Christopher Ward has spent the past year treating its own catalog like a sketchbook. The Bel Canto keeps mutating, the Twelve has been stretched and skeletonized and shrunk, and the brand seems comfortable letting its bestsellers absorb ideas that would have felt out of character a few years ago. Not everything has landed for me. Almost all of it has been well built, which is the harder half of the equation, and the newest entry shows up in six flavors as the Twelve (Ti) Pic’n’Mix.
The thing worth being precise about is what’s new, because the case isn’t it. The Twelve (Ti) has been available in 36mm Grade 2 titanium for a while now, and Christopher Ward’s own product copy describes the Pic’n’Mix as a remix of that existing watch. What changes is the dial plate. It’s a three-dimensional crystalline surface built to read like sugar crystals pressed flat under the handset, finished with a degradé fade that runs light at 12:00 into dark at 6:00. Six colors, 50 pieces each, named the way a corner shop would name them: Blue Sherbet, Kola Krystals, Apple Sour, Cherry Pop, Orange Fizz, and Berry Burst.
Everything else follows the Twelve blueprint. Twelve-sided bezel, screw-down crown, flat sapphire, and the same brushed, polished, and sandblasted treatment across the case. The numbers are the cool part here. It stands 8.95mm tall, measures 40.8mm lug to lug, and the case alone weighs 34 grams, which works out to 70 grams on the titanium bracelet and 45 on rubber. Water resistance is 100m. That’s about as easy a watch to wear as anything in this territory, and 36mm remains hard to find in an integrated bracelet watch.
Inside is the COSC-certified Sellita SW300-1 b, time-only, running at 4Hz with a 56-hour power reserve and a stated tolerance of -4/+6 seconds per day. Christopher Ward specifies elaboré-grade Colimaçoné finishing on the movement, which is a mid-tier decoration standard rather than the highest one, so read “chronometer” here as a rate claim instead of a finishing claim.
You can still see the rotor through the snap-on exhibition caseback, though the sapphire carries a printed Pic’n’Mix graphic over the view. Both straps come in the box, the color-matched rubber and the titanium bracelet with a micro-adjust butterfly clasp and screw links. The presentation case even ships with a striped paper candy bag, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your tolerance for a theme.
All six are available now at $2,350. This isn’t my favorite thing Christopher Ward has done, and I’d reach for several of the brand’s subtle/tooly releases first. Even so, the execution looks flawless, and I’ll tip my hat to a company still taking swings at this price instead of coasting on the Genta look it already sells well.
What I can’t judge from a screen is the color. Press photos tend to flatten a textured, layered dial like this one, and my guess is these read brighter and stranger in the metal than anything published so far. If that turns out to be true, I may end up eating my words, which happens a lot here at TBWS.
Co-Founder & Senior Editor
Michael Peñate is an American writer, photographer, and podcaster based in Seattle, Washington. His work typically focuses on the passage of time and the tools we use to connect with that very journey. From aviation to music and travel, his interests span a multitude of disciplines that often intersect with the world of watches – and the obsessive culture behind collecting them.