9 April 2024

SPIRIT OF BIG BANG SANG BLEU A HIGH-TECH CREATION INCISED INTO THE TRANSPARENCY OF A SAPPHIRE

Tattoo-etched sapphire, new boundaries pushed back

After 8 years of collaboration between Hublot and Maxime Plescia-Buchi, we finally have a creation in sapphire. The three-dimensional geometry and the indelible features of Sang Bleu have been inked into Hublot’s high-tech material of choice. A geometric watch to be tattooed on your wrist, combining intensity and softness, strength and delicacy. Hublot has once again demonstrated its ability to combine craftsmanship and technology with this hyper-complex timepiece.

Spirit of Big Bang Sang Bleu

Since 2016, the Hublot x Sang Bleu collaboration has seen the celebrated typographer, tattooist, artist, and founder of Sang Bleu, Maxime Plescia-Buchi, set down his indelible and distinct features, and stamp his three-dimensional geometry with both relief and depth onto Hublot watches. From the Big Bang in 2016 to Spirit of Big Bang in 2023, 2024 is once again making its mark.

Spirit of Big Bang Sang Bleu Sapphire – A play on similarities and differences.

It has kept the Spirit of Big Bang, maintaining the 42 mm diameter and the soul of the barrel shape, while offering a different aesthetic finish. It is a watch that, even with its ultra-generous proportions and assertive shape, offers perfect ergonomics to suit all wrist sizes, both feminine and masculine. There's no change on the movement side, with the HUB4700, a skeletonised automatic chronograph with date at 4.30, 50-hour power reserve and its oscillating weight redesigned in the Sang Bleu style.

The inspired design remains the same, a watch incised, chiselled, angled and faceted by Sang Bleu, revealing and overlaying hexagons, rhombuses and triangles redrawing forms and volumes, feature by feature. The playful relief and depth in Maxime's features takes on a new dimension, as the sapphire reveals an entirely new personality.

Spirit of Big Bang Sang Bleu Sapphire – A contrasting softness of features incised into the hardness of the sapphire

The sapphire now extends from the dial – which already revealed the HUB4700 self-winding skeleton chronograph movement through the disc hands designed by Sang Bleu – to the case and the bezel, enhancing the watch’s organic design. The complexity of the design of the collection, plus the demanding geometry of Maxim’s polygonal tattooing, meant that we once again had to push back the boundaries of machining sapphire. Under the impact of the sapphire’s transparency, the purity of the Sang Bleu features, which remain sharp and methodical, expresses itself here in an ultra-light minimalist style, both visually and on the wrist. A fascinating and highly demanding material, whose total transparency required an absolutely perfect level of finish.

Thanks to 3D machining and over 100 hours of work, the Spirit of Big Bang Sapphire Sang Bleu is practically as hard and scratch-resistant as a diamond (9 on the Mohs scale, compared to 10 for diamonds). The only remaining non-transparent elements are the crown, the push buttons, the screws on the case, the 6 H-shaped screws on the bezel, and the folding clasp, all cut out of titanium, and the components of the movement.

Produced in a run of 100 pieces; making this a collector’s edition!

“Beneath Maxime’s spatially redesigned features, it is like we achieve this duality every time, whereby the watch’s DNA is simultaneously identical and yet so very different. While the sapphire gives Maxim’s three-dimensional tattoos a new geometric aesthetic, it has also provided us with the opportunity to reconsider their technical production, to take on new challenges, to optimize our processes, and to overcome new constraints. Each model drives us to improve ourselves in a quest for both technical and aesthetic excellence. To machine sapphire into the demanding geometry of Sang Bleu’s polygonal tattooing meant that we once again had to push back our boundaries in the mastery of this iconic material. There is no longer any doubt that Hublot is the leader in making sapphire timepieces!”

RICARDO GUADALUPE

HUBLOT CEO

“2024 marks eight years of collaboration with Hublot, and three iterations: the first in 2016 with the Big Bang Sang Bleu; the second in 2019 with the Big Bang Sang Bleu II; and finally the Spirit of Big Bang in 2023. While every design is produced using a similar approach, transposing the principles of my tattooing across to Hublot’s specific watchmaking space, the result is different every time, as it is applied to a different base. In 2016, it was the Big Bang 3 Hands, in 2019, the Big Bang Chronograph and in 2023 the Spirit of Big Bang Chronograph. This time, in addition, we are transposing what the DNA itself has become, the fusion of Hublot and Sang Bleu, onto a Hublot signature material never before applied to our collaboration: sapphire. This is a highlight for this collaboration because sapphire is, in itself, the most noble material used in the watchmaking industry, while it simultaneously bestows something ghost-like and futuristic, virtually architectural, onto the pieces. This corresponds exactly to what I seek to produce in all my projects.”

MAXIME PLESCIA- BUCHI

FOUNDER OF SANG BLEU
HUBLOT AMBASSADOR