Pre-orders for the Yema x Alain Silberstein Marine Limited Edition open today (October 21st) but should you invest in one? I’ve spent the past week with this modernist timepiece to find out. I say modernist because Alain Silberstein is a widely celebrated modernist artist, known for his use of colour and shape. He’s a popular figure in the watch industry having worked with multiple interesting brands like Louis Erard and Ressence. Now though is the turn of French brand Yema.
The first thing that strikes me whenever I strap the Yema x Alain Silberstein Marine Limited Edition onto my wrist is the shape of the case. It’s a dual crown compressor style case with an internal rotating bezel, which is not a style of design I can remember Yema ever tackling before. Their regular divers, like the Navygraf or Superman are strongly influenced by a 1960s-70s skindiver aesthetic, broad and flat.
However, the compressor style of design (admittedly hailing from the same time period) is taller but more compact. The lugs of this watch are short and round emerging from the circular edge of the case body and immediately transitioning into the rubber strap. The case itself, designed from scratch by Silberstein, has flat, vertical sides that lead to a rounded top that itself transitions immediately into the sapphire glass. In black, DLC coated titanium it feels very modern, which is entirely the point given the modernist slant of the collaboration.
Silberstein’s influence is felt most on the dial. The hour hand is a large red triangle outlined in white while the minute hand is a huge yellow arrow. Uniquely the seconds indicator is a starfish, which is not a typical Silberstein shape but instead is a fun acknowledgement of the watch’s diving specs, water resistant to 200m. While I never took the watch anywhere near the water, it at least stood up to the English rain.
If you take the watch off (easy to do with the butterfly clasp) the aquatic theme continues on the watch’s caseback. It features an exhibition window, beneath which two koi fish appear to be swimming over the movement, one in silver and the other in gold. The movement they protect like spirits from Japanese folklore is the CMM.20 micro-rotor, with the rotor here being picked out in red. It’s an automatic calibre with impressive stats that include a 70-hour power reserve and -3/+7 seconds per day accuracy. My own collection is full of 38-hour to 42-hour power reserve movements so I very much enjoyed the added leeway of the extended reserve.
To me, the most awkward part of the design is the screw-down crown that operates the internal bezel. Don’t get me wrong I like the style of it with its blue Cerakote® ceramic coating but I have yet to master its use. By which I mean whenever I set the bezel to my chosen point, I almost always nudge it out of position again when trying to screw it back into place. The interval between where it starts to screw into place and where it rotates the bezel is a fraction too small. Still, that can largely be chalked up to user error.
I keep coming back to the fact that if there wasn’t a Yema logo on the dial, I would not be able to tell you that the Yema x Alain Silberstein Marine Limited Edition is a Yema. Even the Marine inscription below 6 o’clock looks like it would be more at home on the back of a Porsche or Maserati. It’s so different to everything else in their stable. Depending on your point of view that’s either a positive or a negative. I dearly love Yema’s other divers so this is quite jarring to me, but I know that my colleague, Oracle Time’s editor Sam Kessler, is praising it as the coolest Yema to date.
It’s priced at £2,958 in a limited edition of 500 pieces. That puts it at the higher end of Yema’s divers, which does make sense. Its totally unique case design in DLC coated titanium likely contributes a fair sum to the total, in addition to the manufacture movement. Plus the modernist approach to the classic elements of dive watch design are entertaining.
Price and Specs:
More details at Yema.
