Roger Dubuis’ Rarities programme and its first offering, the Excalibur Moonlight, demonstrate the essence of bespoke watchmaking
On the casebacks of his earliest watches, Roger Dubuis engraved three words, ‘just for friends’. It was a personal declaration that his watches were made for a close and discerning circle who appreciated not only technical mastery but the creative vision behind it. That philosophy has found a new home.
On the third floor of the Roger Dubuis manufacture in Geneva, there is a red door. It is not the first red door to carry meaning in the world of luxury: Elizabeth Arden painted hers on Fifth Avenue in 1910, and an entire language of exclusivity was born from it. The colour has always signalled that something exceptional happens on the other side. For Roger Dubuis, it is the brand’s bespoke watchmaking programme, Rarities by Roger Dubuis.
Step through and the logic of conventional watchmaking falls away. There are no fixed references, no standard configurations, and no production runs. A small team of watchmakers, engineers, and designers work on pieces built for individuals rather than collections. Clients are invited into every stage of the creative process, selecting materials, complications, finishes, and metiers d’art in direct collaboration with the brand’s team.
Rare gemstones, intricate engraving, enamel work, and highly complex mechanisms: the choice is shaped entirely by the owner’s vision. The only constraint is that every piece must carry serious watchmaking content. Decoration alone is never enough. Every piece is produced once.
Always unique
The Excalibur Moonlight is one such piece. It is a unique timepiece designed to showcase the full depth of what Rarities by Roger Dubuis can do and to embody the brand’s annual theme, Movements of the Sky. The brief was to build a watch in which reading the hours and minutes becomes an experience of looking up at the stars rather than down at a dial. The result is a four-level dial system in which the moon, the stars, and the 12 constellations of the zodiac revolve around a central tourbillon. To look at the Excalibur Moonlight is to look upward.
Inside the 45mm black DLC titanium case is the RD115 calibre, first presented by Roger Dubuis in 2022 and adapted specifically for this piece. The movement is defined by its central tourbillon, paired with two rotating discs, one for hours and one for minutes, mounted on ball bearings that orbit the tourbillon cage.
The dial is where the Excalibur Moonlight transforms watchmaking mechanics into something altogether more evocative. Four layers build a night sky from materials rarely seen on a wrist, starting with a blue flange ringed in luminous indexes that frame the scene like a horizon.
Beneath it, the hour disc is cut from translucent blue Murano glass, its surface etched with the 12 constellations of the zodiac. The minute disc above repeats the effect with astral motifs and a slow, glowing procession of moon phases. At the centre, the tourbillon spins once a minute, its cage textured to resemble the lunar surface, a small moon caught mid-orbit.
The piece truly comes alive in the dark. The Super-LumiNova across the constellations, moon phases, and indexes emit a soft green glow, while the caseback, laser-engraved with dots inspired by the Milky Way, each tiny cavity hand-filled with luminescent material, radiates its own light.
Through the sapphire caseback, the movement reveals an architecture that connects directly to Roger Dubuis’ earliest work: cut-out bridges positioned in an arc, offering a view into a movement finished across 19 distinct decorative techniques—a reminder of the traditional decorative crafts Roger Dubuis has always built its reputation on.
The final touch is the most personal. The barrel cover can be engraved with the exact arrangement of stars as they appeared on a chosen date, most fittingly, the owner’s birthday, rendered in silver against black. It is the sort of detail only a manufacture building every part in-house could offer: not decoration, but a signature written in the sky.
Mr Dubuis’ ‘just for friends’ sign-off is the stuff of legend now, but the spirit behind it continues to thrive. It moved from an engraving to a door, and from a door to a watchmaking process built around a single client rather than a catalogue. Rarities by Roger Dubuis is, in the end, the same promise made with an even deeper conviction.
This story first appeared in the August 2026 issue. Purchase it as a print or digital copy, or consider subscribing to us here
