Some watches announce themselves from across the room; this one does it from across the street. The Wild ONE Skeleton X-Lite Turquoise is the second act for Norqain’s featherweight flagship, trading the black-and-yellow of last year’s debut for a shade of turquoise that belongs somewhere between a Swiss glacier lake and the shallows off the Palm.
The spectacle is matched by the engineering. The case, 41mm across and just under 12mm high, is built from Norteq — the brand’s carbon-fibre composite — reinforced with titanium and aluminium, and the whole watch, strap included, weighs roughly 45 grams. That is lighter than most sunglasses, yet the construction shrugs off shocks beyond 5,000 Gs and keeps water out to 100 metres.
At its heart sits a fully skeletonised, COSC-certified automatic movement developed with the specialists at AMT, visible from both sides through the openworked architecture and good for 65 hours of power reserve.
Norqain will make 300 pieces — a hundred more than the sold-out debut — at €10,650, each delivered with a choice of turquoise-accented rubber strap or the stretch fabric alternative, both fitted to the Norteq pin buckle. The young Swiss brand has made independence its calling card, and the X-Lite Turquoise states the case at a glance: serious chronometry, dressed like it’s on holiday. In this part of the world, that combination tends to find an audience quickly.
