If you are looking for a AAA Swiss replica watch that is genuinely different, then HYT is seriously hard to beat. Who else other than the irrepressible Vincent Perriard could have taken such a zany idea, ran with it and turned it into a shining example of what the Francophone media like to call “la nouvelle horlogerie”, which translates poorly into English as “new” watchmaking?

But in HYT’s case, it is not just the watchmaking part that is new. The tiny capillary and the coloured fluids that HYT’s sister company Preciflex produces could be used in a number of other fields, in particular the medical sector (for example for micro-injections). What started out as an avant-garde design with a vibrant green fluid has since evolved into a variety of models, from the traditional “straight cylinder” H1 to the cool V-shaped arrangement in the H2, with the colours of the fluid evolving as well.

 

The H2 Tradition by HYT marries state-of-the-art technology with a traditional aesthetic. © Paul O’Neil

The H2 Tradition brings the project full-circle, putting the roots of traditional Swiss watchmaking at the centre – literally. The H2 collection is about showing off the mechanical connections that power the bellows to push the coloured and colourless liquids around the capillary in different directions. But in the H2 Tradition the blue fluid, which appears to float in mid-air in its capillary, competes for your eyes’ attention with the oscillations of the balance at the very centre of the watch, where you would find the central minutes hand on all the other H2 models. In the space left by moving the balance we find a subsidiary dial in the purest of watchmaking designs for the off-set minutes and another, smaller, off-set dial for the seconds.

Instead of the technical architecture of the more avant-garde models, the H2 Tradition creates a classic look. The distinctive mainplate decoration combined with the V-shaped arrangement of the bellows immediately bring a car’s engine to mind. Is that not what I am looking at, after all: the mechanical engine of the watch? I just wanted to keep looking at it, not to see the time (although it is surprisingly easy to read the hours shown by the meniscus between the blue liquid and the colourless liquid) but just to fake watches UK the balance beating away and check whether, by chance, it might be approaching six o’clock, when you get to see the twice-daily treat of the retrograde liquid display, as all the blue liquid is gradually pushed back into the left-hand bellows to start another 12-hour cycle.