A Week On The Wrist: Look Ma, No Hands: The Mesmerizing Trilobe Une Folle Journée
A bunch of us here at Hodinkee have quite the affinity for the hand-less little wonders that the French independent brand Trilobe has been producing since its 2018 debut. Their take on telling time with rotating discs and rings is truly unique, and we’re definitely here for it. We like them so much we even collaborated on a special edition of the brand’s Nuit Fantastique that I semi-tried to convince my wife to let me purchase (sadly, she side-eyed me when I even hinted at the idea). While I lost that battle, I was still lucky enough to spend a week with and capture on video their more avant garde model, the Une Folle Journée (or “a wild day” in French), to see if such a wildly designed watch was suitable for everyday wear.
The first thing you’ll notice with the Une Folle Journée is that, unlike most modern watches, it doesn’t have hands. Instead, the skeletonized dial features three eccentric rings – the largest representing the hours, the middle one for the minutes, and the smallest one for the seconds. They all rotate counterclockwise, which took some getting used to, and they’re suspended at different elevations by columns that attach to the wheels underneath.
In order to protect those flying rings, the watch has a massively domed sapphire crystal that protrudes a whopping 10.2mm from the case. It all adds up to a level of depth and three dimensionality that you don’t see on all that many watches nowadays. The basic concept is actually the same as their flatter Nuit Fantastique, but in this implementation the rings give the illusion that they’re actually floating – which I have to admit, mesmerized me for an entire week. You’ve never seen anything like this, trust me.
While this watch sounds pretty unorthodox so far, the grade 5 titanium case is actually fairly traditional in design. It’s polished with a brushed mid-case, has a crown where you’d typically see one at the 3 o’clock position, and measures only 10mm thick and 40.5mm in diameter. By modern standards, these are totally wearable dimensions for a lot of people, and this is why this wild watch is so easy to wear. Sure, the sapphire crystal protrudes a bit and is more susceptible to hitting things than the flatter variety, but other than that it wears just like any of my other watches on a leather strap. Also, I’m always worried about hitting my watch on something, so when I wore the Une Folle Journée I practiced the same level of situational awareness as I do with all my watches.
There are a few more details I’d like to share about my week with the Une Folle Journée – but describing this watch isn’t nearly as neat as seeing it in person, so do yourself a huge favor and tune into the video to see this wizard’s-orb-looking wonder in action.
I dabble in a little design myself. You’ll seen in the video.
Hodinkee
