Financial Times

Watches can be elegant, they can be decadent, they can be practical… but sometimes you just want something that puts a smile on your face. Last year TAG Heuer released a comic short film starring Ryan Gosling to mark the 60th anniversary of its Carerra watch; this year it’s just dropped a multicoloured retread of its very first watch, the 1986 Formula 1, in collaboration with the disrupter brand Kith. There’s something wonderfully Lego-like about the whole thing. It’s a primary coloured vibe that MB&F has also embraced in the faces of its radical M.A.D.1 designs (where you tell the time from hour and minute cylinders that rotate around the watch’s case) – the latest yellow, red and blue iteration has instantly sold out but another take on the M.A.D.1 is to come in the summer.

Both watches join a family of exuberant designs, such as Hublot’s smiling-flower-faced Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow watch and Jacob & Co’s Brilliant Full Baguette Rainbow (both available on the secondary market). For a more subtle take on the multi-hued dial consider American brand Alabaster Industries’ Silver Core, where the dial is sliced from tiger eye natural stone, so every watch is subtly different; or if you fancy a single pop of – currently very fashionable – green there’s Omega’s latest Seamaster with a “teak”-textured dial inspired by the wooden decks of sailing boats, or Cartier’s new Santos-Dumont in teal.