Rainbow Me Happy With Watches From Chanel, Piaget, and Purnell

Rainbow watch fever may have peaked, but the allure of Roy G. Biv never wanes. The rarity and fastidious craftsmanship (not to mention price) to realize rainbow colours in a timepiece has earned a solid fan base. A rainbow has an implicit ability to spark hope—even technology’s spinning wait wheel is slightly less infuriating when it looks like a rainbow beach ball. The world of fine watchmaking continues to capitalize on this colour variegation, like these rainbow-hued watch novelties released for Watches and Wonders 2021.

Chanel Electro Collection

The J12 Electro Box is a 12-piece collection of black ceramic watches each set with baguette-cut sapphires of the same colour, and together form the rainbow gradient.

Chanel introduces the Electro collection “inspired by the electronic music culture of the 1990s,” says Arnaud Chastaingt, director of the maison’s watchmaking creation studio. “This musical movement created a radical new visual universe,” and became Chastiangt’s starting point for this new watch collection centred on the J12. The J12 entered the Chanel vernacular in 2000, and the fashion favourite soon became a cult classic. There have been numerous iterations over the years, with Chastaingt having spent a few years working on the 20th-anniversary J12 model. For 2021, the J12 is once again reinterpreted and enters a polychromatic world of the rainbow setting. Electro, made up of a variety of models, emerges from the “eccentric universe of the night,” Chastaingt explains.

J12 X-Ray Electro Star.

J12 Electro Dream.

Première Electro.

Piaget Limelight Gala Precious Rainbow

The Limelight Gala was first unveiled in the seventies and with its asymmetrical lugs and gem-set bezel is still a design icon today. In tribute to the timepiece’s history, Piaget has created a rainbow setting of tsavorites and coloured sapphires for the limited edition Piaget Limelight Gala Precious Rainbow. The 18-karat rose gold timepiece comes in a 32mm case with the signature Palace Décor on the dial and bracelet housing the in-house 501P1 mechanical movement.

Purnell Escape II Treasure Baguette Rainbow

Swiss watchmaker Purnell was founded on the principal of “only tourbillon,” and vows that every timepiece created includes a tourbillon. The company is devoted to making very complicated and very extravagant watches. The Escape II Treasure Baguette Rainbow blends superlative mechanical watchmaking with brilliant gem setting. The 18-karat rose gold 48mm timepiece boasts the world’s fastest triple-axis tourbillon with a double Spherion movement with two cages—each housing a triple-axis tourbillon. The 386-part hand winding calibre CP13 was developed by Purnell in collaboration with master watchmaker Eric Coudray. This is rainbow bling + bling with 247 diamonds (25.10 carats) and 41 sapphires, rubies and tsavorites totalling 2.87 carats.