Ochs und Junior Picks Out Its Perpetual Calendar in White Gold for the Holidays

Ochs und Junior is the small La Chaux-de-Fonds brand built around Ludwig Oechslin, the watchmaker behind Ulysse Nardin’s astronomical trilogy and the Freak. Its watches display complications through holes and dots instead of hands and subdials, and they do it all with the utmost of elegant simplicity. The perpetual calendar is the best example: Oechslin first designed it for Ulysse Nardin in 1996, using a few gears in place of the usual levers, so the date can be set forwards or backwards from the crown at any hour. After a Settimana for Christmas 2024 and a Day/Night in 2025, this year’s holiday edition is the perpetual calendar in white gold, and it closes out the brand’s 20th anniversary.

The case is Ochs und Junior's usual 42mm, a two-part grade 5 titanium case with straight lugs, a screw-down crown and a sapphire crystal. Look at how stubby those lugs are... that makes it almost puck-like on the wrist. It weighs 62g without the strap, which is light for a 42mm watch with a perpetual calendar inside. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is anthracite, sandblasted at the edge and circular-grained in the centre. Thirty-one holes arranged in a spiral around the edge track the date, with a white gold dot showing in the current day. A central disc with four openings turns once a year, and its outer opening points at the month like an hour hand, so 10 o’clock means October. A gold dot in that opening marks a leap year. Two small circles above and below the disc show power reserve and running seconds, and a separate dot near 1 o’clock tells you when the date can be adjusted. The hands and 10-minute markers are white gold too.

The base is Ulysse Nardin’s calibre UN-118, an automatic with 50 jewels, running at 4Hz with 60 hours of power reserve, with Oechslin’s calendar module on top. Ochs und Junior puts each one together and regulates it by hand in La Chaux-de-Fonds. It comes on an Ecopell calfskin strap in black, closed with a titanium buckle.

The Ochs und Junior Perpetual Calendar Holiday Edition 2026 is available from now until January 6 2027, priced at CHF 15,000 before tax. See more on the Ochs und Junior website.