If you haven’t come across Awake by now, which rock have you been living under? They’re one of the breakout stars of microbrand watchmaking in 2025, stepping into the limelight in a big way. At the core of what they do are their Vietnamese lacquer dials in the Sơn Mài collection. While they’ve explored several iterations, the Silver Leaf Classic series is tough to beat for its intense colour, becoming one of our favourite watches of 2024. Now they’re launching a follow-up collection called the Awake Sơn Mài Silver Leaf Vignette, which we got hands-on with in Geneva a few weeks ago.
Jumping straight to the dials, they are absolutely gorgeous. They’re produced using the same lacquer over silver leaf technique as the original Silver Leaf series, creating a similar textured appearance that’s crackly and grainy. What makes the new dials stand out compared to the old is the new vignette finish. Vignette is a term that Awake are borrowing from the photography industry and it’s a term used to describe the effect seen on old photos where the centre of the image is clear while the edges become faded out in a gradient – like those stereotypical Victorian photos.
In watchmaking terms, we would be more familiar with the phrase fumé gradient as fumé and vignette effectively amount to the same thing. A gradient dial where the centre starts bright and gets darker towards the edge, creating a smoky impression. That’s perhaps most apparent on the Carmine Red and Palladium (grey) editions where the transition of colour is very obvious. The Moonlight Blue and Ultra Violet are bit more subtle in their gradients because they either start at a darker shade in the centre, as in the case of the blue, or don’t quite transition all the way to black as with the violet.
The fifth watch in the Sơn Mài Silver Leaf Vignette series is the Golden Hour, which is the only limited edition among them. It stands out as special because it’s the only one with a multi-colour gradient. While the others all show linear gradients from their centre colour towards black, the Golden Hour has a yellow middle that moves to orange and finishes with a reddish-brown. Whereas a normal yellow fumé dial would look more like the Rado Anatom we included in our guide to yellow watches. It makes for an incredibly intense dial that you can’t help but stare at as the shades appear to shift under the light.
On the wrist, they wear exactly the same as the rest of the Sơn Mài watches. 39mm steel cases with smooth bezels and polished lugs that lead into a leather strap. Relatively understated as far as case design goes but that’s the point, it lets all your attention move smoothly to the dial where you can appreciate the traditional techniques on display. Though one of the most interesting dichotomies present in the collection is the contrast between those traditional techniques and the modern, bullet-shaped hour markers back-lit with Super-LumiNova.
Inside the watch is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic movement with 68-hour power reserve. A calibre that’s rapidly jumped to the top of the tier list when it comes to third-party microbrand movements this year. It’s visible through the watch’s exhibition caseback where you can see the tungsten rotor.
All five watches are priced at €2,000 (approx. £1,725) with the Golden Hour being limited to 100 pieces while the others are regular collection models. For a follow-up to one of Awake’s most popular models, the Awake Sơn Mài Silver Leaf Vignette is pitched at just the right level. The introduction of those Vignette gradients makes them stand out as different without leaving the DNA of the original collection behind.
Price and Specs:
More details at Awake.
I have a Palladium version. It is beautiful, great timegraph specs. I may order the light grey strap in nubuck from Delugs as an added look (the light brown strap it comes with is lovely too, albeit different lovely.)
One gripe is the challenge winding; the crown is small and without a design for easier gripping, and winding from position 0 is a bit of a challenge. The manufacturer might redesign with this in mind, realizing a large crown isn’t an answer.
Without wishing to come across as negative towards OT, but the many recent reviews have been targeting high end, high cost and overly complicated watches, so great to see this review of realistically priced but beautiful watches . As always from this maker, this new range is more “normal” but still outstanding, the coloured dials look amazing without being garish, along with every other feature, the chapters, the case, so for me, no negatives for the watches, with the only exception being the limited availability.