Issey Miyake’s perfume-bottle design language, channeled into wristwatches

There’s certainly an element of luxury that overlaps the perfume and watch industry. They both are objects of desire and symbols of high-society. They even often have the same points of inspiration, with the liberal use of faceted glass, chrome, and gemstones if you’re looking to really up the ante… but there’s obviously a distinction between a watch and a perfume bottle. Lee Huang’s conceptual watch created for Issey Miyake blurs that distinction.

The conceptual Issey Miyake watch cleverly uses glass as a material for the watch body, as opposed to stainless steel. Borrowing the fluted design texture from most top-of-the-line fragrance bottle designs, the watch’s thick glass body comes with a unique textured rim that reflects light just the way a fancy looking glass bottle does. The glass body (and the dial cover too) come with a high refractive index that creates enough parallax to give it the appeal of a perfume bottle, along with just a slight tinge of frosting that actually helps cut the internal reflections to retain the watch’s minimalist appeal. In keeping with the timepiece’s clean, almost zen-ike design, a plain white leather strap suspends the crystalesque time-telling beauty to your wrist. Looks beautiful, doesn’t it?!

Designer: Lee Huang

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Sarang Sheth
Sarang is the co-editor in chief of Yanko Design. He is a former industrial designer at a Bangalore-based multidisciplinary design studio, working in areas including appliances, FMCG, packaging, technology, luxury, etc. Sarang has written about design and technology for over a decade and has been a jury member on international design awards. He occasionally works on tech concepts featured on Forbes, The Verge, Hypebeast, Digital Trends, SlashGear, Tom's Guide, LetsGoDigital, and Unbox Therapy. Sarang graduated from MIT Institute of Design, Pune.