Hublot used last week’s SIAR show in Mexico City as a platform to debut its newest experimental timepiece, the Big Bang MP-11 SAXEM, which owes its vivid green hue to a material called SAXEM, shorthand for sapphire aluminium oxide and rare earth mineral.



Typically used in high-tech applications such as satellites, and never before seen in a watch case, the material—which combines aluminium oxide, the basic component of sapphire, with rare-earth elements like thulium and holmium—is hard, brilliant and fully transparent.



Its use offers a perfect example of Hublot’s trademark “Art of Fusion,” referring to the brand’s pioneering approach to combining both classic and state-of-the-art materials in its forward-looking wristwatches (the brand’s “regal mastery of innovation,” in the words of CEO Ricardo Guadalupe).

Hublot Big Bang MP-11 SAXEM Courtesy of Hublot
The model builds on a tradition of transparency Hublot began with its Big Bang Unico Sapphire, whose see-through sapphire case proved that despite the well-known challenges of machining a case out of sapphire, where there was a will, there was a way.