Hermès H08 watch

Urban and contemporary, the new H08 watch from Hermès was designed to capture the spirit of a sport watch within a classic presentation.

The new Hermès H08 watch

Ask Philippe Delhotal about the role and purpose of watches in today’s world and prepare to be surprised. The creative director of Hermès Horologer tackles the question with typical French candeur. “The traditional watch, it’s not about being useful,” he explains. He’s sitting in a sunlit office in Geneva, and even over Zoom it’s easy to pick up on his dry humour, because to an horologist watches are, in fact, everything. “You don’t really need it for the time even,” he continues. “It’s really a piece of art. It’s the time that people put behind it, and the emotions behind it.”

It might sound like an odd pitch while discussing the launch of the H08, a new line of thoroughly elegant automatic timepieces for men. But it is one that fits entirely within the Hermès philosophy to constantly reflect and re-evaluate in order to create and design items, be it a watch, clothing or an objet from the Petit H line, that elevates daily experience, making it more streamlined and effortless.

Revealed at the recent Watches & Wonder in Geneva earlier this year, the H08 delivers a simple proposition: a watch that looks good, blending the best parts of sport-inspired detail, the performance of a mechanical movement and the precision of geometry in design. With typical Hermès savoir faire, it blurs the boundaries between casual and elegant in a razor-thin casing that sits almost flush with the wrist and is neither round nor square but both at once. It’s also made with the pick of materials, including a graphene composite that’s both robust and unbelievably lightweight (it’s one of the lightest materials used in contemporary watchmaking), DLC-coated titanium cases, and a choice of black gold-coated or black nickel-coated dials. And it happens to feel extremely nice to wear – which is high up there on the list of details that matter most.

Philippe Delhotal, creative director of Hermès Horologer

Available in five iterations, including the aforementioned graphene-filled composite case topped by a satin-brushed and polished ceramic bezel with black gold-coated dial, and there’s also the matte black DLC-coated titanium option and a second in satin-brushed titanium. The H08 is a watch designed for the multifaceted world of today’s urban man, according to Delhotal.

This meant creating something that could balance the taut finesse of sport watches with the fluid, adaptable aesthetic that underpins the collections of Hermès’s menswear designer Veronique Nichanian. In fact, the silhouette of the H08 draws heavily upon Nichanian’s work. It’s sensual, yet undeniably masculine. “I really want [the H08] to be aligned with the atmosphere that you can get from the Hermès Men’s Universe, this environment which is more urban, but also contemporary. These are two keywords that were leading us to start working on this watch, but also working on the materials and the colours.”

Delhotal’s starting point for the H08 was that urban man’s most common environment, the city; its architecture and the geometry of its lines and the energy that runs along those lines and streets. Just as every city is a juxtaposition of the smooth and the rough, of fluctuating perspective, so it is with the H08. “This is something that was really important to me, to play with another perspective,” says Delhotal. “The choice of materials was really important ... We wanted to play with new materials that could bring this modern touch also, like we brought the rough band, for example, or titanium. This brings a really modern touch to the object I think.”

Hermès H08 watch

While the H08 has been described as an all-terrain watch, Delhotal explains he had no interest in creating something that would resemble the aesthetics of the traditional performance timepiece. Instead, he focused on capturing capture the spirit of a sports-style watch that had the elevated, classic features of a traditional mechanical timepiece and was the perfect blend of both. “What I mean, when we speak about all terrain, is that it’s adaptable to your everyday life, whatever you do.

“But the other very important part is also the lightness in terms of design. It’s true that with other sports watches you have a lot of information [on the dial] and this is maybe what the people are looking for, but that was really not what we wanted to have. We always work for simplicity and we really want to keep the essentials, go to the essentials, being a bit minimalist at some point. But sometimes trying to stay simple is even more – you are tempted to put more information [onto the watch].”

Finishing the H08 is a bespoke typography used to create the numerals that reflects the same architectural fluidity of the casing, with the zero and eight embodying particular significance – the former emptiness and the latter infinity.

The excitement at this year’s Watches & Wonders 2021 around the release of the H08 was in part due to the fact that, unlike other maisons, Hermès is not inclined to the rapid release of new lines or creations. Delhotal, who joined Hermès more than a decade ago after a five-year stint at Patek Philippe, and before that had been at Jaeger-LeCoultre and Vacheron-Constantin, says that the aim at Hermès is instead the considered development of timepieces that stand the test of time.

Hermès H08 watch

“I have the impression that we are bringing out fewer creations,” he says. “In the past, when Hermès came to Switzerland in 1978, we really brought new creations out every few years. Of course, we had the Arceau in 1978, Cape Cod in 1991, and Slim d’ Hermès in 2015. And today, H08. We had three years to develop the H08. What we are thinking today is, bring out fewer creations, but make sure, and we hope, that they will last over generations.”

To achieve that goal, says Delhotal, you have to understand that a watch today isn’t about being useful. It’s not even about telling the time. It’s about the pleasure of its creation.

“[The H08] is a piece of art on your wrist,” he tells WISH. “A mechanical watch is a living object. It really lives; you can hear it. There is something, it moves and you have this contact with it.

“The objective of your traditional watch is, we need to wear a beautiful object on our wrist. It’s really just that. To make it simpler, to wear a beautiful object that reflects your personality, your taste, your style, and also to have kind of, as you say, a painting on your wrist.”