Omega in a dinner jacket
By Julien Moreau, Geneva ·
Omega's dress watches suffer from the brand's own success. Everyone thinks of the Speedmaster and the Seamaster, and the De Ville range gets the treatment one gives the cousin who became a solicitor.
The Trésor deserves better. It is 40 mm of steel, 10.6 mm thick, on a leather strap, with a blue dial carrying hours and minutes and nothing else, not even a seconds hand. The hand-wound 8910 gives 72 hours, so the morning ritual of winding becomes a three-day affair if you forget, and the open back shows a movement that is pleasantly finished without being fussy about it. Thirty metres of water resistance, as one expects.
My hesitation is price and thickness together. At sixty-seven to seventy-two hundred dollars it sits against the Jaeger Master Control Date, which is thinner and has the better dress pedigree, if a date you might not want. The Omega is the warmer of the two and, if hand-winding gives you pleasure, the more satisfying. I would choose it for someone who likes winding things and dislikes being asked the time to the second.