The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.

We've minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.

In most cases, you'll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.

Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.

If you suffer a covered loss, there's no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.

Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).

The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.

We've minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.

In most cases, you'll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.

Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.

If you suffer a covered loss, there's no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.

Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).

The fastest and most secure way to protect the watches you love.

We've minimized the paperwork and maximized protection, so you can stop worrying about your watches and focus on enjoying them.

In most cases, you'll get a personalized quote in seconds and your policy kicks in immediately.

Wherever you are on planet Earth, your watches are protected. Rest easy and travel safely.

If you suffer a covered loss, there's no deductible and no gimmicks. Ever.

Each of your watches is covered up to 150% of the insured value (up to the total value of the policy).

The Spec Sheet Putting On Our Pleated Pants And Looking At A Timeless Classic: The Two-Tone Rolex Datejust Ref. 16233

Watch Spotting President Bill Clinton Wearing A Timex Ironman Triathlon 8 Lap To His Inauguration (1993)

Watch Of The Week My '90s Blancpains And Zeniths Are Future Collectibles, But That's Not Why I Love Them

Editors' Picks Our Favorite Watches For Under (A Few Way, Way Under) $1,000

Photo Report MoonSwatch Madness! Huge Lines Form Around The World On Omega x Swatch Launch Day

Watches In The Wild Thailand, Ep. 1: The Best Place In The World To Collect Seiko

Finding the right color for these cases required more than looking at a paint swatch.

Fallon, Nevada is a dusty stretch of land bookended by the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west and desert tumbleweeds to the east. Its landscape is beautiful in the expansive way that only flat open landscapes can be. Since the 1960s, it's been home to the U.S. Naval Force's premiere training academy – you might know it by the name Top Gun.

When you think of Top Gun, what comes to mind? Tom Cruise, obviously. But what else? For Christian Knoop, IWC's creative director, it was the dust of the Mojave desert; the icy waters of Lake Tahoe in the winter; the deep green of the mountain forests that the fighter pilots observe as they zoom overhead. For the last couple of years, Knoop and his team has been steeped in this imagery for the brand's latest collection, which debuted at Watches and Wonders.

The line of five watches feature IWC's signature colored ceramic cases, all rendered in the earthy tones found in and around the Top Gun academy. There's forest green Woodland; stark white Lake Tahoe; dusty beige Mojave Desert; matte black Ceratanium; and true black Jet Black. Getting to the final colors was a collaboration between IWC's designers and the Pantone Color Institute, the color consultancy behemoth. That IWC used Pantone's color language to define its new cases isn't unusual – most of the company's design processes begin with examining dozens of color swatches – but for Top Gun they worked hand-in-hand with the institute to land on specific shades of beiges, greens, and blacks that could truly evoke the nuances of the academy's landscape.

For IWC, the design process begins with a moodboard. "As designers, we take pictures of these uniforms and landscapes and put them all on the wall," Knoop explains. "But sooner or later there comes a moment where we have to translate this into color code." That's where Pantone comes in. Pantone's Color Matching System includes more than 2,000 colors, which can be used as the creative basis for just about any product or project.

Two thousand colors is a lot of colors to choose from, but it's not enough to find the just-right warm tone of the Mojave's sand or the very specific shade of black found on fighter jets. IWC used Pantone's chips as a starting point for a larger discussion around what it wanted to evoke with the watches through color. "In reality," Knoop says, "the color of the case rings doesn't match any of the colors we get from Pantone."

For the Mojave Desert edition, Knoop's team wanted to find a color that was warm but not sunny; dusty but not dull. They started pulling swatches in neutral tones. "It's a calm color," Knoop says. "A color that gives off a certain durability." After identifying a handful of Pantone swatches that approximated their vision, IWC shipped them off to its ceramics manufacturer in Japan to create samples of the color.

Creating colored ceramics involves a process called sintering, where a loose powder is treated with high heat to create a compact solid piece of material that Knoop describes as having a "chalk-like" consistency. In the case of IWC's watches, the powder is a combination of metallic oxides that are combined with a colored ceramic powder. The sintering process naturally alters the intended color of the final product. "This isn't the kind of process where you can translate color 100 percent," Knoop says. It means that finding that exact gray-green-beige of the final Mojave watch was more trial-and-error than test-tube exact. Knoop explains that coming up with the right mix of powders is a highly manual process. You can't just add pigment to the mix and expect it to turn out right. "You have to make the right technical binding between the colors and the materials, which is very complex."

With the Mojave watch, IWC tried five different versions of the color before landing on a shade that felt right. And that's the challenge – there's no definitive right or wrong when it comes to color. Color matching to a Pantone chip is only matching in theory. "Even a black dial is not just a black dial," Knoop says. Color is a mix of science and emotion. There's an element of "you know it when you see it," which gives the design process its inexplicable magic.

Liz Stinson is the executive editor of Eye on Design, published by AIGA. Her writing on design has also appeared in Wired, Curbed, Gizmodo, Architectural Digest, and The Wall Street Journal Magazine. To read her complete HODINKEE archive, click here.

The H Shop carries a variety of pre-owned IWC watches. For more information about IWC, visit their website.

Talking Watches With Culinary Icon Emeril Lagasse, Bam!

Buying, Selling, & Collecting The Patek Philippe Aquanaut 5060A: The '90s Start Of Something New (Kind Of)

Watch Spotting The Breitling Chronomat Fused The 'Seinfeld' And 'Friends' Universes

The Value Proposition The $150 Orient Bambino Is The New Value King

The Tudor Black Bay Buyer's Guide

Introducing Grand Seiko Releases Two New 36.5mm Heritage Models In The 44GS Case Design (And They're Not Limited!)

Introducing Take A Break From Your Smartwatch With The Timex X Adsum MK1

Second Opinions If You Really Love a Watch, Give it Away

Enter the World of Hodinkee

All the watches you need to know about, delivered to your inbox daily.

Enter the World of Hodinkee

All the watches you need to know about, delivered to your inbox daily.