Hublot Classic Fusion 45mm KING – 511.OX.2610.LR

Hublot's Classic Fusion watch family is, for the most part, an anomaly. Look through the ranks of Big Bangs, King Powers, Spirit of Big Bangs, at your local Hublot boutique, and you'll read the Hublot character writ large. This is a brand that trades in big statements, big watches, and extreme skeletonisation.
So what makes the Classic Fusion line so different? Here, bezels are polished gold or titanium, not camo-painted ceramic. You won't find a single Classic Fusion with a wild denim dial. And while there are some skeletonised models, they're done with the delicacy of a modern dress watch, rather than the look-at-me bravado of a streetwise King Power. These are watches for masters of the universe, not kings of the street corner.
For suitable boardroom presence, a luxury watch must be unobtrusive but well-sized. The Hublot Classic Fusion 45 mm King 511.OX.2610.LR is square in the ballpark on both counts. Its classic colour combination (white dial, pink gold case, black leather bracelet, pink gold clasp) is perfect for all business requirements, from boardroom suits to club cocktails, and even looks the part next to off-duty casuals. In other words, this is a piece that can be worn as a beater (a watch for all-day, every day wear) by a person who wants to announce that he or she is director of a successful corporation.
The 45 mm diameter hits the sweet spot for presence without obtrusiveness. And the central seconds hand adds that extra element of refinement: the ticking sweep of the second hand somehow validates a business timepiece, giving some movement and interest to the otherwise bare dial.
It's fascinating to see how the Hublot logo sits on an unadorned dial. Wearers are so used to seeing the Hublot font, and the fancy 'H' marque, printed above skeletonised movements. Or surrounded by chrono counters and subdials on a Big Bang or a Spirit of Big Bang. On the Classic Fusion 45 mm King, free of encumbrance, the logo looks very precise and classy. And that 'H' is present on the tail of the second hand. Which, in a mark of precision and quality, reaches all the way to the edge of the dial. If there was a minute track (there isn't—that would count as clutter on a dial this ascetic), the tip of the second hand would skate smoothly over each index. As would the sharply-pointed and polished tip of the minute hand.
Both minute and hour hands, incidentally, are subtly skeletonised. And the hour indices are in polished gold. The Hublot Classic Fusion 45mm King has no lume, as befits a beater with boardroom leanings.
The self-winding HUB1112 movement powers central hours, minutes, seconds, and a date window at 3 o'clock. It's visible through the sapphire display back. The concept of 'stealth luxury' carries great weight in the boardroom, where your luxury watch is more respected for hiding its complexity and expense behind a solid face. To see the inner workings, you have to take your Hublot Classic Fusion 45mm King off your wrist—so you know how intricate and expensive it is, but no-one else does unless you choose to show them.
Hublot is a brand whose lifeblood came in late. Hublot has been in existence since 1976, but it wasn't until 2004 that the legendary Jean-Claude Biver took the helm as CEO. It's no coincidence that the Classic Fusion 45mm King comes from a company that has benefited from Biver's leadership. Biver, himself a consummate businessman, understands exactly why there's a niche for luxury watches that are recognisably Hublot, but completely different from the standard fare delivered by the brand. In the same way that he understood why people were ready for the Big Bang, back in 2005 .
To understand the Big Bang, the Classic Fusion, and the man who created them, you have to understand the resurgence of luxury watches in the early 1980s. Biver is more than just a clever man who understands markets. He's a visionary who saw hope when all around him were forecasting the end of the mechanical watch sector. By the end of the 1970s, mechanical watches had been all but destroyed by the arrival of quartz movements. Cheap to make, easy to produce, and superbly accurate, quartz calibres seemed to devalue everything the watchmaker stood for. One brand in particular, Blancpain, had just suffered a 10-year decline in sales and was ready to die.
Then Jean-Claude Biver did something that changed watchmaking history.
Taking the helm at Blancpain in 1981, Biver made the lack of quartz in a Blancpain movement a selling point rather than a drawback. In that one stroke of marketing genius, the modern luxury watch was born. 'Since 1735 there has never ben a quartz Blancpain watch,' the slogan went, 'and there never will be.' Suddenly, the complexity and finicking of a mechanical watch—the movement you see in the back of the Classic Fusion King, in other words—wasn't a problem. It was an attraction.
Jean-Claude Biver is a man who sees open markets. When he unleashed the Big Bang—a watch that defied the existing design codes for a sports watch—it tripled Hublot's orders in a single year. And when the Classic Fusion was released, the embodiment of Biver's mission statement was complete. Biver ran Hublot on a platform of 'the fusion of tradition and future'. And that's exactly what you get with the Hublot Classic Fusion 45mm King. Traditional looks, Hublot codes. Ref 511.OX. 2610.LR is more than a business beater. It's a definer of business fashion: all day, every day.
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Image Credit – Officialwatches.com vedere di piu rolex e Hermes Cape Cod