Watches: Zodiac Time from Van Cleef & Arpels

They won’t predict your future, but Van Cleef & Arpels’s Zodiac Lumineux timepieces will certainly light up your wrist. Following the release of the men’s Zodiac Lumineux timepieces ($113,000) last year at SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) in January 2018, the Swiss watchmaker has unveiled the Lady Arpels Zodiac Lumineux versions ($148,000). Both collections feature the 12 signs of the zodiac and feature the brand’s patented light-on-demand module, which illuminates each zodiac sign’s “stars,” made from enamel beads, on the dial via a pusher button. The technology first debuted in 2016 when it lit up the Aventurine dial of Van Cleef & Arpels’s Midnight Nuit Lumineuse timepiece—also inspired by the heavens.

The beauty of the light-on-demand module is that it’s not battery operated and doesn’t eat up the watch’s power reserve because it operates separately from the movement. That means you can show it off as many times as you like, if you don’t mind being that person that strikes up the astrology conversation at a dinner party. (Or, if you’re clever, you might use it as a subtle way to alert your significant other that it’s time to leave while you pretend to play with the watch.) The four to six LED lights within each timepiece are good for 10,000 hours and light up for four seconds at a time when activated, which means you can light up your wrist roughly 9 million times—likely, more than you will ever need to in a lifetime unless you are seriously obsessive compulsive.

A pusher on the side of the white-gold case of each timepiece activates the lighting system, which you can feel spring into action on the wrist. The light that shows through the enamel beads—which mark the stars on each zodiac sign—shines for just four seconds at a time. The vibration of a ceramic strip (much like that found in a lighter), beating 200 hertz, lights up the stars. Creating this system was a challenge for Van Cleef & Arpels engineers, because the team had to find just the right balance for the ceramic strip’s thickness—if it was too stiff it bounces back too fast, but if it is too soft it takes too much time. When it’s beating at 200 hertz, it’s so fast it can’t be seen, so the R&D team had to use a high-speed camera that took 4,000 pictures a second in order to make its movement visible to the human eye.