Chromatic Glitch

With five collaborations with Zenith under his belt, Men's Folio had the rare opportunity to pick the mind of the creative lynchpin Felipe Pantone in an exclusive interview about his latest release.

- Asaph Low

With a last name identical to Pantone — yes, the founders of the Colour Matching System® — one would imagine the amount of confusion — or worse, mistaken identity — Argentinian-Spanish artist Felipe Pantone has experienced. The fact that the artist dabbles in colours — here, we quote his profile: “He [Pantone] explores how the displacement of the light spectrum impacts colour and repetition” compounds the conundrum manifold. For the record, any mention of Pantone from hereon refers to the artist, Felipe Pantone.

Zenith and Pantone recently unveiled the latest chapter of their collaboration — the DEFY Skyline Tourbillon Felipe Pantone. It marks the fifth project the two disruptive minds have conceptualised together and produced, the first being a custom colour gradient tarpaulin for Zenith’s Le Locle manufacture façade in 2020. Subsequent collaborations — including the latest release — manifested through Zenith’s DEFY range of watches. The first DEFY 21 Felipe Pantone was followed up by the highly successful and piece unique Zenith x Felipe Pantone DEFY 21 Double Tourbillon Only Watch edition (both in 2021) before 2022’s DEFY Extreme Felipe Pantone paved the way for this year’s 100-piece limited edition release.

Unlike its two other commercial predecessors, this year’s edition swaps out Zenith’s famed high-frequency chronograph in favour of a tourbillon, with its tourbillon bridge fashioned in Pantone’s emblematic lightning bolt shape. Other nods toward the artist’s works include the sapphire dial with concentric circle micro-engravings on the front and a mirrored metallic finish on the rear to evoke the colours of a CD. A similar gradient colour execution happens on the distorted watch hands and hour indices.

Men’s Folio had the opportunity to speak to Felipe Pantone about his latest collaboration with Zenith.