Trilobe Probes the Luxury Sports Watch Arena with the New Trente-Deux Collection

Trilobe, the young French indie brand, is marking its seventh anniversary with the release of the Trente-Deux, a luxury sports watch collection that retains the unconventional time display created by the brand’s founder, Gautier Massonneau. While the dial borrows design cues from the Nuit Fantastique, the sporty yet elegant stainless steel case and integrated bracelet are brand new. Another piece of breaking news regarding the Trente-Deux is its automatic movement. Marking a new direction for the brand, the Trente-Deux is powered by the Trilobe’s first manufacture movement issuing from its Parisian design studio & workshop situated at 32 Avenue de l’Opéra (hence the new collection’s name). 

Bored by the conventional approach of displaying time with central hands, Massonneau inverted the formula by putting time in continuous motion. A delightfully poetic inversion, the three pillars of time – hours, minutes and seconds – are displayed on three rotating discs and indicated by three stationary pointers in the shape of the brand’s trefoil logo. Following the brand’s first launch in 2018 with Les Matinaux, Trilobe came out with an even more sophisticated and minimalist interpretation of time in motion with its Nuit Fantastique of 2020.

A luxury sports watch is primarily defined by its case, and Trilobe has pulled off an attractive stainless steel proposition with compact proportions – 39.5mm diameter x 10.15mm thickness (46.18mm lug-to-lug) – and well-executed finishes. Composed of seven different elements, the underlying barrel-shaped case is decorated with vertically brushed areas highlighted with brightly polished bevels. The microblasted, fluted push-button crown with the Trilobe logo is flanked by crown guards – the case has been tested to depths of 50 metres. To balance the crown guards, the left side features lateral fins. Surmounting the tonneau base is a sloping fluted bezel with mirror-polished ridges and matte grooves.

As a candidate in the luxury sports watch sector, considerable thought has gone into the development of the integrated steel bracelet. Its elegant tapering profile is composed of satin-brushed links with polished bevels and mirror-polished central links for contrast. The double-folding clasp operates via a spring blade to keep the profile clean and is engraved with the Trilobe logo.

The watch, available with a blue or grey dial, is faithful to the three-lobed display of the Nuit Fantastique and decorated with different finishes. The central area of the dial has a matte sunray finish with applied silver frames separating the chapter ring for the hours and the off-centred figure eight for the minutes and seconds. Like the Nuit Fantastique, the hours printed on the peripheral ring rotate counterclockwise and align with the static trilobe indicator at noon. The elegant figure-eight on the left side of the dial housing the intertwined minutes and seconds features a grained background for the minutes and a snailed ring for the seconds with a Clous de Paris guilloché decorative flourish in the centre.

In earlier articles, we would describe Trilobe as a “French brand with Swiss mechanics”. With the new Trente-Deux collection, this is no longer applicable thanks to the brand’s first Parisian manufacture movement, the X-Nihilo. Echoing the finishes found on the case and dial, the automatic movement is enhanced with a 5N gold treatment. Its bold, contemporary architecture and openworked tungsten rotor spotlight the isolated, magnified balance wheel supported by a traditional bridge. Fitted with safety devices to protect the movement from shocks, the X-Nihilo calibre beats at 28,800vph and delivers a 42-hour power reserve.

The Trente-Deux models retail for EUR 16,500 (excl. tax).

More information at trilobe.com.