex launched an entire set of colorful dials at once in a complementary palette.
They were bright, bold, and almost childlike in their purity: coral red, green, turquoise, pink, and yellow. Rolex watchers immediately hailed them as a tribute to the so-called Stella dial day-date watches of the late 1970s and 1980s – wound up bright and unexpected, and also evocative of a louche, sybaritic age. But there was something more basic, more essential, and at least theoretically more attainable about the Oyster Perpetual collection.
It sparked imitators left, right, and center — and still does. At last week’s Geneva Watch Days, Zenith’s 2025 collaboration with Swiss furniture maker USM would qualify as a textbook example : A full set of bold, color-blocked dials on an otherwise traditional stainless steel sports watch.
Earlier this year, Oris’s Large Crown Pointer Date set a similar note. In 2023, archrival Omega debuted Seamaster Aqua Terra models with similar hues to Rolex’s opening escapement; other mid-tier brands, including Breitling and Tag Heuer, followed a similar mold .
