Rolex debuted its Sky-Dweller collection in 2012. It’s not often that Rolex introduces a brand new model, so it’s no surprise that the novel Sky-Dweller was the biggest news at Baselworld that year. the Sky-Dweller was hard to swallow at first – it had a wide 42mm solid gold case with a rotatable fluted bezel that served to control the movement inside. Its dial is packed with information, including two time zones, a date window, and a month indicator – oh, and it’s also an annual calendar. That’s amazing, isn’t it?
Rolex fitted the first two models with matching oyster gold straps and the latter with a leather strap. Two years later, replica Rolex added three more gold versions with additional bracelet and leather strap options. For the first five years of the Sky-Dweller’s history, the watch was only available in an all-gold version, which was out of reach for most collectors. The pair of then-new Sky-Dweller replica watches were equipped with Oyster bracelets and Rolex offered a few Rolex offered some different dial colors.
Perhaps because the steel/white gold combination is more readily available than the previous all-gold version, onlookers can allow themselves to imagine wearing this watch. Perhaps it’s because Rolex used cleaner baton-style hour markers on the dial and dropped the more ornate Arabic and Roman numerals. Another possibility is that the market is increasingly appreciating the Sky-Dweller’s striking looks and mechanical complexity. After all, this is not the first time that a new Rolex model has taken several years to catch on with the public.
The local time is read by a traditional central hand, while the second time zone is read by a small inverted triangle located slightly off-center above the 24-hour disc. In addition to the traditional date window at 3 o’clock, Rolex also features 12 dial windows next to the Sky-Dweller’s hour markers, which are filled in red to indicate the current month. Finally, one of the most impressive features of the 9001 movements is that it is an annual calendar, which means that the Sky-Dweller can distinguish between months that have 30 or 31 days.
However, the addition of the white Rolex Sky-Dweller, and in particular the blue dial, thrusts the entire collection into the spotlight. What the blue dial offers is something different – wearable and seductive, luxurious and sturdy. It is everything that the Rolex Sky-Dweller did not represent when it was first released.