FeatureThe World On Your Wrist: Presenting The Jacob & Co. Palatial Five Time Zone Watch

Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and your current home time… while it is physically impossible to travel to five places at once—unlike a certain Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter franchise, who’d wind up her magical Time-Turner to attend multiple classes at the same time—the Jacob & Co. Palatial Five Time Zone line of watches at least lets you live up to that illusion via sub-dials showing the time in four global cities. One of the brand’s latest additions to this longstanding range is a formidable all-black model with a PVD coating—which goes to show how far the brand have come since their first Five Time Zone watch, whose dial was a delightful patchwork of geometric shapes in Kandinsky-ish colours, and subsequent models were further exaggerated with sparkly diamond studded bezels.

Record-Breaking Entry: Five Time Zone Watch

Enamoured with the prevalent hip-hop and bling culture in the US, jeweller-turned-watchmaker Jason Arabo enrolled for a jewellery-making programme, and, at age 21, announced his label Jacob & Co.. He opened a store at NYC’s diamond district to create his own version of ‘bling’—not the quintessential gold pieces that rappers would ‘dig’, but dazzling neckpieces and rings with big, coloured diamonds. Hip hop artistes, music moghuls, and celebrities with flashy tastes immediately lapped these up. (In fact, Arabo is credited with the incorporation of the word ‘bling’ into the 2003 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, after hordes of rap songs paid ode to him and his ‘bling jewellery’.)

In 2002, ‘Jacob the Jeweller’ materialised the fond memory of receiving a two time zone watch from his father at age 13 into the Palatial line of timepieces. The dial, a jigsaw of bold hues, soared to such popularity that rap artistes celebrated their career milestones like signing a record label or releasing a chartbusting album by splurging on a Jacob & Co. timepiece. A recent example is Rihanna flaunting the blood red Jacob & Co. Brilliant Skeleton Northern Lights timepiece for her iconic Superbowl performance. Further escalating the sales was a bikini-clad photoshoot with supermodel Naomi Campbell, which led to rappers Busta Rhymes, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, Pharrell Williams, and even Irish singer-songwriter Bono, make a beeline for the model.

By 2007, Arabo cemented a formal foray into the Swiss watchmaking world by unveiling Jacob & Co. SA in Geneva. He keeps surprising fans and patrons with never-seen-before technological prowess in watchmaking, with models such as The Quenttin watch with a pioneering 31-day power reserve and a straight tourbillon, plus and the revolving 24-city aperture in the 2013 launch, the Epic SF24.

Signature Design Traits

multiple or dual time zone watches usually have a rotating bezel for a 24-hour scale, or some part of the bezel involved, as in the case of revolutionary Epic SF24 Grade 5 Titanium model which features a flap mechanism displaying a second time zone, with a bank of time zones in 24 global cities.

All Jacob & Co. Five Time Zone watches have four pronounced or borderless sub-dials in four quarters of the dial, to tell the time of each global city, namely Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Paris. Each sub-dial has its own operational fluted crown set in the four satin-finished lugs, plus a bigger-sized crown positioned at the usual three o’clock to adjust the current local time on the main dial. The wearer can manipulate the time to any time zone, even those other than the displayed city names.

The featured quartz movement watch, with a 45mm dial size, is powered by calibre 280.002 that promises 50m water resistance and housed within a steel and black PVD case.

Other versions of this Five Time Zone timepiece showcase sub-dials shaped as diamond-encrusted continents, or with a safari-inspired theme, or feature the bold, jagged serif font in the Pirate editions. All models sport either 40mm, 47mm, or even larger case sizes, up to 57mm, mounted on alligator leather straps or on metal bracelets.

Ahoy There, Matey!

The Pirate Jacob & Co. series oozes a slick ‘gangsta’ vibe, with the skull-and-bones imagery, a perennial symbol for danger and now a mascot for rap underdogs with ghettoised origins, who are raking in the moolah.

This line offers a plethora of coloured, engraved and lacquered dials, each model with minor variations on either the hue, the placement of the round, brilliant diamonds gracing the skull and bones, fonts of city names, or the bezel. Some versions have nickel dials with hypnotic guilloche patterns. The skeletonised dauphine hands on the dial are further enhanced with a sinewy, bony pattern. An engraved logo graces all five crowns, strangely resembling a ship with the flag at full mast.

Jacob & Co. Palatial Classic 

If the business of four dials is too much of a mouthful, one can opt for a slimmer model, basically a dress watch, leaning towards to minimalist art deco style. A sign of the brand being mindful to customer choices is their offer to choose between either a self-winding or manual-winding Palatial Classic timepiece.

The Palatial Classic Manual Big Date or the manual-winding movement watch is inbuilt with calibre JCCM01, indicting a 50-hour power reserve at six o’clock and a double date aperture at 12 o’clock

The self-winding calibre JCCA01 runs the Classic Palatial Automatic version, which promises a 36-hour power reserve, is protected by a unique ‘Glucydur’ balancing disc to tackle thermal contraction and an anti-shock mechanism

Jacob & Co. Palatial Classic Shop The Collection

The self-winding calibre JCCA01 runs the Classic Palatial Automatic version, which promises a 36-hour power reserve, is protected by a unique ‘Glucydur’ balancing disc to tackle thermal contraction, and an anti-shock mechanism. The Palatial Classic Manual Big Date or the manual-winding movement watch, is powered by the calibre JCCM01, with a 50-hour power reserve which is indicated at six o’clock, and a double date aperture at 12 o’clock. Both versions have 42mm steel cases with guilloche-style dials protected by sturdy sapphire crystal glass.