Secret and mystery watches are one of my favourite niche concepts in the already very niche industry of watch design. They’re essentially a type of watch that’s meant to beguile or deceive the onlooker in some aspect, such as having seemingly impossible components or aspects of the display that serve as an illusion. That’s the impetus behind the new Ming x Massena LAB 57.09 Secret Honey (a follow-up to their original 2021 collaboration, the 17.09 Honey).
Jumping straight to the dial, it features a constantly shifting motif of hexagonal holes that change in both position and colour. At times it feels like a magic eye image with the way it seems to trick you. In reality, the dial is composed of three rotating disks that rotate at different speeds and with slots cut into them to variously hide or reveal orange and/or white lume on the layer below.
The 57.09 Secret Honey’s disks rotate at a rate of 60-minutes, 12-hours, and 24-hours respectively. In order to make them practical timekeeping elements, the 60-minute and 12-hour disks have arrow-shaped indicators on their outer edges that serve as the watch’s hands – pointing to the peripheral 12-hour scale. At its core, this is a two-hand, time-only watch but thanks to the unique way the dial has been constructed, it feels much more special, which is the point of secret and mystery designs.
Housing the distinctive display is Ming’s fifth generation case design in titanium, measuring 40mm x 10.17mm. One of the signature elements of the fifth generation case is the triple lugs with their curving, stepped design and for the first time, each of the lug layers has been given a different finish. The smallest, outside lug has a normal titanium finish, the middle lug has a TiN coating to look like yellow gold and the largest inside lug has a TiSiN coating to look like dark rose gold. The effect of which is to make it look like the tips of the lugs have been dipped in honey.
Powering the 57.09 Secret Honey is the Sellita for MING calibre 330.M2, an automatic movement with 50-hour power reserve and 4 Hz frequency. It’s visible through the exhibition caseback where you can see its dark anthracite finishing across the rotor and mainplate. The edge of the caseback is also inscribed with the watch’s details such as the 100m water resistance rating.
This is probably my favourite Ming design to date due to the combination of the distinctive honeycomb display and the warm honey orange lume that contrasts with the dark framing of the dial. It’s priced at CHF 7,250 (approx. £6,600) excl. taxes in a limited edition of 125 watches. It’s available exclusively through Ming’s online boutique from October 15th at 1pm GMT (2pm BST). Ming also note that they’ve learned their lessons about server capacity following the website crashes that occurred during the launch of the 17.09 Honey in 2021 so hopefully the Secret Honey launch will be much smoother – though if there’s ever an example of suffering from success, it’s that.
Price and Specs:
More details at Ming.
