Hublot Big Bang Sang Bleu II: Malaysia Price And Review

Alvin Wong 12 December 2019

There’s method to Hublot’s madness.

In 2016, Hublot invited famed Swiss tattoo artist Maxime Plescia-Büchi to collaborate on a Big Bang watch. He came up with an unorthodox design that referenced Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and named it after his multidisciplinary studio, Sang Bleu. Telling time took on a whole new dimension, as octagonal discs replaced traditional hands and created the impression of a dial in a state of flux.

Swiss tattoo artist Maxime Plescia-Büchi

This year, Plescia-Büchi takes his concept of geometric shapes further with an ingenious riff on the chronograph. The lines of the watch’s architecture have been exaggerated and extended beyond the dial and into the 45mm case, cutting into its hexagonal bezel and sapphire crystal, and even moulded onto the interchangeable rubber strap. This is further reinforced by the vertical lines of the alternating brushed and polished facets of the case and bezel.

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The Big Bang Sang Bleu II explores polygonal shapes in a different way from its older sibling. Although the dial might seem near-impossible to read at first glance, it’s actually quite simple once you know what you’re looking at. It has two elongated diamond-shaped discs with prominent luminescent-coated tips that indicate the hours and minutes, and an arrow-shaped seconds hand. There’s still a strong family resemblance though, thanks to the oversized, skeletonised discs that form what is best described as an ever-changing horological tattoo on the wrist.

The matte black dial is partially skeletonised to reveal the movement below. It has a 12-hour ring, two sub-dials and a 60-minute ring around the periphery that are offset against markers and indexes in titanium or King Gold, depending on the case material. The chrono minutes with a white luminescent-tipped skeletal hand is found at three o’clock, while the continuous seconds sits at nine o’clock. The integrated date aperture is between four and five o’clock.

Within the faceted case resides a Manufacture automatic chronograph flyback movement with column wheel. It oscillates at a frequency of 28,800 vibrations per hour, for a period of 72 hours. A Sang Bleu geometric design is found on the partially openworked rotor that’s visible through the sapphire crystal caseback.

Of the two, this second-generation piece boasts a far cleverer interplay of Plescia-Büchi’s intricate pattern work whose masterly artistry is the perfect match for the Big Bang’s precision timing. But if you like what you see, you have to be quick. This release is limited to 200 pieces in titanium and 100 pieces in King Gold.

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Alvin Wong

Ex Editor-In Chief

Alvin promises not to be a douche when talking about watches. He may have scoured the Basel and Geneva watch fairs for the past 15 years, and played an instrumental role to the growth of Singapore's pioneering horological and men's lifestyle publications, but the intrepid scribe seeks to learn something new with each story he writes.