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Behind the new Rolex Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller is 5 years of designing and engineering

Rolex has unveiled its Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller, a watch years in the making, and revealed some of the steps a new design goes through

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The Rolex Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller 40 is a fresh entry in a lineage that includes such legendary watches as the Datejust, the GMT-Master II, the Submariner and the Cosmograph Daytona.

It takes Rolex five to seven years to create a new watch model, I just learned.

It is March 24, and I am sitting in the Geneva headquarters of the watchmaker with the platinum version of its brand-new, not-yet-announced Rolex Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller in my hands.

It is a fresh entry in a lineage that includes such legends as the Datejust, the GMT-Master II, the Submariner and the Cosmograph Daytona.

I was summoned to this top-secret meeting to discover the wonders of this new timepiece. A week later, the Land-Dweller will be introduced during the Watches and Wonders trade fair across town in the Swiss city, and within minutes of its debut, collectors and fans around the world will be dissecting it.

A close-up of the Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller 40.
A close-up of the Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller 40.

A totally new collection from Rolex is a rare thing.

Like fellow luxury juggernauts Porsche or Hermès, Rolex’s great strength is that it rarely changes much. You need to be able to look at a watch and immediately know it is a Rolex – and that the wearer is the kind of person who owns such a thing. The company tweaks its core products gradually over time.
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