After a banner year in 2022, Zenith's CEO Julien Tornare looks to the new year with even greater optimism
When it comes to precision time-keeping, Zenith's Defy collection is said to be "the epitome of the manufacture's endless pursuit of precision through innovation". This is largely thanks to the high frequency El Primero movement that powers the Defy watches.
At the LVMH Watch Week 2023 in Singapore, Zenith introduces the Defy Skyline with a skeleton dial—in blue or black—further distinguished by a four-pointed star at the top. Instead of a third hand indicating the seconds, the Defy Skyline, which is distinctive for its 12-sided bezel, has a 1/10th of a seconds counter; in the skeleton version, it sits at 6 o'clock. The hand makes one complete revolution in exactly 10 seconds, a visible evidence of the precision of the openworked El Primero 3620 SK calibre's 5Hz frequency.
Relaunched in 2017 by then new CEO Julien Tornare, it's not a stretch to say that the Defy range has contributed vastly to the renaissance of Zenith, apart from the Chronomaster Sport that launched in 2021. "[Defy] immediately gave us a breath of fresh air," declares Tornare. "The model is also a very good playground for creativity and innovation—the name itself is permission to defy the rules. The team has total freedom to come up with ideas."
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He points to the Defy Extreme Glacier that incorporates chalcedony, a crystalline stone with pale blue hue, around the pushers and dodecagonal bezel. "Nobody had ever heard of chaldedony but I said this was great because it looked like a frozen glacier. The result is a watch that looks cool," he enthuses. "It's the same with the skeleton watch. I wanted to do a contemporary skeleton and I wanted the star to be on the skeleton dial."
Defy has since become a key product line, very modern and a great complement to the newer Chronomaster, which is also very successful.