Omega’s De Ville Trésor Orbis watch
Two new dress watches will have you looking good, while doing good
The oldest Douglas DC-10 airliner in operation today is known as the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital. Donated to the Orbis International charity in 2011, it has been kitted out to be an ophthalmic clinic and teaching facility, one where medical personnel can watch live surgeries and undergo training. Within this “hospital with wings” there’s a 48-seat classroom, a laser treatment room, an operating theatre and an intensive care unit.
Orbis was founded in 1982 as a non-profit organisation dedicated to tackling preventable blindness in developing countries. It approaches this in two ways: by flying doctors to nations where the blind and partially sighted have limited access to treatment, and by training local healthcare workers in sustainable and transferable skills. “Our goal is not to come in and show off,” says Dr Hunter Cherwek, vice president of clinical services at Orbis. “It’s to come in and show how.”
In the last 20 years, the Flying Eye Hospital has carried out treatment programmes in 92 countries, providing help to over 23m people. It has introduced at least 325,000 eye care specialists to modern equipment and procedures.
The watch manufacturer Omega has been a supporter of Orbis since 2011, its ambassadors Daniel Craig and Cindy Crawford have both undertaken awareness-raising trips to some of the world’s poorest regions. (The accompanying short films, posted on YouTube, are worth every minute of your time.) Eddie Redmayne is its most recent champion.
Omega has also produced multiple special edition watches, making a donation to the charity from each sale. The latest models, launched this month, are a pair of De Ville Trésor dress watches. Both 40mm in size, they come with domed gradient dials, varnished second hands
De Ville Trésor Master Co-Axial Chronometer Orbis Edition,
40mm steel on navy leather strap, £5,560, by Omega
and 18k white gold indices, with an option of a polished or a diamond-set bezel (priced £5,560 and £10,100 respectively).
In reference to Orbis’s mascot — and the cuddly toys given to children undergoing eye surgery — a teddy bear replaces the eight digit inside the date indicator at the six o’clock index. Each watch comes in a presentation box with a certificate and a bear key charm.
Omega is best known for its sports watches — the “Moonwatch” Speedmasters and the “James Bond” Seamasters — but its dress watches have a vintage charm of their own. The Trésor shares its name with a model first produced in 1949 and pays tribute to Omega's design heritage, while being a thoroughly 21st century watch — each one is driven by a “luxury” version of its handwound calibre 8511 movement. A first-class watch doing first-class work.
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