You’re looking at one of Gérald Genta’s first notable watch designs.
That’s right — before he put pen to paper and created the Royal Oak for Audemars Piguet and the Nautilus for Patek Philippe, the young Swiss designer made the White Shadow for Universal Genève. Elegant and comfortable, it’s one of the more interesting vintage dress watch designs both from an aesthetic and a technical perspective.
Thanks to its record-breaking, slim automatic movement, the Gilt Shadow is a supremely comfortable watch. The cushion shaped case is impressively thin, but it’s also wide enough to feel substantial. UG produced this model in several configurations, but this particular example has to be one of the handsomest we’ve seen.
Dating to the 1970s, it features a 35mm yellow gold-plated cushion case, a signed crown, an acrylic crystal, sunburst champagne dial with black 'Roman' indices and a matching black 'pencil' handset. Powered by the Universal Genève Cal. 2-66 automatic movement with micro-rotor, this piece comes paired to a signed Universal Genève, brown alligator leather strap with a gold-plated pin buckle.
There are lots of great affordable dress watches out there, but few can match the Gilt Shadow’s pedigree.
It’s elegant, innovative and unusual — quite the combination!