Stylish and Accessible, Meet The Hand-Wound DUMOREAU DM02

Dumoreau is a recent microbrand out of Huntington Beach, California, established in 2020 by Carlo Aiello. Prior to this, Carlo was an award-winning architect and product designer with a Red Dot Award, Good Design Award and ICFF Award. You can even find his Parabola Chair in both the Chicago Atheneum Museum of Architecture and Design and the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. Unlike architecture and large projects, the small scale of watches allows Aiello’s vision to quickly materialise (a building can take many years to come to fruition). The latest Dumoreau DM02 dress watches follow the DM01 integrated sports watch from last year, and things are even more refined this time. 

The polished stainless steel case of the Dumoreau DM02 has a softer aesthetic that organically flows from the large rounded bezel to the caseback. It’s a departure from the sharp angles and flat brushed surfaces of the DM01. The case extends to slightly twisted lugs that give the piece a sophisticated character. Unlike last year’s Miyota automatic, a hand-wound Swiss movement runs the show and there’s an oversized 6.5mm crown to make winding a breeze. It’s a push/pull crown, but a triple gasket allows for a 100m water-resistance rating. The watch is fairly compact yet contemporary at 39mm in diameter and 9.5mm in height (lug-to-lug is 46mm), making it ideal for most wrists. There are AR sapphire crystals front and back, and the main crystal is close to the dial to reduce potential reflections. 

There are three dial colours available, limited to just 100 pieces each – white/silver, salmon and black. These are two-piece dials with a pattern of concentric circles in the centre and outer perimeter, and a wide brushed ring with Arabic numerals for the hours and minutes. Radial numerals flow around the dial without shifting position, so between 4 and 8 o’clock, they’re upside down. Leaf-style hour and minute hands are blued on the silver and salmon dial, and gold-coloured on the black dial to match the gilt numerals.

Carlo included a sweeping seconds hand as it resembles a Japanese Zen garden over the concentric circles on the dial. All numerals and the minute track were printed multiple times via a pad printer for a raised look. The 20mm straps are Italian leather from the Matteo Torre atelier and include a textured black Saffiano for the white/silver dial, calf-textured blue for the salmon dial and golden-brown suede for the black dial.

As mentioned, the brand shifted from a Miyota automatic to a hand-wound Sellita SW 210-1. It’s adjusted to five positions for an impressive accuracy of +/- 7 seconds per day. It’s well finished with Côtes de Genève, perlage, blued screws and a snailed crown wheel and ratchet. There are 19 jewels, a 42-hour power reserve and a beat rate of 28,800vph (4Hz). Seen from the exhibition caseback secured via six screws, it’s a quite handsome movement with a bit more presence than the comparable ETA 7001.

Availability & Price

The new Dumoreau DM02 is limited to 300 pieces total with 100 per dial variant. Each retails for USD 975, which is a considerable jump from the DM01 at USD 395. The refined design and upgrade to a Sellita SW 210-1 more than justify the increase. Also, these are now Swiss-made watches via Roventa-Henex (designed in California). You can pre-order now for deliveries in December 2022 by visiting dumoreau.com.

Sponsored post: This article is sponsored by Dumoreau Watch Company. However, it reflects the writer’s opinion and has been written according to MONOCHROME’s editorial policy.