Forging Ahead

Swiss watchmaking giant Swatch Group operates its own foundry, servicing the needs of its entire stable of brands, including Breguet, Jaquet Droz, Harry Winston and Blancpain. Possessing a proprietary foundry not only allows the group to guarantee the ethical, responsible provenance of the gold used in its timepieces, but also increases its ability to invent new alloys, such as Sedna gold, developed in-house by Swatch Group’s metallurgists and scientists for Omega.

Taking its name from a large planetoid in the outer fringes of our solar system, the surface of which is a particularly profound shade of red, Sedna is an 18k rose gold melding gold, copper and palladium. Preventing the copper in the alloy from oxidising, the palladium helps give the metal’s deep rouge hue far greater longevity than everyday rose golds.

Good As Gold

Another of Omega’s signature gold alloys, Moonshine gold, is inspired by an orbiting object closer to home, our own moon. Used in the recent Speedmaster Moonwatch Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Limited Edition, Moonshine gold is a toned-down yellow gold intended to be redolent of the colour of the moon at night. Omega says that the mellow yellow, patent-pending alloy of gold, silver and palladium offers high resistance to fading, retaining its lustre for decades.

A desire to overcome the tendency of rose gold fading with time—especially when exposed to chlorinated or salt water—motivated Rolex’s metallurgists to create a proprietary alloy the company calls Everose. Forged in Rolex’s own foundry to a closely guarded formula, this signature alloy of gold and copper is thought to also contain a small amount of platinum, which is the key to locking in the metal’s warm pink tint permanently.

Originally launched on watches in 2014 but now also used in the house’s jewellery, Chanel’s beige gold aims for subtlety. Along with black and white, beige was one of Coco Chanel’s go-to colours, inspiring the development of this shade of gold for the brand that carries her name. An 18k gold alloy, possessing a certain warmth but more restrained than red or yellow gold, beige gold’s hue hovers between the two.

See also: Chanel J12 Turns 20 With A New In-House Movement

Sweet As Honey

A Lange & Söhne’s honey gold, which the Saxony-based manufacture has been using for a decade, similarly straddles a middle ground between pink and yellow. Its charming colour is particularly pleasing to the eye. The company’s director of product development Anthony de Haas says: “When looking for a designation to aptly describe the new hue, Lange decided to take inspiration from nature. Honey displays various colour nuances, depending on the plants from which the nectar is collected.”

However, in keeping with the practical nature of the Germans, this alloy was not developed for poetic or aesthetic reasons—rather, its blend of gold, copper and zinc was devised as a means of building a gold watch of improved structural integrity. “Beauty aside, the main target of this material development was to increase resistance against scratches,” says Anne Schaal, A Lange & Söhne’s managing director for Southeast Asia & Australia. “Honey gold is, at a hardness of 320 Vickers, twice as hard as yellow gold." Sweet indeed.