Why IWC’s New Ceramic Pilot’s Watch is Anything But Plastic

For well over a decade, IWC has partnered with Laureus Sport for Good, an organization that supports programs across the world that uses organized sports to improve the lives of children by promoting equality. Every year since 2006, IWC has released a limited edition watch (typically featuring a blue dial) that draws attention to these efforts. These watches are often prized by collectors, sell out frequently, and represent a more daring design than what you’d find in the permanent IWC collection, which is kind of the whole point. Last week, IWC unveiled this year’s Sport for Good collaboration, a pilot’s watch with a blue ceramic case. The commentary online, then, went a little haywire, and got me thinking about ceramic watches in general, and colored ceramic cases in particular. 

Let’s get the basic specs out of the way first. The Pilot’s Watch Automatic Edition “Laureus Sport for Good” (not exactly the most elegant name) is quite simple on paper. This is essentially IWC’s core 41mm pilot’s watch with a Sellita based movement with a blue dial and a blue ceramic case. The footprint and format of this watch are practically ubiquitous at this point – even if you don’t have personal experience with an IWC pilot’s watch (which we’ve covered extensively in a variety of guises in the recent past), you might have encountered a watch in this genre that feels very similar by any number of other brands. In a lot of ways these are the most toolish of tool watches, and while devotees will go on at length (and I mean at length) about the subtle differences between pilot’s watches built by different brands in different eras, there’s an equally compelling case to be made that if you’ve seen one, you’ve kinda seen them all. I might not go that far, personally, but the general layout of these pilot’s watches was standardized for a reason, and if we follow that old maxim that speaks of things not needing fixing lest they be broken, you begin to understand why they’re so easily identifiable and have endured through the decades. 

Where this particular watch sets itself apart is the ceramic case. As you can see from the photos, it’s blue. And again, it’s ceramic, a material that has been used for years by IWC (a good explainer of the origins of ceramic cases can be found in Blake’s discussion of the recent Tribute to 3705). Colored ceramic, though, is a bit more exotic. Ceramic watches with black cases are certainly fairly well understood, but something about a ceramic case in a bright primary color feels a bit at odds with what our understanding of a higher end luxury watch should be. This is something that’s worth exploring. 

If you find yourself looking at photos of the Pilot’s Watch Automatic Edition “Laureus Sport for Good” (we’ll just go with “ceramic Laureus” from here on out) and thinking to yourself that it really looks a lot like a Swatch, well, I guess on some level, I can’t really blame you. It has a simple aviation inspired dial layout. OK, plenty of Swatches over the years have explored the pilot’s watch genre. The case is circular in shape. Ditto for the vast majority of Swatches ever produced. And the case, as mentioned, is blue. Without a doubt, the defining characteristic of Swatch watches over the years has been their brightly colored plastic cases. And if the world existed only in two dimensions, and this watch could only be experienced in photos, it would be fair to continue comparing it to a Swatch. But a ceramic watch, even one made in a primary color, is a very different thing than a watch made of plastic.

I’ll stop here to point out that I have absolutely nothing against Swatches, or watches made of plastic. I have owned and will continue to own Swatches in brightly colored cases. They’re a lot of fun. But a ceramic watch, particularly one in a color other than black, represents a technical achievement. A flex, if you will, because of the difficulty inherent in producing the material. These watches also have functional benefits over watches made of traditional watchmaking metals. 

To make a ceramic watch case, inorganic, nonmetallic powders are blasted with incredibly high heat for an extremely specific amount of time (if it’s fired for too long, or not long enough, you end up with unusable material). The solid material that results from this precision heating and cooling process is highly durable and resistant to scratches, making it a great choice for watchmaking applications. It’s also lightweight, which makes cases made from ceramic a natural fit for sports watches like the ceramic Laureus. It’s not a material, however, that is particularly easy to finish in a luxurious way, but brands like IWC, Omega, and Hublot have made a lot of advancements over the last twenty years in their ceramic processes, which means we now regularly see ceramic cases with alternating finishes that look and feel a lot like what you’d find on a steel watch.

Adding color to a ceramic watch is tricky. The sintering process that fires ceramic naturally darkens the material, so adding the right mix of pigment at different stages of that process requires some trial and error. It also has an impact on the integrity of the material itself, and brands that have been using ceramic for a long time have generally figured out the right mix of zirconium oxide and other compounds to keep colored ceramic strong through the heating process. There was a time when watch enthusiasts were concerned with brittle ceramic literally shattering in the event of a drop, but real world cases of lugs falling clean off in the event of an impact appear to be few and far between (but not completely unheard of).

One of the things I enjoy about the watch community on Instagram is the unfiltered opinions that come fast and furious to every post. In the case of this particular watch, the social media echo chamber revealed that even after decades of high quality ceramic watch production, there’s still a gap in understanding just how unique this material is. It also speaks to the enormous impact that Swatch has had on the collective subconscious of the watch collecting public such that merely the sight of a colored case could immediately trigger comparisons to the value oriented staple of the 80s and 90s. In my mind, the possibility that many people might overlook the genuine watchmaking achievement that’s on display in this new Laureus edition only makes the watch that much cooler and under the radar, which is an admittedly weird way to categorize a blue cased watch.

The new “Sport for Good” pilot’s watch is a limited edition of 750 pieces, with a retail price of $6,250. IWC