Czapek
Promenade Transparencies Aqua Blue

The Promenade Transparencies Aqua Blue explores Czapek’s fascination with mechanical transparency through a new chromatic expression. Limited to just 38 pieces, it pairs a smoked sapphire dial with the fully skeletonised Calibre SXH7, allowing the eye to travel deep into the architecture of the movement.

Two years after the original Viridian Green edition, Aqua Blue revisits the same idea of radical clarity in a cooler, more luminous palette. Transparent at its centre and gradually deepening towards the edge, the dial reveals and conceals in equal measure, creating an ever-changing interplay between colour, light and mechanics.

The Aqua Blue dial owes its distinctive fumé effect not to lacquer or pigment, but to metallization. A microscopic metallic coating is deposited onto the underside of the sapphire in dots measuring approximately eight microns in diameter. Their density gradually increases towards the dial’s perimeter, producing the blue gradient while preserving transparency at its centre.

Light-blue Superluminova indexes are individually applied by hand directly onto the sapphire crystal. By day, their soft colour complements the dial’s aquatic tones; after dark, they emit the same light-blue glow. The result is a dial that appears almost weightless, floating above the mechanics beneath it.

Visible from both sides, the in-house Calibre SXH7 was conceived to be as captivating from the dial as through the caseback. Its seven openworked bridges reference the multiple-bridge architecture found in François Czapek’s 19th-century pocket watches, while its reversed escapement and off-centred small seconds at 4:30 give the movement its distinctive contemporary character.

Because nothing is hidden, nothing can be overlooked. Sandblasted bridges, openworked ratchets, hand-chamfered inward angles and straight-grained flanks are finished with equal attention on both sides. Beating at 4 Hz, the automatic calibre offers a 60-hour power reserve and is wound by a micro-rotor crafted from 100% recycled platinum.

Housed in the elegant 38mm stainless-steel Promenade case, the Transparencies Aqua Blue balances mechanical complexity with refined proportions. Curved lugs and hollowed flanks create a slender 10.8mm profile, while sapphire crystals on both sides feature internal anti-reflective treatment, offering an uninterrupted view through the watch.

The case is paired with a nubuck leather strap in dark blue, its napped, velvety finish echoing the tactile depth of the dial's metallized surface. Tone-on-tone stitching traces the edges by hand, while the strap tapers gently from the lugs to a steel pin buckle, keeping the profile as slender as the case itself. As an alternative, the watch can also be fitted with a stainless steel Milanese mesh bracelet, its fine woven links offering a cooler, more technical counterpoint to the warmth of the nubuck.