One of my favorite watch discoveries last year was Atelier Holgur, whose debut diver, the Frømand, I reviewed last year. When I had it in for review I found it to be quite impressive on a number of levels, but the best thing about it was its commitment to the idea behind it. It’s a perfectly capable diver, but everything about it has been designed with a particular aesthetic appeal in mind. In a watch world full of brands that are trying to sell you “tools” you will never actually need, it was weirdly refreshing to see Atelier Holgur admit that they just wanted to make something that looked nice. Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and you might see the Frømand and immediately want to turn away, but I happened to enjoy it’s unusual take on the skin-diver format and highly legible dial execution. Now they’re back with an update to the Frømand, the new Edition Fumée Silver Tide, with a dial that provides this diver with a very different personality than the debut.
The new Silver Tide follows other Edition Fumée releases in a variety of colors that have trickled out from Atelier Holgur over the last year. The Silver Tide variant, according to the brand’s founders, takes inspiration from their night diving experiences, where moonlight reflects off the water with a silvery glow and fades into the black of the ocean. The dial here is higly evocative, with a bright silvery center that gradually becomes darker until it reaches total blackness at the dial’s perimeter. The format remains the same as the Frømand I sampled last year, with lume filled hour markers, a small seconds register at 6:00, and a black and white dive bezel.
I think your appreciation for the Frømand will really hinge on how you feel about the case. It has a vaguely “integrated” look but makes use of fixed bars for pass through straps, or straps of the brand’s own design that loop around the bars and snap shut. The way that space between the lugs is filled in by case material (titanium in the case of the Frømand) is a love it or hate it proposition, but I’m a fan. I like the way it squares everything off, and found that it looked great on my wrist. The case measures 40mm and is 13.5mm tall.
Powering the Frømand is the Schwarz-Etienne ASE 200, which has been cutomized for Atelier Holgur. This micro rotor caliber has been skeletonized and its surfaces micro-blasted for an industrial look. The power reserve, on a full wind, is over 80 hours.
The Edition Fumée Silver Tide is available to order now through the Atelier Holgur website. The retail price is CHF 11,500. Atelier Holgur
