Renaud Tixier skeletonises its Monday micro-rotor in gray gold

Renaud Tixier has given its debut watch its first movement update. The Monday Skeleton, announced today, strips the RVI2025 caliber to a fully openworked form and offers it in green and petrol blue editions of 15 pieces each. A price of CHF 129,000 excludes VAT, matching the maison's earlier releases.

The founders and their plan

The independent brand was founded by Dominique Renaud, the veteran inventor who co-founded movement developer Renaud & Papi, and Julien Tixier, a young master watchmaker. Their plan is to rethink seven core horological principles across seven watches named after the days of the week, released over 20 years.

The Monday reimagines the micro-rotor. A flywheel coupled to a propulsion spring is beneath the platinum rotor, and Renaud Tixier calls this component the dancer. Inspired by energy-recovery systems in the automotive industry, the spring-loaded, shock-absorbing mechanism lifts winding efficiency by 40 percent.

Skeletonisation runs through the partnership's history. Renaud honed the craft at Audemars Piguet between 1979 and 1984, working in a workshop devoted to openworked watches. Tixier brings prototyping and traditional finishing, including hand bevelling, black polishing on titanium and inward angles.

The hand-finished movement

The two skill sets meet in the new caliber. Every one of its 262 components is finished and decorated by hand at the workshops in Tolochenaz, a village on the shores of Lake Geneva. Techniques include black polishing, bevelling, circular graining, Côtes de Genève and bridge rounding.

The movement carries 238 inward angles, each finished by hand, alongside 187 hand-bevelled inner angles carried over from the original. The barrel cover and its spinning mainspring drum are layered with Grand Feu enamel in blue or green to match each edition.

The automatic caliber measures 36.8mm across and 6.83mm thick, and it beats at 18,000 vibrations per hour. Its power reserve stands at a minimum of 72 hours. Central hours and minutes are joined by a seconds display on a dedicated sub-dial.

The patent behind the winding system is unchanged. A declutching mechanism protects the movement from shocks, while the dancer converts even the slightest wrist movement into energy for the reserve. The design intent is efficiency without sacrificing the architecture a skeleton exposes.

The case and strap

The case is 18k gray gold, 40.8mm in diameter and 12.6mm tall, dropping to 10.5mm without the domed sapphire crystal. The caseband and the space between the lugs are hand-engraved with a burin for an organic texture, while the thin bezel, lug tops and caseback ring are mirror polished.

Color carries the distinction between the two references. The peripheral minutes flange, the chapter ring, the small-seconds track and the skeletonised dauphine-style hands are finished in blue or green. Faceted applied indexes sit on the rehaut's lower level, with a white minute track above.

Each watch comes on a 21mm hand-stitched alligator strap in full-grain leather matched to its accents, closed by an 18k white gold pin buckle. Water resistance is rated at 30 meters, so the Monday Skeleton is a piece for the wrist rather than the pool.

The openworking was a matter of time, given how much the 2024 inaugural Monday already revealed. Its RVI2023 caliber offered a cutout at nine o'clock and a full view of the gold-plated platinum micro-rotor through openworked curved bridges, alongside titanium bridges on the dial side.

That first edition displayed the winding system, a hand-engraved and enamelled barrel cover, and a large 2.5Hz balance wheel. The new fully openworked RVI2025 does away entirely with a traditional dial, letting the mechanics stand in for the face itself.

What results is a movement that reads less like a base to decorate and more like the whole object. The reshaped architecture reveals the mechanical structure while keeping the signature winding system intact, and the finishing gives the eye more than the headline complication alone.

The Monday was first shown two years ago as an effort to revolutionise micro-rotor winding, and since its debut the line has produced a handful of iterations mostly centered on dial design. This is the first to rework the movement architecture itself rather than the presentation around it.

The movement measures 36.8 mm in diameter and 6.83 mm thick. With 30 pieces in total split evenly, the Monday Skeleton is the maison's most limited statement of the winding idea so far.

Only 15 examples exist of each edition, and the published price keeps it in step with the brand's earlier output. For a maker that has built its identity on mechanical innovation and traditional finishing, the skeletonised Monday is both a showcase of craft and a reframing of its own debut.