Watches And Wonders 2025: A. Lange & Söhne Masters Understated Luxury With The Odysseus Honeygold
4 min read
Sports watches mean one thing - business. Be it microbrands, independents or major manufacturers, the genuine hype around sports watches attracts without divides. Even for brands we generally equate with reserved finesse, an all-out execution of a sports watch is more than a matter of want but a principle of need. In 2019 A. Lange & Söhne followed suit by introducing the Odysseus, their first integrated bracelet steel sports watch. Six years down the line and a few iterations later, the brand offers the Odysseus Honeygold at Watches and Wonders 2025 in a honey-gold construction paired with a brown dial. Occurring in a sunset-hued material with a dial drenched in what’s Pantone’s color of the year, this one means even more business.
A. Lange & Söhne For Everyday Wear
The entice of a “sports watch” transcends mere investment potential. While the monetary sentiment is strong, it’s actually a derivative of high demand born from the product’s versatility. When it can be worn more, it will be wanted more. This was the impetus driving the opus of the Odysseus at A. Lange & Söhne. It was simply designed to be a mechanical watch safe to be worn even during sports and leisure activities. The pursuit of this utilitarian utopia doesn’t however warrant a strictly-steel policy. Lange proved it with the Odysseus in white gold and titanium and now with the Odysseus Honeygold introduced at Watches and Wonders 2025.
The Odysseus Honeygold is equipped with a robust self-winding movement and a case that’s rated safe for underwater exploits at depths up to 120 meters. As proven by practice, that’s more than enough for the modern needs and actually multiple factors better than the ones credited to the segment creation. With features such as the large displays for the date and the day of week, the Odysseus sets benchmarks in the category. The round case profile paired with angular contrasts from the tapered pushers for date and week correction lends the timepiece a dramatic visual depth. All these elements put together make the Odysseus Honeygold a distinct benchmark in the segment of sporty-elegant timepieces.
A Perfect Pairing Of Earthy Hues
The brown dial trend is witnessing a significant boom and among the many vivid asides available against the plain white or black dials, brown doesn’t lend any harsh ocular stir. It is a perceptibly favorable hue with a higher attribute of like-endurance. On every level, a brown dial is a better sustainable variant over its viral alternatives, many of which feel like realizations of weird chromatic fetishes. In the Odysseus Honeygold, the rustic referencing transcends mere dial surfaces and occurs as a complementary aesthetic lending the entire watch a warm and soft golden hue. It’s adequately contemporary to not be relegated as a geezer but definitely a tad too serious to be a rapper’s preference.
Both the case and bracelet are machined from 750 honey-gold with the latter occurring in a five-row setting. Its clasp includes a precision adjustment mechanism allowing for a fitting range of 7 millimeters. At 40.5 millimeters across and 11.1 millimeters high, the case is consistently proportional to the watch’s versatile range of utility. Staying on the subject of practical value, the Odysseus Honeygold’s outsize date and the day-of-week display along with the luminous lancet-shaped hands as well as the hour markers make it a safely legible timekeeper. The embossed grooves along the peripheries of main as well as subsidiary dials lend it a three-dimensional visual impact. There’s also the red number 60 on the peripheral minute scale which is a consistent feature across the Odysseus collection.
Robust Mechanics For Everyday Rigors
In the truest essence of its utilitarian opus, the Odysseus Honeygold packs in a reliable A. Lange & Söhne caliber. Its L155.1 Datomatic movement excels in robust construction as well as sustainable reliability. Balancing function with form, it gets a typical Lange standard of high finishing application on each of its 312 constituents. The hallmark of this 50 hour autonomous caliber is the 950 platinum skeletonised centrifugal mass acting as the unidirectionally winding rotor. Oh, then there’s the hand engraved balance cock as well.
The caliber achieves high-rate accuracy with the balance operating at a frequency of 28,800 semi-oscillations per hour (4 hertz). Unlike the usual recipe for A. Lange & Söhne oscillation systems, here it is held by a balance bridge secured at two points.
Quiet Luxury, Loud Impact
While the more recent inclination towards colors that pop and scream is birthing a new wave of timepieces, the A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold flourishes in its avoids of the palette excess. In its delectably warm luster, there’s however one excess - not of color, but of pure understated luxury destined to last against fleeting trends.
The Odysseus Honeygold is limited to 100 pieces.
