Time in Technicolour

"WHAT COLOUR IS it?" sounds like a naive question for a potential watch buyer to ask, especially when luxury brands prefer to flaunt as much jargon as possible to describe all the technology and craftsmanship that goes into making the mechanical heart of a tourbillon.

Increasingly though, watchmakers are noting the power of the right colour to draw attention to their creations before showing off the mechanical wonder underneath.

For this reason, watch brands are rushing to roll out ever more colourful watches to stand out in an over-crowded market. Some have even gone the extra mile to make colours the main attraction of the watch to get notice.

Take independent Swiss watch brand De Bethune, for instance. It had such a huge success with DB28 Kind of Blue that the natural blue - produced with a special technique - of this moon-phase model has become the brand's signature. Now, the master in the art of thermal oxidation of metals has conjured an equivalent model in "an extraordinary, ra…