Since 2017, Hublot has made Saint-Tropez its summer testing ground. Not because the town is a strategic market—though it certainly is one—but because it provides the ideal setting for an experience that the Geneva-based brand consistently cultivates: luxury lived rather than displayed.
On June 17, 2026, on the quays where the Mediterranean’s most beautiful sailboats are moored, Hublot presented its summer collections under the title “The Art of Pastel Ceramics.” The title says it all: this is not watchmaking in the strict sense—complications, calibers, or precision certifications. It’s about color. About materials. About the watch as a fashion accessory in the most sophisticated sense of the term.
Ceramics as a Craft Challenge
Working with ceramics in watchmaking is one thing. Working with it in pastel shades—powder pink, sky blue, sage green, sand—is quite another. Ceramics are, by nature, a capricious material: coloring them requires mastery of firing temperatures and pigments that few watch manufacturers possess. Hublot, which has made material innovation one of its hallmarks since its inception, excels at this craft.
The pastel shades created for this summer collection are not premixed colors: they are the result of a research and development process unique to the Nyon factory, where the materials teams work with the same scientific rigor as a pharmaceutical laboratory. The result is a soft yet intense palette—colors that seem to have absorbed the Mediterranean light.
Saint-Tropez as a state of mind
The choice of Saint-Tropez as the venue for these pieces is no accident. The town, ever since Brigitte Bardot and Roger Vadim, has become more of a legend than a place—a place where casualness and excellence coexist without contradiction, where one can wear a watch worth the price of a car with a simple white T-shirt without shocking anyone.
This is precisely the niche Hublot aims to fill with its summer collections: visible yet relaxed luxury—jewelry that can be worn at the beach without ostentation and to dinner with effortless ease. Ceramic—a lightweight, scratch-resistant material that feels comfortable against the skin even in intense heat—is ideal for this aesthetic.
Leisure as a theme
There is something paradoxical about the idea of a summer watch—a timekeeping device designed specifically for those who, for the duration of a summer, seek to break free from the constraints of time. Hublot plays on this paradox with keen awareness: the summer watch isn’t there to remind you of appointments. It is there to punctuate the light, to mark not the hours but the hues of the day—the blue of the morning, the gold of the afternoon, the pink of the sunset.
The 2026 Pastel Editions are produced in limited quantities. What is rare is appreciated, and what is appreciated is worth contemplating. In Saint-Tropez, in June, this feels like a philosophy.
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