In 1965, Nivada Grenchen sold the Colorama as the watch with many faces, a tiny jewel that swapped bezels and straps to match an outfit. Sixty years on, the Colorama returns as the first women’s collection in the brand’s modern history.
It is a small watch with a system attached, and the system is the story.
Three bezels, seven straps, one small watch
The idea is older than most of the revivals filling this year’s catalogs. Nivada presented the first Colorama in 1965 and protected the system with a Swiss patent, selling sets that behaved like jewelry boxes. The range ran from six colored bezels for the Colorama VI to stone-set bezels and a pendant for the Maharani, and silk and lace for the Fiesta.
The party trick is still the bezel. It clicks on and off in seconds, no tools and no jeweler required, and every set carries three of them.
Golden Hour sets get three polished gold shapes. Color Pop sets swap them for three enamel bezels in orange, green and white, each with a raised floral pattern lifted from the vintage pieces.
The straps play along: slim leather, 8mm wide tapering to 5mm, in up to seven colors that run from black, brown and white to orange, green, red and silver. Three bezels across seven straps make 21 combinations before the pendants join in.
One watch, three faces a day.
Underneath the dressing-up sits a small, serious watch. The case is 17mm of 316L stainless steel with gold-tone IP plating and stands just 6.75mm tall, over a flat white enamel dial with gold-tone applied indexes and a flat sapphire crystal.
A Ronda 1042 Swiss quartz movement runs the two hands, accurate to -10/+20 seconds a month, with a battery rated at about 36 months. Water resistance is 5 ATM, and the caseback snaps on in the vintage manner.
Seventeen millimeters is small even by vintage standards, closer to a piece of jewelry than a wristwatch, and that is the intent. The Colorama was designed in 1965 to be worn the way a brooch is worn, as the finishing piece of an outfit, the last thing put on before leaving.
The second gift hides in its own box
Every set, Classic or Collector, includes the Time Capsule, a heart-shaped pendant built to hold the watch. Its hammered gold-tone surface carries a single 1.5mm prong-set diamond, and it hangs on a shorter chain so it rests close to the neck, where a pendant gets seen rather than lost in an outfit.
The heart shape is deliberate, a romantic emblem the brand ties to love and protection, and the hammered finish keeps it from reading as costume jewelry. Worn with the watch inside, the capsule turns the timepiece into the pendant.
It arrives in a separate box on purpose. The set is the first gift, presented in a black box inspired by the original vintage case with room for a handwritten message card, and the capsule is kept aside to be given later, at an anniversary or on Valentine’s Day, as a second moment.
The two-moment idea came out of the design process itself. The brand wanted the giving of the watch to stretch past a single evening, so the capsule waits in its own box until an anniversary, a birthday or a Valentine’s Day asks for it.
Collector Sets add the Golden Sun, a 35mm gold-tone pendant on a long chain. The watch drops into it and rides lower on the chest, worn as a necklace the way the 1960s originals were. One movement, three addresses: the wrist for the day, the heart close at the neck, the sun lower and longer.
Four sets for the centenary
The line splits four ways. The Golden Hour Set (23001Q01) and the Color Pop Set (23002Q01) cost $695 each, while the Golden Hour Collector Set (23003Q01) and the Color Pop Collector Set (23004Q01) cost $895, adding the Golden Sun pendant and the full run of seven straps.
It is also a first: the Colorama opens the brand’s women’s line, built with a woman at the center of the story, after collectors spent years asking how to share their vintage-inspired watches with the women in their lives.
The revival took more than a year of work, with the team refining proportions, colors and the feel of the bezel as it clicks into place. It lands in the brand’s centenary year: Nivada Grenchen was founded in 1926 and relaunched in 2020 under Guillaume Laidet. The Colorama is the November chapter of a twelve-launch centenary calendar.
Sales open on 19 November, as a permanent collection, on the brand’s own site and through its retailer network. The launch runs as a series of presentations rather than a single drop. Collectors meet the sets in Paris, New York, Zurich, London and Milan through the season.
A 17mm watch has no business being this much fun. The Colorama changes its face in seconds, hides a diamond in a heart, and starts at $695.
I would begin with Color Pop. The orange enamel bezel makes the 1965 idea sing.