The Sky Dwellers of Rolex have been divisive. It was originally released in 2012, making it the brand’s latest brand new release, which surprised most people a bit. Many describe a more robust version of the replica GMT Master II, just as people living in the sea were stronger Submariners. Rolex’s rumor mill has us all looking forward to creating an aircraft-inspired grey watch for hard-working professionals.
What we got instead was something that out-Day-Dated the Day-Date. When it was first released, it was covered only in the finest precious metals, with an elegant silhouette without any embellishment, such as a push piece for everyday work, including a grooved bezel, suggesting that the Rolex sky dweller is definitely not part of the tool table series. Most importantly, it also led to a series of breakthroughs for Rolex. It gave us their first almanac; It was by far the most complicated replica watch they had ever made, powered by a calibre that contained the biggest number of components.
We got use to the conservativeness of the Rolex design book. Everything is styled to be as tastefully unpretentious as possible, which is the reason those replica watches from the 50s still look so good today. However, since the beginning of this century, Rolex seems to be making strides to shake things up, firstly with the highly unconventional Yacht-Master II from 2007. That was also a polarizing effort among the purists and the Sky-Dweller’s weird off-centered sub-dial decapitating the lower hour markers drew criticism as well.
What’s more, the choice of materials meant that Rolex’s latest was extremely expensive. Available in one of each flavor of 18k gold, the cheapest of the three retailed at the time for about 37,700 Swiss Francs, or roughly $38,700. Five years after the collection was originally released, the first fake Sky-Dwellers made with stainless steel emerged. They arrived as the answer to the prayers of many who had grown to appreciate the watch’s visuals and who had a particular need of its GMT and annual calendar function, but who didn’t desire to spend the kids’ college fund on one.
The yellow Rolesor piece, comprising a steel case with yellow gold bezel and center bracelet links, remains perhaps the archetypal look of the brand. There were several other key factors that upped the desirability. The busy dial was toned down by replacing the Arabic or Roman numerals with plain batons and by making the GMT disc the same color as the rest of the dial. Previously, the 24-hour ring had typically been picked out in a contrasting tone, but making the entire dial more monochromatic actually added to the legibility, along with giving the whole thing a little dab of extra class. The stick hands were made a touch longer as well, again helping the readability of what is still an information-rich frontage.
Beyond that, it is unnecessary to change anything else. The movement remained Rolex superb in-house Caliber 9001, its 380 components garnering it a total of seven patents. 60 of those parts were taken up by the bezel assembly, the second generation of the Ring Command – the first iteration of which was brought out on the Yacht-Master II.
Instead of merely being an attractive design element, on both those replica watches the Ring Command bezel is an integral part of the whole system. With the Yacht-Master II, it acts as an analogue on/off switch to facilitate setting the countdown timer. But on the Sky-Dweller, it is a fully-fledged function selector. Connected directly to the movement, controlled by the rotating crown, the three positions of the dial turn on various functions of the watch.