Hunting season is now open for fans of Ralph Lauren’s watches and two big cats are on the prowl. Prepared for outdoor adventures on any terrain, the casual, utilitarian spirit of the RL67 Safari watch has made it a popular choice with both men and women since its launch in 2013.
This year sees the arrival of the new RL67 Safari on rugged 'aged' steel bracelets (below) with either a grooved camouflage or all-black dial. The look and feel remains vintage Ralph Lauren and, like every product the designer introduces to his lifestyle emporium, the new watches bring a laid-back, unstudied sense of style to the scene. The new watches expand the offer of the RL67 Safari, which include the Grand Date models with a bigger, more imposing 50mm case sizes and a practical big date window.
The rugged romance of Safari
Ralph Lauren created his first Safari apparel collection in 1984, a year before the release of the epic romance Out of Africa starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Enamoured by the rugged and unspoiled world of an African safari, Ralph Lauren fully understood the storytelling potential of this theme. “The romance of safari,” confesses the designer, “is a dream that I have returned to many times. It is an adventure, a world of refinement set against a rugged and powerful landscape.”
Translating the spirit of Safari into a watch
The challenge was to translate the mood of his Safari apparel collection into the realm of watches, and the debut of the RL67 Safari collection fit the mandate to perfection. Enhanced and enlarged over the past four years, the RL67 Safari has been growing to include two 50mm versions, one with a camouflage dial and the other with a black dial and a dark olive-green canvas strap inspired by a classic explorer’s shoulder bag.
African Safaris and urban jungles
The personality of the watches is weathered and casual, backed up for real life wear and tear with a robust mechanical movement, excellent legibility and water-resistant cases. Both the camouflage and the black dial versions of the RL67 models come in aged steel cases with a gunmetal finish. The vintage patina of the cases of these Safari watches gives the blackened steel a worn appearance intended to convey the feeling of a much-loved, much-worn object.
The perfect travelling companion, the new RL67 watches can also tackle the tough realities of the urban jungle as men and women go about their daily safaris. Both watches are kitted out with retro-style beige luminescence on the hands and hour markers, which glows in the dark, and run on a Swiss mechanical automatic movement. Water is no problem either thanks to the screw-down crown providing water-resistance of 100 metres.
