ROUGE AWAKENING

This month, Dior revives its beloved 2004 timepiece Chiffre Rouge, a much-missed design icon from the Noughties.

-  Daniel Goh

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Dior’s iconic Chiffre Rouge watch is reimagined as a new collection comprising eight designs, featuring some of the storied couture house’s most cherished brand codes.

Its current zeitgeist references archival designs. Both of Dior’s creative directors, Kim Jones (menswear) and Maria Grazia Chiuri (womenswear), avidly mine vintage Dior looks for their collections. In the same way, the Chiffre Rouge timepiece, first created by Hedi Slimane in 2004 when he was creative director of Dior Homme, has made a timely comeback.

Chiffre Rouge was a groundbreaking product for Dior at the time: It was the first automatic watch the brand had ever made, and was powered by a special version of Zenith’s El Primero mechanical calibre.

Sleek and black, with a sporty crown and Christian Dior’s lucky number eight sitting at four o’clock, the watch attracted a cult-like following – not least because it was designed by Slimane. The last new Chiffre Rouge model was launched in 2015 and, after that, the line fell into a slumber. Until now.