The Awake Sơn Mài Frosted Leaf has always been about its dial, hand-layered Vietnamese lacquer over metal leaf. Previously that has always been silver leaf, but for the new Royal Blue, the French independent has changed that leaf from silver to pure gold. It’s limited to 200 pieces, and the first time Awake have used gold leaf and sơn mài together on a watch dial.
Each dial is built up from alternating layers of natural lacquer, blue pigment in shades running from deep sapphire to pale sky, and gold leaf caught between them – the lacquer drawn from the sap of the decade-old cây sơn tree. It’s then finger-sanded by an artisan over roughly 15 hours, at which point a single slip can ruin the dial. The result is that warm scatter of gold across a deep blue ground, and no two are identical.
Royal Blue also marks the debut of a new case, down a hair to 38mm from the Frosted Leaf’s previous 39mm, with a slightly shorter 44.75mm lug-to-lug and a trimmer 11.5mm of height. That’s a sensible adjustment for what is fundamentally a dress watch built to show off its dial. The crown is now screw-down for 100m of water resistance – generous for the genre – beneath a gently domed sapphire. It also features the recently updated emblem on the crown to go with the new handwritten-style logo on the dial. Both are part of a wider identity refresh that Awake have undergone.
Inside is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic with a 68-hour power reserve, here fitted with a new tungsten rotor finished three ways and visible through a sapphire caseback. It arrives on a blue Alcantara strap from Jean Rousseau with the brand’s new micro-adjustable pin buckle, letting you tweak the length in 3mm increments.
At €3,000 (approx. £2,590), including tax and shipping, Royal Blue asks around £365 more than the silver-leaf Frosted Leaf, which feels about right for the jump from silver to gold, on top of the slimmer new 38mm case. Available to order from 1 July, with deliveries from September in a limited edition of 200 pieces.
Price and Specs:
More details at Awake.
Beautiful watches and perfect size case, ordered the Son Mai Frosted Leaf in Moka after trying on at Hands On Horology, the dial is fabulous, very happy with it.