Decoding The Fuss About Peach Fuzz: A Nuanced Trend For The Watch Industry Or Just A Re-Inspiration Of The Familiar Salmon Hue
5 min read
Color is the new obsession for the luxury watch industry. 2023’s Watches and Wonders witnessed a substantial pivot towards a pronounced inclination of color in dials, allowing brands to establish nuanced aesthetic trends.
In the modern era of casual elegance, more and more individuals are embracing watches as canvases for self-expression. The once-formal environments have given way to a playground of possibilities, where the wrist becomes a showcase of personality. And what better tool to convey individuality than the palette of dial color?
In this kaleidoscope of contemporary horology, color emerges as the answer - a means to articulate personal taste, mood and identity. And when the hues express a velvety gentle and warm tone, somewhat synonymous with Pantone’s Color of the Year 2024 - Peach Fuzz, our pursuits of horological masterpieces are multiplied in rewards.
What is Pantone and Peach Fuzz?
Pictured above is Peach Fuzz, Pantone’s Color of the Year 2024.
Surprisingly, selling colors is not how Pantone makes money. What Pantone sells is something much more abstract - a promise of uniformity. So, as a company, Pantone sells consistency. It’s Pantone that makes sure a color looks the same whether it’s printed on paper, fabric or metal. More than just the beauty of color, Pantone tasks itself with ensuring reproducibility of color across diverse formats.
Pantone 13-1023 Peach Fuzz is a color inspired by warmth and healing. As an elevated global interest in forecasted for self-care, this color accurately captures the emotion. It feels right for a world learning to emerge from the harsh experiences of Covid.
Peach Fuzz is a color nestled between pink and orange that has a warm and welcoming feeling, effortlessly reciprocated by the name.
Are Watchmakers On Board with The Peach Fuzz Trend?
The peach fuzz fever had gripped the horology frontiers long before Pantone gave us the 13-1023 shade. Salmon dials, basically peach hued watch faces have been of burgeoning prominence within the collector communities.
The charm and character of the salmon color scheme has erupted across a broad selection of timepieces from many watchmaking families. When we look at watches, what is it about this peachy color that makes a timepiece so desirable? We can talk about the underlying details of rarity, inherent in a Peach Fuzz salmon-ish color dial. In the collector’s space, a lot of us are attracted to the peculiarity of pieces and more often than not, that means the dials have tropicalized or faded over time.
Pictured here is a Rolex Explorer Ref. 1016 with a tropical dial - Bob's Watches
What the salmon color does is produce a level of warmness that doesn’t necessarily come from age, instead it’s a color that has always been an element on the piece. Using the Peach Fuzz or salmon color as a catalyst to up the demand, we have seen high-end brands feature it on their most exclusive pieces. It is definitely a color that symbolizes at this point, an upper echelon and after so many decades of being popular, we doubt it will ever lose its momentum.
Who Gave Us the Best Peach Fuzz Timepiece of 2023?
The perpetually inventive and savvy Maisons are already taking the lead in featuring Peach Fuzz on their timepieces. With a timeless affinity for salmon, introducing re-inspirations of the warm hued color comes as a natural next step in refining their creations for broader appeal in today's as well as tomorrow’s market.
Here are our favorite peach-hued timepieces from 2023:
Breitling Premier B01 Chronograph 42
Rado Captain Cook Marina Hoermanseder
Movado Heritage Series Datron Automatic
Chopard L.U.C 1860
The pale rose and light orange hues of Peach Fuzz and salmon colors have spawned a whole new level of interest and appreciation among watchmakers and collectors alike. With Pantone announcing the salmon-ish Peach Fuzz as its Color of the Year 2024, we’ll definitely see it swim upstream in 2024 and for good reasons.
