Chopard’s latest L.U.C wristwatch is something of a surprise. L.U.C watches, being the top of the line, serious horology offered by Chopard, are typically conservatively styled. The L.U.C Time Traveler One ‘Time of the Desert’, on the other hand, is strikingly coloured.

Only just concluded, Dubai Watch Week was five days of exhibitions, talks and seminars, but also a platform for several watchmakers to introduce special editions unique to the Gulf, like the TAG Heuer Autavia UAE edition we covered last week.

A variation of the world time watch Chopard announced last year, the L.U.C Time Traveler One ‘Time of the Desert’ was another unveiled at the event, which was scheduled to take place just after the Chopard Classic Rally Dubai; the watchmaker’s co-president Karl Friedrich Scheufele is a classic car enthusiast.

While, the ordinary Time Traveler One in steel is fitted with a sporty black and orange dial, the UAE edition has a striking dial. While salmon- and copper-tone dials are fashionable right now, the dial on the Time Traveler One is neither colour, being instead a metallic sand.

While the dial colour is almost uniform, the dial surface has different textures, giving the colour tones that vary with the light. The centre is radially bused, while the chapter ring for the hour and minute markers has a stamped concentric guilloche.

All of the 24 cities on the world time disc are the conventional placeholders for each time zone, save for Gulf Time Zone, or GMT+4, which is represented by Dubai written in Arabic script – “دبي‎”.

The rest of the watch is identical to the stock Time Traveler One. The steel case is 42mm in diameter, which is largish though it feels smaller than it actually is. But at 12.09mm high with brushed, vertical sides, the thickness of the case is apparent.

The case has two crowns: one at two o’clock for local time and the other crown for world time. Each time zone is via the 24-hour ring and adjacent cities disc, and on the innermost ring sits the date indicator.

It’s powered by the in-house cal. L.U.C 01.05-L, an automatic with a 60-hour power reserve.

The movement as seen in the stock Time Traveler One

Price and availability 

Limited to just 20 watches, the L.U.C Time Traveler One ‘Time of the Desert’ (ref. 168574-3005) is priced at AED52,900, equivalent to US$14,400. It’s available from Seddiqi & Sons in Dubai.