If you chase the sun, you could easily celebrate your birthday twice in different time zones. And if you’re adventurous enough—and let’s face it, loaded enough—to be a globe-trotter, it’s time to get yourself some useful bling: a timepiece that actually tells you, at a mere glance, when you’re not in Kansas anymore…or wherever it was that you and your gang last toasted your latest milestone. It’s also a good accessory for when you’re on the job, going places, taking one for the team—humblebragging like a boss. The watch says it all.
“Worldtimers,” as frequent fliers are familiar with, usually have a complicated watch-face filled to the edges with numbers and city names depicting the major time zones. That’s fine—the tech is cool to look at and fiddle with (and there’s something for everybody, even obsessive types who like measuring speed and distance alongside travel time). But that type of watch can also be a headscratcher, when all you really want is the time in your current locale, and a reference point like the time back home. Telling time needn’t be so complicated, right? (Yep, even with jet lag on top of a hangover.)
Out this October, Bulgari’s newest timepiece, aptly named Hora Domus, which means “home time” in Latin, keeps it simple for you. The classic-looking watch face is devoid of clutter and thus reader-friendly. A mere push of a button adjusts to your destination city (among 24 worldwide, in polar opposite pairings), which is named on the aperture signified by a hard-to-miss arrow. Solid hands show the local time, with an extra cut-out hour hand permanently set to your home time (they’ll overlap when you get back home). Conveniently placed indicators around the center of the dial show season, day/night for home time, and AM/PM for local time. If you want to automatically adjust to daylight savings time, there’s a push-button for that, too. Bulgari’s Calibre BVL191 movement keeps the Hora Domus ticking at 21,600 vibrations per hour, with a 48-hour power reserve.
As for style, the movement itself is decorated with handcrafted circular graining and Côtes de Genève pattern. The housing is a classic 18k pink gold double ellipse case, 45mm in diameter, with glassbox sapphire crystal protecting the dial (in satin-finished silver or in lacquered black) and sapphire caseback. It attaches to your wrist with an alligator strap in black or “brawn,” and a rose gold pin buckle.
The disorientation felt in travel is not so much due to a movement in space, but a movement in time. Jet lag is physiological, as you cope with the shift in circadian rhythms or a changed reality as it were. It helps to have a handy timepiece making your mental recalibration to space- and time-traveling much easier. You can then concentrate on the good stuff: cultural nuances and discovering what life has to offer outside your comfort zone.
