Roger Dubuis is celebrating their 30th anniversary this year by going back to their roots. If this is a brand you’ve only been paying attention to in recent years, you might be surprised at just how big a departure this represents from their modern modus operandi. The brand, named for its founder, Roger Dubuis, launched their Hommage and Sympathie collections in 1996, setting a strong visual tone that would begin receiving in-house movements of their own design by 1999. The first design to come from the brand was a unique retrograde perpetual calendar, and that’s exactly what they are presenting to celebrate this anniversary, in a new Hommage case that I can only hope hints at the reemergence of the collection at any kind of scale.
Roger Dubuis began life as a watchmaker in the late ‘50s with Longines, and would go on to help develop complications for Patek Philippe before founding his own atelier in the ‘80s. After more than a decade of developing new complications for clients, Dubuis and co-founder Carlos Dias (a designer from Franck Muller) took the step of creating their own brand under which they would eventually begin developing their very own watches. Designs for the Hommage and Sympathie collections were classic in many ways, but with unique flourishes that pushed them over the top in the best way.
The brand’s modern watches are what you might call over the top as well, though in a very different way. In short, they’ve taken a very different route than one might have imagined coming into the year 2000, and that shift largely began with their first sport watches in 2004. The release of the La Monégasque represented the last grasp of a Sympathie adjacent design, but alas, it wasn’t long for this world. Enter the Excalibur, and the gothic knight aesthetic which dominates Roger Dubuis’s design language today.
The designs may be well off the beaten path, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and they are still a very capable manufacture at the end of the day. That said, when you come across an Hommage of old, it pains one to think about what could have been. This week, we’re kind of getting an answer to that in the Hommage La Placide Perpetual Calendar Biretrograde, which captures a bit of that old magic. This is a modern, 38mm Hommage featuring a pink gold case, a five layer dial set on a Leman Blue base, and a curvaceous retrograde perpetual calendar design reminiscent of the brand’s earliest work. A more fitting anniversary piece I can’t imagine.
This Hommage gets its name from Roger Dubuis’ nickname, ‘Placide’ (a sour note for Cyberpunk 2077 fans), and features the brand’s RD14 caliber with their RD72 complication module mounted to it. The result is the automatic caliber RD1472, which sets the day and date displays into dramatic arches on either side of the dial operating in retrograde. Those ecliptic segments are filled with mother-of-pearl and framed in pink gold. A moonphase sits at the bottom of the dial, while the month and leap year indication is set at the top of the dial.
It’s not quite traditional, but Roger Dubuis have created something special here that feels truly unique to their history. The design of the dial and case remain as compelling as ever, and will have many yearning for a return of the Hommage collection as a whole, perhaps featuring a monopusher chronograph for its next act, ala the old Lemania based H40. Until then, this is a fitting reminder of Roger Dubuis heritage, and a perfect celebration of 30 years. This Hommage is limited to 28 pieces (as is tradition for the brand) and is priced at EUR 115,000. Roger Dubuis