Ambiguous Dior Christal 42mm Automatic Watches

There are unisex watches, and then there are ambiguous watches. Unisex watches are meant to be suitable in style and size for both men and women. Unisex is a term often often applied to a watch that a watch maker wants to appeal to mostly women, but thinks that some men might want to get it as well. Basically, if you have a watch that appeals to a man, but is labeled as a women’s watch, you are going to sure as rain alienate that buyer. For instance, I recently saw a perfectly good 42mm black and yellow diver’s watch. It wasn’t super large, but decent in size. Flip the watch over to find the words “Lady Diver” written on the caseback. Zap! You’ve instantly killed any men who might want to buy the watch even though it looks good on them. On the other hand, women don’t much mind wearing watches meant for men. Thus, the “unisex” watch was born.

On top of that, there is also the situation where you have no idea who the watch is meant for. It might be for women, or men, or both. You just have no idea, and as far as I can tell, Dior isn’t giving us any hints with this Christal 42mm Automatic watch collection. Can’t you see this watch on a man or a woman. And that is sort of a problem, because I think the watch speaks to both sexes, while not speaking to a specific sex. Which means that if you are a man, you’ll wear the watch wondering if it is really speaking to a woman, and vice versa. This has to do with the confusing mix of both masculine and feminine traits present in the design and presentation.

Both of the watches are 42mm wide with Swiss ETA automatic 2824-2 movements. The cases are steel, and one of the versions with the diamonds decoration is obviously more feminine – I think. I am so confused… The pyramid cut black stones are black sapphires – located on the straps of both watches. More black pyramid shapes show up on the dial of the non diamond weave patterned dial version. Pretty much a feminine touch.

So while the decoration looks feminine, the hands and hour markers are masculine. The dials are also cluttered like men’s watches. I really dislike the marker strips located between the Arabic numeral hour makers that just confuse you. See what I mean? Those markers just seem to make reading the time more difficult. In the abstract I like the looks of the Dior Christal 42mm Automatic watches. LVMH has really given Dior watches and interesting “almost complete” look. But this new line just doesn’t fully speak to me, it would be a pain to use for telling the time due to the confusing dial, and the styling is just too ambiguous – which is maybe the type of person that are targeting with the watches.

By Ariel Adams

Tags: 42, 42mm, automatic, Christal, diamonds, Dior, watch

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Watches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.