Since the revival of the brand under the roof of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, Daniel Roth has moved consistently into a segment that is rarely occupied in today’s watch landscape: small series with immaculate finishing, no sporting ambitions, and a clear positioning in the field of Haute Horlogerie. The new Extra Plat Platinum is not an outlier in this logic — it is the logical next step.
The starting point is the already familiar Calibre DR002, a manufacture hand-wound movement developed from scratch by Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini for the Extra Plat collection. In a platinum case, it now appears in its most materially demanding configuration. In practice this is not trivial: platinum is denser than gold, more sensitive to machining tools, and requires lower cutting speeds during case production. According to the manufacturer, the production effort is three times that of gold. The double-ellipse case, measuring 38.6 x 35.5 mm with an overall height of 7.7 mm, is considerably smaller and flatter than what passes for the norm today. Anyone expecting platinum to announce itself loudly will be disappointed — and quietly seduced by its restraint.