The golds that emerge from the manufactures of these watchmakers aren’t your regular gold, but come in colours so unique, they cannot be found anywhere else in the world. 

&ldquo;Created exclusively for women, 365 days of a year,&rdquo; hailed Chanel during the launch of the <a href="http://www.lofficielsingapore.com/counting-the-days-the-j12-365-watch-by-chanel/" target="_blank">J12-365</a> in 2014. Designed as an everyday <a href="http://www.lofficielsingapore.com/category/jewellery-watches/" target="_blank">watch</a>, the stunner racked up lots of style points for its feminine allure. The two most distinguishable features were its size (a smaller and female-friendlier 36.5mm case instead of the 38mm original) and, more importantly, its colour (a pretty, never-seen-before hue imbued in the timepiece&rsquo;s sleek gold accents). Chanel called those precious metals &ldquo;beige gold&rdquo;, an exclusive alloy it had developed to obtain a unique tone that&rsquo;s girlier than yellow gold but subtler than rose gold.

The J12-365 was dubbed &ldquo;fresh&rdquo; by connoisseurs and the press, and Chanel would later extend the use of beige gold to its other watch models such as the Premi&egrave;re, the <a href="http://www.lofficielsingapore.com/girls-like-boys-a-closer-look-at-chanels-boy-friend-watch/" target="_blank">Boyfriend</a> and, most recently, the Monsieur.

ART-GOLD-1-LOFFICIEL-SINGAPORE.jpg

When it comes to manufacturing special gold alloys, Chanel isn&rsquo;t the only expert. A year before the high-tech ceramic and beige gold J12-365 tickers hit the market, Omega proudly showed its own alloy which was&nbsp;made entirely in-house, and inspired-by and named after <a href="http://www.luxuo.com/style/watches/omega-constellation-sedna-gold.html" target="_blank">Sedna</a>, a red planet in the depths of the solar system. Infused with secret amounts of copper and palladium, the metal bore a beautiful, long-lasting rosy tint that recalled the colour of the celestial body. Incidentally, Hublot&rsquo;s proprietary King Gold also bears a red hue that&rsquo;s more intense than traditional red gold.

Gold, by nature, isn&#39;t a robust metal and in order to strengthen it, other materials had to be added. Hublot and Omega&#39;s top choice was ceramic.

Omega and Hublot didn&rsquo;t stop there. The pair knew that gold, by nature, wasn&rsquo;t a robust metal and in order to strengthen it, other materials had to be added. Their top choice was ceramic, a material so resilient it is used by Nasa to protect its space modules from burning up in the Earth&rsquo;s atmosphere during re-entry. Ceragold and Magic Gold were the results. The former, by Omega, appeared on the iconic Seamaster as a ceramic bezel that&rsquo;s seamlessly bonded with gold numerals through an ingenious eight-step process. The latter, used to create <a href="http://www.luxuo.com/style/watches/hublot-big-bang-unico.html" target="_blank">Hublot&rsquo;s Big Bang Unico</a>, is allegedly the world&rsquo;s first scratch-resistant gold, according to the Swiss brand.&nbsp;

A number of horological records &ndash; from the next big grand complication to the thinnest calibre &ndash; are smashed every year by the world&rsquo;s top watchmakers, but in an industry where &ldquo;what&rsquo;s next?&rdquo; is the most important question, these brands prove that innovation can go beyond the mechanical parts of a luxury timepiece.

The Art of Gold

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