A watch is a tangible product, capable of instilling emotion, passion and genuine excitement in us, who more often than not remain somewhat disconnected to the expressive nature of the consumables in our lives. And there is no other watch on the planet that makes you feel the way a HYT timepiece does. As polarising as their designs are, you can’t help but feel some kind of affection towards their extremely modern and extremely adventurous take on the measuring and displaying of time.
The HYT Skull 48.8 is the latest piece from the HYT atelier. It’s an embodiment of enthusiasm, coupled with a smidge of inimitability, a splash of colour and a big bag of in-your-face style. There are three distinct versions of the Skull 48.8, with each being produced in a limited run of only 50-pieces. There is a very blasé looking green version, an ultra-brash and super aggressive red version, and an ice-cold, cooler-than-cool blue model. Each has its own unique characteristics, and each comes with a matching strap.
Each skull features its own individual colour in a varnish opaline finish, as well as an anthracite grey galvanized coating with micro-blasted finishes. The left eye depicts the passing seconds, with the right eye depicting the power reserve. The strap has a coloured rubber core specific to the colour of the watch itself, coupled with a grey technical fabric with grey stitching and a titanium folding buckle.
The titanium case measures 48.8mm across and a huge 17.9mm in depth. This is by no means a small watch, and if you expected a watch with a big skull on emblazoned on the dial to be small, then I’m sorry, you need to bury your head in the sand. The titanium case features a similar finishing pattern as the majority of the other pieces from HYT. Satin and sandblasting finishes features throughout the case, and this continues to expand the very modernistic feel of the watch.
The off-centre titanium crown is sheathed in black rubber, and is protected by a titanium crown guard. The huge domed sapphire crystal does wonders to show off as much of the dial as possible, and it gives the illusion that the skull is trying to escape from the body of the watch.
The Skull 48.8 features HYT’s patented micro-fluidic time-measuring module, which in itself is just about as ingenious as anything I’ve ever come across in modern horology. The module features two multi-layer metal bellows, a capillary tube with interior nano-coating within medical-grade glass, two liquids (one transparent and the other coloured), a thermal compensator and ceramic fluid restrictors. What does that mean, exactly? Well, for starters, and this is all that should really matter: You’ll have one bad-ass watch with one bad-ass movement on your wrist. The movement itself has actually been tended to in a very traditional manner, with the bridges being hand-beveled and covered in Côtes de Genève. Contemporary watchmaking meets traditional finishing techniques.
This is a cool watch that’s going to appeal to a vast majority of the world’s watch enthusiasts, myself included. But with a price of $65,000USD (or about $90,000AUD), there’s only going to be a select few that are actually going to be able to afford it, myself unfortunately excluded. Overall, however, I’m super excited to see what else HYT will bring to the fore over the coming months, and if the Skull 48.8 is anything to go by, we can expect some very fun things!
Ratings:
Movement: 5/5
Aesthetics: 4/5
Wearability: 3/5
Affordability: 1/5