Get Your Freak On

The Ulysse Nardin Freak One is our kind of oddity

- SUFFIAN HAKIM 

IF THE ULYSSE NARDIN FREAK ONE was made of cheap plastic rather than titanium and rose gold, it would be very easily mistaken for a watch created by a forgetful amateur. In putting it together, this amateur seemed to have forgotten the dial, crown and hands and had placed a single oversized pointer - more appropriate for a novelty compass rather than a watch.

But in the hands of Ulysse Nardin's artisans and engineers, the 44 mm black and rose gold watch is an inspired piece - deconstructed rather than incomplete, fascinating rather than, well, freakish.

In its press materials for the Freak One, the Swiss Maison evokes personalities it believes to be freaks or rather, innovators, thinkers and visionaries ahead of their time, who exist and operate outside of (figurative) boxes and pigeonholes. Names such as Post Malone and Billie Eilish are referenced, as are Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Jerry Lorenzo and Claude Monet.