Corum Admiral AC-One 45 Chronograph

Corum’s Admiral collection has flown flags to mark the watch’s indices since the swinging ’60’s. For nearly sixty years, Corum’s milked the motif with dozens of variations, many best described as aethetically challenged. And here it is: the first Admiral watch without flags! The titanium-cased Corum Admiral AC-One 45 Chronograph. Oh wait . . .

There they are! On the flange, in stencil form, pretty much hiding from view. But wait there’s more! Am I the only one who see the dial’s embossed triangular pattern — “Grenadier fendu” to you — as a bunch of tiny flags?

Corum’s designers worked hard — perhaps too hard — to differentiate the AC-One 45 Chrono from its horological stablemates. Notice the AC-One’s sharply angled dodecagonal bezel and the embiggened Corum key and brand logo at the 12 position (as befits at 45mm watch).

While the new Corum Admiral AC-One 45 Chronograph’s  dial still mashes the subdials into a tri-compax layout, props to the designer for skeletonizing more of the hour and minute hands to maximize otherwise minimal legibility. And incorporating the sub-dials numbers into the mini-chapter rings.

The date window, on the other hand, is a disaster. I don’t know what watch designers drink in La Chaux-de-Fonds (in the Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel). Hopfenperle? Whatever it is, the person responsible for the date window’s inclusion, for its cock-eyed positioning needs to check into IWDA (Inebriated Watch Designers Anonymous). The color-matched frame around the date window does nothing to help its aesthetics, and much to make them worse.

Corum’s attempt to modernize the Admiral’s seafaring design strikes me as a farrago of dissonant design cues (especially in gold). A great deal of effort leading to nothing much. (At $9,900.) What the Admiral really needed was a sea change, something simple, striking and hi-tech. And maybe something less expensive. But this? No. At any price.