Some watches sell you a movement. This one sells you a surface. Awake’s new Son Mai Silver Leaf collection shrinks its Vietnamese lacquer dials into a 38mm case, and the dial stays the entire argument: pure silver leaf under roughly a dozen layers of translucent lacquer, sanded and polished until the color glows from underneath instead of sitting on top.
Four gradient dials make up the Vignette line. Gentian Blue, Indian Red and Java Green join the permanent collection. Purple Viola, the magenta one in these photos, is a numbered limited edition of 200.
Fifteen hours in every dial
Son Mai is sanded lacquer, a Vietnamese craft built on patience. Awake starts each dial with pure silver leaf laid over the base, then builds the color in translucent lacquer, layer after layer, about twelve in all. Every layer dries, gets sanded back and polished, and the silver underneath keeps shifting the light as the gradient deepens.
Fifteen hours per dial. The caps exist for that.
The hands and markers get the same treatment as the dial furniture on far pricier métiers d’art pieces. Polished steel, filled with BGW9 Super-LumiNova, then sealed under steel caps, a detail Awake calls its Chiaroscuro signature. In the dark the inserts glow blue-green through the caps, so the lacquer stays readable after the light goes. The dial itself carries almost no text, just the Awake script and a small Hand Made signature at six.
Two kinds of scarce
The permanent three are capped, not limited. Awake will make at most 100 dials per color per year, a ceiling set by the lacquer work itself rather than by marketing, and by the hours a single dial absorbs. Purple Viola plays by stricter rules: 200 numbered pieces, split into two batches. The first hundred start shipping on November 30, 2026, and the second batch follows in March 2027. Once those 200 are gone, the color retires.
Ordering is direct. All four sit in Awake’s own store now, priced the same, and the figure US readers land on is about $2,955 with taxes, duties and worldwide shipping folded in. No dealer markup, no waitlist theater, just a production calendar set by how fast lacquer can dry and be sanded.
The Vignette treatment is the gradient itself. Color pools bright at the center and burns down to near-black at the rim, and because the pigment sits in translucent layers over reflective silver, the dial changes as your wrist turns. It is the same trick enamelists chase with fumé dials, done here in lacquer, and it means the watch reads magenta, plum or almost black depending on the light. No two rooms show you the same watch.
Smaller case, full-size hardware
The case is 316L stainless steel, 38mm across and 44.75mm lug to lug, with a thickness of 11.5mm over the crystal and 10mm without it. Sapphire front and back, the front with anti-reflective treatment, and a push-in crown. Water resistance runs to 100 meters, which puts this firmly in wear-it-daily territory instead of the handle-with-gloves corner where lacquer dials usually live.
On the wrist, the 44.75mm lug to lug is the number that counts most. It keeps the case inside the edges of smaller wrists, and the 20mm lug width means the strap drawer you already own fits it. At 11.5mm thick it slides under a cuff without the negotiation thicker sport watches demand.
Inside sits La Joux-Perret’s G101, an automatic with a 68-hour power reserve and a custom tungsten rotor you can watch through the caseback. Straps come from Jean Rousseau in Paris: alcantara or nubuck over a rubberized calfskin lining, on curved quick-release spring bars cut for this case. Even the buckle got engineering, a Fitwell M1 with 3mm of tool-free micro-adjustment, the kind of detail you feel on a hot afternoon when your wrist swells.
Awake is a Paris independent founded in 2019, and Son Mai is the collection that built its name. The first Silver Leaf generation sold out in the maker’s store for less than this line costs. The Vignette watches refine that formula: smaller case, same fifteen-hour dial, tighter hardware.
The permanent colors, up close
Silver leaf grain sits under the lacquer in every macro.
Editor’s take
My arithmetic is simple. About $2,955 buys a Swiss automatic in a daily-wearable 38mm case, and a dial built the slow way by a Paris independent. It wears like a dress watch and works like a daily one, which is a short list to be on. What the money really buys is the fifteen hours: no machine stamps these out, and no second example matches yours. That is the whole pitch, and it does not need another one.
If you want one, the Viola is the order to place first, since numbered batches don’t wait around, and the permanent colors will still be there next year at their own slow pace. This is the rare craft watch that asks for patience from its maker and none from its owner. I’d wear the blue on grey alcantara, and I would not baby it.
