The overarching trend in watches toward everything vintage is itself full of mini-trends. One of those is for brands to first release a faithful homage or reissue and then, if successful, follow it up with new dials and finishes that make it much more unique and modern. This is what new versions of the Massena LAB Uni-Racer chronograph represent with three vibrant and interesting colorways touting a perfect summer feel.
Massena LAB’s dip into vintage-inspired watches featured an homage to the Universal Geneve Uni-Compax watch in two dial variants that were released last year. The brand tweaked some elements, increased the case size to a more modern 39mm and used a modern movement (the manually wound Sellita SW510 M) but generally stayed as close to the original watch as possible. This included the dial designs which came in nearly monochromatic “panda dial” color scheme and a more colorful “reverse panda” style of gray dial with white subdials.
With the new versions, Massena got a little creative: The underlying features like case size, movement and asymmetric “big eye” chronograph subdial are unchanged, and the vintage vibe is respected — but you’re left with something that feels familiar and time-tested yet fresh at the same time. Two models seem to take a similar panda/reverse panda approach as the first run, but now the colors are silver and vibrant shades of blue. A third model mixes a green dial (currently on trend, too) with gold-toned subdials. Each model throws in little touches of red for an overall colorful effect.
While these new models in what the brand is calling the Holiday Collection aren’t strictly limited, each version is only being produced in a batch of 35 examples. They’re available exclusively from the the Massena LAB website and the Hodinkee Shop starting today for $3,495.
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