Christopher Ward enjoy making things glow more than a mad scientist with a penchant for the radioactive. They literally have an ongoing series of improbably bright complications with ‘glow’ in the name. They’re not subtle about it. And therein lies the problem – which pieces like the Moonglow are definitely talking points, they’re not wearably down-to-earth. It turns out that now and then, subtlety can be a good thing. Case in point, the handsome new Christopher Ward C60 Trident Lumière.
‘Lumière’ isn’t just the name of a sentient candlestick; it’s French for light and that’s the starting point for Christopher Ward’s new diver. After all, what’s the biggest challenge for telling the time underwater? Other than keeping the water out of course. It’s actually reading your watch. And so, the Lumière uses indexes made entirely of Globolight, the solid lume created by specialist Xenoprint. It’s the same stuff that Christopher Ward uses for the moons on their C1 Moonglow and Moser & Cie use in their Heritage Dual Time. Needless to say, it’s incredibly bright; hide-this-in-your-bedside-drawer kind of bright. It shines twice as brightly and for much longer than other, similar lume.
For a proper dive watch, that level of brightness is perfect, a lovely light blue across the sharp baton indexes, the 12 o’clock triangle, Christopher Ward’s signature handset and even their flag logo. They’re shaped and chamfered with a level of precision you don’t often get with lume, or even most indexes for that matter. The result with the lights on is pretty cool; with the lights off it’s spectacular.
The bezel also has some luminescence to it, not using Globolight. The coin-edged bezel has a hardwearing ceramic insert that’s had the numerals and indexes machined out and filled with lume. It’s not as bright or eye-catching as the dial lume of course, but it still does the job the best it can. I can’t imagine anyone wants big, applied numerals on the most at-risk part of the watch. Oh, and as with all Trident watches, it’s got a solid feel to its unidirectional clicking.
There are three dial variations and the orange we have here is by far my favourite. There’s a good reason diving specialists like Doxa lean heavily on the colour. It’s the last colour to disappear underwater, so between this and the Globolight, there’s arguably no more underwater readable timepieces. It’s also just a cool, eye-catching flash of brightness on the wrist. The blue and grey are still handsome, but this for me outshines them completely.
That said, on the grey version both dial and bezel are exactly the same colour. I’d have loved to see the same thing here with even more orange, rather than the orange-grey dial-bezel pairing. I can see some sense in toning down what could be a rather domineering colour of course, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
As you might have guessed from the distinctive hue of the case, ‘Lumière’ isn’t just talking about the lume. The entire watch, bracelet and all, is made from Grade 2 titanium, making it much, much lighter than it’s 41mm across might suggest. Not that it’s particularly bulky to start with at just 10.85mm thick and the entire watch has been given a slight overhaul to make it the most svelte the C60 Trident has ever been.
A chunk of that waistline has been trimmed thanks to the Sellita SW300 movement. It’s a notable step up form the SW200 used in the C60 Trident Pro, bumping up the power reserve to 54 hours and the chronometer-certified accuracy to -4/+6 seconds per day, on top of its thinness. It’s not quite Christopher Ward’s in-house number, but it’s the next best thing and makes the watch accessible, despite the host of improvements the watchmaker’s lavished on the Lumière.
Speaking of improvements, this is the first Trident in recent memory with a helium escape valve. For most people that’s nothing more than an aesthetic quirk or, at most, a fun little talking point in the vein of ‘guess what my watch can do’. But for the borderline insane denizens of the deep that are saturation divers, it’s vital to stop the crystal popping right out.
Bottom line, this might just be my favourite Christopher Ward diver to date. Sure, I love the retro vibes of the C65, but if you’re looking for a professional standard diver – one with 300m water resistance, a unidirectional rotating bezel and low-light readability – I can’t think of any that can stand up to the C60 Trident Lumière for its mix of good looks and practicality. And price. Always price, with Christopher Ward – which in this case is £1,985 on the bracelet. It’s a punchy price point for the British brand, but you can’t deny that’s some serious value.
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Must be just me but I would have buyers remorse as soon I had had tapped in my CV2.