Please excuse the preamble, but many of my watches are acquired because of a connection with the watchmaker behind them. I first met Emmanuel Dietrich in about 2012/2013 at a small fringe independent brand show in Geneva, the GTE (Geneva Time exhibition or something) at around SIHH time. He was an industrial designer and was there to show his first watch, a timepiece called the ED01 (google it), a robust utilitarian sports watch with funky cross-over elastic straps designed to be worn over a ski jacket which never really took off. A couple of years later Dietrich officially released the first version of the ‘Organic Time’ series, the OT1. I have kept in touch with Emmanuel over the years and a few years ago I managed to buy my favourite of his watches, the Dietrich Organic Time OT4.

The OT4 has a dark grey frosted steel case and an oh-so-smooth forged carbon bezel. One of the coolest things about these watches is the shape of this 2-part steel case plus bezel construction, which is quite different to most offerings in the price range…it really is an organic looking form with curves everywhere and a curvacious side profile which makes for a very comfortable fit to the wrist. The Carbon bezel is not your usual ‘laid-up’ carbon construction but ‘forged’ carbon (a misnomer, IMHO) which is actually dozens of pieces of Carbon ‘string’ moulded into a form under very high pressure and heat to create a look and surface which catches the light in a special way. The watch has a unique shaped sapphire crystal with a subtle dome, featuring faintly luminous hour marker ‘dots’ on the underside of the glass as well as laser-etched minute markers.

The rounded-hexagon dial is dominated by an X-shaped 3-D ‘branch’ design which looks almost Sci-Fi and is impossible to describe without photos. The hands are leaf-shaped – I don’t mean the classic ‘leaf’ hands but like actual tiny superluminova leaves on the end of beautiful very fine stainless steel (and in this model, blued) hands. There is a subsidiary seconds readout in the form of a 6-point star at the 5 oçlock position on the dial with one point being luminous, a practical touch which is unique to this model. Another similar star-shaped wheel, but with added hour numbers on the outer perimeter shows 24h time against a luminous background zone at the 9.30 position. There’s a cutaway section in the dial at 6 o’clock to show off the oscillating balance wheel, escape wheel (partially) and anchor. It’s a three-dimensional dial with many small details on different levels only becoming apparent when observing with a loupe. The beautifully polished and applied 12 and 6 numerals on the inner dial, the brushed steel movement bridge contrasting with the black and grey, the stunning blue hands…

This Dietrich Organic Time OT4 uses Miyota movements, dropped by the company in more recent models in favour of Swiss-made movements. There is a nice screw-in caseback and several original one-piece Dietrich straps available in leather/suede/silicon to perfectly suite the “thread-through” case. In my experience any black or grey NATO also does the job, although it has to be a wide one (min 24mm).

Great little conversation piece if you want something out of the ordinary, and rare enough on these shores to be a bit special…