September 5th, 2011

Picto – a picture of watch fashion 2011

The decorative watch has dominated women's timekeeping for many seasons, whilst the men's ”statement watches” have been battling it out to be big, bigger, biggest! Now Timepieces Rosendahl Copenhagen is relaunching the Danish design icon, Picto, and by doing so is taking men's and women's watch fashion in a completely new direction. Minimalist and brimming with the best from the 80s.

Even though the 1980s are known for spectacularly garish colours and the sculptured silhouettes that are now back in fashion, the decade also contained a more minimalist design wave. The aim was to update conventional design, focusing on form and function, and in 1984 two Danish designers had a stroke of genius when they created the Picto watch. A minimalist, almost aesthetic watch design in a graphic style and ”rotating disc” which is more contemporary today than ever before.

Fashion & MoMA

With Picto, Steen Georg Christensen and Erling Andersen wanted to design a ”picture” of time. Where traditional watches show the time with the ticking hands, it is the watch face that rotates on Picto, giving the illusion of the earth moving and time passing. Conversely, the hour hand is fixed like a dot on the face, as Picto's only feature besides  the minute hand – both in shiny, stylish steel.

Picto's innovative design and technology have taken the watch all over the world and directly into MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where the watch is today a part of the museum's permanent exhibition. So it is a modern design icon that Rosendahl is now relaunching in its almost original form. However, the watch casing has been changed to enable the soft, supple silicone strap to glide straight through it, making Picto the epitome of the no-nonsense design that dominates today's fashion.