Look, I get it. Getting through twenty-twenty-four emotionally unscathed has been like grabbing a fistful of wild stallion mane and gritting your teeth as it tried its damnedest to buck you off its roller coaster ups and downs. To quote Charles Dickens from A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”

Yet, here at Revolution, our job has always been to edify and uplift. Because we believe in the genuine beauty of those magical objects that unite science and magic and, art and engineering, known as the mechanical watches. So, for our last launch of the year, we wanted to create a timepiece that we thought would be guaranteed to put a smile on your visages. Why? Well, it uses NOMOS Glashütte’s Zürich platform, a super cool interactive multi-time-zone watch that we consider a fantastic value proposition. But it is now rendered in a color way that combines three shades of pink; a deep, almost ruby hue, combined with a scorching hot pink and a softer pink. Look at this watch that we’ve named “Sambal.” How can you not love it? How did this watch come about?

OK, flashback to this April, when NOMOS Glashütte, in its first time at Watches and Wonders, did something very genuine and cool. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its much-beloved Tangente 38, it created 31 versions of the watch and made them in 175 pieces in honor of 175 years of watchmaking in Glashütte. As an added gesture of thanks to his loyal following, the brand’s founder and owner Roland Schwertner reduced the retail price of the watch by 175 euros. On full display and channeling the kaleidoscopic visual panoply of colors at a Frank Stella exhibition, these cotton candy and Easter egg hued variations of the Bauhaus- infused Tangente model brought a sense of buoyancy and happiness to the otherwise rigid corporate climes of Watches and Wonders. Everyone who ambled into the NOMOS booth decided to stay, kick back and luxuriate in the heady, optimistic and chromatic dopeness of the Tangente collection.

But there was one color-way that immediately caught my eye. It might come as something of a surprise to you that I love the color pink. My wedding, which takes place around the time you read this, will be at a pink hotel, and I and my groomsmen will don , pink evening shirts to complement our dinner suits. I also own a replica of the scorching hot pink Pinarello Dogma bike belonging to Caisse d’Epargne rider David Arroyo when he took “pink jersey” at the 2010 Giro d’Italia. And my extraordinarily beautiful miniature dachshund Bandit and I are known to coordinate our pink outfits on our father and daughter post-prandial walk around the neighborhood. So when I set eyes on the NOMOS Glashütte Tangente 38 — the watch is actually 37.5mm — in the “Chili” colorway, I knew I had to have it. The dial was an seductive combination of dark pink, hot pink and light pink, which it one of the most unadulteratedly joyful watches I’d seen in a long time.

The NOMOS Glashütte Zürich World Time

It was as I sat staring at this marvelous pink watch that I started to think of a pink-themed and decidedly flamboyant version of NOMOS’ famous world time watch, the Zürich. I’ve always loved the Zürich. Sized at 40mm in diameter and at 10.9mm in height with a lug-to-lug width of 49mm, to me this is to me the perfect size for a world time watch. It is actually identical in dimensions to my Patek Philippe Ref. 5131 cloisonné enamel watch with a similar function. I get it that everyone now loves smaller sized timepieces! But in the Zürich, because of the addition of a city disk to show time in the 24 main time zones around the world, anything smaller than 40mm feels a bit hard to read to me. The Zürich is also, from my perspective, one of the smartest and most intuitive to use multi-time-zone watches around. OK, first let’s address the elephant in the room — as the Zürich is not, strictly speaking, a world timer as the watch does not actually display the time in all 24 zones simultaneously. But it does allow you to rapidly tell time in any city in the world by pushing the button at two o’clock.

Here’s how the Zürich works. You set the city disk with the pusher until your home city, or the city that represents that time zone, is at 12 o’clock. Then you pull the crown out and set the 24-hour disk to the correct time. This is now your home time. There is a very clear arrow marker at three o’clock that points it out. And, just in case there was any confusion, there is a “home” icon on the inner part of the frosted dial, also at three o’clock. You then set the hour hand on the dial to the correct position using the recessed pusher at eight o’clock. This may seem like a needlessly additional step. But wait, because once this is set up, then the fun begins. With a single activation of the pusher, as a new city leaps to 12 o’clock, the hands automatically jump forward to display the correct local time there. Meaning that when you get on a plane and get off in a new city, setting the local time is as simple as a few pushes of the button at two o’clock. Also, if you wanted to check the time in a different city because you need to call someone there, all you do is hit that pusher again until their time zone is at 12, and then jump back to your local time zone once you’re done. Finally, the home time stays in place amid all this frenzied activity, so you always have your reference time if you want to say good morning or night to your significant other. While this might not seem as plainly pragmatic as a full display world time watch, it does make keeping track of time in different zones, easy, very fun and extremely interactive.

The Season for Spice

Once we had the go-ahead from Roland Schwertner to create a pink “Chili” themed Zürich World Time, we started toying with different names for our timepiece. It was Bryan Tan from our team who that came up with “Sambal,” which is a fiery hot but very delicious chili paste consisting of chili, shrimp paste, lime, garlic, ginger and shallots, with a recipe that is a closely guarded secret in many households. Sambal is used liberally and ubiquitously in many of our Southeast Asian street food dishes, like my personal favorite, laksa. Sambal is also a family of chili pastes that has 100 different types of sub- categories, such is the obsession with spice in our part of the world. As this limited edition of 50 watches is named for our local cuisine, we had to replace “Hong Kong on the dial” with Singapore, which is often considered the culinary epicenter of our region and a place with myriad uses for sambal. Because the watch is engineered for “hot weather” usage, we have replaced the calf strap that normally comes on a Zürich with a light grey fabric strap that will afford greater comfort in steamier climes.

The dial here has been rendered in the same visually enticing combination of deep pink that is almost a burgundy color, with hot pink for the seconds subdial and soft pink for the recessed city disk, and we feel that the result is incendiary.

The watch uses NOMOS’ in-house automatic DUW 5201 movement and showcases the hallmarks of German watchmaking that fans of the brand have come to love and expect: a Glashütte three-quarter plate, fully decorated with Glashütte ribbing and NOMOS perlage, ratchet and duplex wheel with Glashütte sunburst. NOMOS’ proprietary escapement, dubbed the Swing System, remains one of the biggest achievements for the German brand and can be found in the DUW 5201. Fully wound, it’ll keep ticking for 42 hours. This level of in-house watchmaking is almost unheard of at this price point.

The NOMOS Glashütte Zürich World Time Sambal for Revolution represents the very last of our limited editions for 2024, and we wanted to end the year with exactly the type of timepiece that puts a smile on people’s faces; accordingly, there is no increase in price between the “Sambal” and a normal edition Zürich. It will be made in just 50 fiery hot examples and priced at USD 6,100, excluding taxes.

Tech Specs: NOMOS Glashütte Zürich World Time Sambal for Revolution

Movement: Self-winding caliber DUW 5201; 42-hour power reserve
Functions: Hours, minutes, world time and 24-hour indicator
Case: 39.9mm × 49.4mm × 10.9mm; stainless steel; water resistant to 30m
Dial: Deep pink, hot pink and soft pink
Strap: Light grey woven textile strap; stainless steel pin buckle
Price: USD 6,100
Availability: Limited edition of 50 pieces