Unimatic Unveil ICON Limited Edition Series with Minimalist Design

When you think about tool watches in their most essential forms, one of the brands that should come to mind first is Unimatic, the independent Italian brand with a penchant for practical dive watches, sporty chronographs, and hyper-legible field watches. Now though they’ve asked the question what happens if you strip away that down to earth tool watch aspect of their designs and turn their watches into minimalist, design-led pieces of art? The result is the new Unimatic ICON Limited Edition series.

The series consists of two models with a titanium and DLC-coated titanium edition for each model, creating a total of four references. The models in question are the 40mm (41.5mm including bezel) Modello Uno dive watch and the 36mm Modello Cinque field watch. Both have 300m water resistance ratings and are lightweight thanks to their Grade 2 titanium constructions, so while the ICON series is more design focussed than the standard models, they sacrifice none of their tool watch ruggedness.

Where the ICON series watches firmly move away from being tool watches are their dials. The over-size, lumed hour markers and minute scale from the standard editions have been completely removed. In their place is a black void punctuated only by the Unimatic logo at six o’clock (also in black) as well as the white hour, minute, and seconds hands. Even then, the hands are skeletonised, giving them an almost ghostly appearance that is only enhanced in the dark when they begin to glow blue thanks to Super-LumiNova BG W9 coating. The Modello Uno also has a dot of lume on its rotating bezel, while the Cinque has a fixed bezel with no lume.

These changes turn the watches into artistic timepieces that encourage you to consider the shape language of the case and hands beyond their simple timekeeping functionality. Distilling the watches to their most essential components. Which is why they are called the ICON series as these are the essential features by which a Unimatic is recognised.

Beneath the surface, both the ICON Modello Uno and ICON Modello Cinque house the same movement. It’s the Sellita SW200-1b with 38-hour power reserve and an accuracy of +/- 12 seconds per day. It’s the dateless version of the SW200-1 and while it’s not outstanding by modern standards, it’s a solid and reliable workhorse movement.

For prices, the Unimatic Modello Uno ICON is £1,700 in titanium and £1,860 for the DLC edition. The Modello Cinque is then £1,590 or £1,750 in the same material options. They are limited editions of 99 pieces each. Unimatic aren’t strangers to the occasional artistic design such as the recent Modello Uno U1-MI, but the uber minimalist vibe of the ICON takes that concept in a new direction.

More details at Unimatic.