H. Moser & Cie. brings forward its minimalistic style and contemporary aesthetics and combines it with The Armoury, a highly specialised menswear brand, to bring us a custom-made piece inspired by pocket watches and gets a special Vantablack dial. The new H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse is available in two limited editions offering 28 pieces each.
Before we get into the details of the impressive watch, let us first take a quick look at the collaboration.
The Coming Together of Two Brands
The Armoury was founded in Hong Kong in 2010 by Mark Cho and Alan See. The brand was born out of a shared passion for classic styling, their interest in bringing classic tailoring to the modern man, and educating them through stories of exceptional craftsmanship and products. When Mark (Cho) met Edouard Meylan (CEO of H. Moser & Cie) in New York back in 2019, there was a visible mutual appreciation for clothes and watches.
While the leaders of The Armoury were drawn by the 200-year-old history of Moser & Cie., the use of Vantablack and a desire to take risks with new ideas, Meylan was drawn to The Armoury’s roots in classic design and their desire to create exceptional, understated pieces that dangled on the cusp between traditional and contemporary. This shared appreciation for each other’s skills led to the coming together of two philosophies to create something that neither of them could have achieved alone.
The H.Moser & Cie. Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse x The Armoury
The Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse x The Armoury is a classic and clean watch available in two cases—steel and a combination of steel and red gold. Following Mark’s preference for small watches that are “discreet but reveal a deeper complexity if you pay them some attention,” the Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse x The Armoury comes in a 38mm case structure. Mark Cho, the co-founder of The Armoury, explains: “When Edouard and I first started talking about the idea of making a watch together, my main requirement was that it was small. To me, H. Moser & Cie.’s fumé dial and Vantablack dial are iconic, and I wanted to work with one of them as a starting point for the design.” However, he quickly leaned towards Vantablack, and his design partner Elliot Hammer suggested the theme of a total solar eclipse. Thus, the Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse was born.
The timepiece is the perfect representation of a total solar eclipse—a time when the sun is completely hidden behind the moon. The Vantablack dial evokes the moon’s silhouette, and the steel bezel and the polished inner bezel, in steel or red gold, represents the halo of the solar corona—the gaseous, outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere, visible by the naked eye only when there is a total solar eclipse.
Furthermore, the dial is home to a number of discreet details. It includes the indices’ exquisite marker dots that require a special technique, stunning hour and minute hands finished with a circle at the tip, and a small second hand with a dot-style marker like the indices. “Absolutely everything in this model links back to this quest for ultimate elegance, combining classicism with a contemporary feel,” explains Edouard Meylan, CEO of H. Moser & Cie. “Its 38-mm diameter is perfectly balanced. We opted for the smallest and finest of our movements, the hand-wound HMC 327 caliber, with an offset small second at 6 o’clock, reminiscent of the pocket-watch style.”
The H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Small Seconds Total Eclipse x The Armoury models will be available in The Armoury stores in New York and Hong Kong, as well as on the e-commerce platforms of the companies. The watch comes with a pocket handkerchief developed by The Armoury for H. Moser & Cie.
For more, please visit H. Moser & Cie.
Image Courtesy: H.Moser & Cie.
