Hublot and Samuel Ross Launch Bold Big Bang Unico SR_A in London

Samuel Ross spent the launch party for his new Hublot collaboration doing something rarely seen at corporate watch events: personally walking the room at CÉ LA VI, an 18th-floor rooftop bar overlooking London, and showing off the watch to every guest he could find. The crowd he had assembled included rapper Headie One, Tottenham footballer Destiny Udogie, Arsenal striker Eddie Nketiah, singer Tallia Storm, and Tinie Tempah — an invite list that reflected, according to Time+Tide's account of the evening, a man who simply gathered the people he wanted around him.

The watch generating that pride is the Big Bang Unico SR_A, limited to 200 pieces and built around a 42mm satin-finished black ceramic case housing Hublot's HUB1280 calibre. That movement brings a flyback chronograph, a silicon escapement, and a 72-hour power reserve to the SR_A design language for the first time. The matte black skeletonised dial puts the column wheel on display at 6 o'clock alongside the open chronograph mechanism, making the movement's architecture the visual centerpiece.

The strap is where Ross's signature most directly surfaces. A newly developed structured rubber piece carries his honeycomb motif in perforated form across its surface. "With the honeycomb, it was about taking information away from the watch to increase the lightness," Ross said. That same logic governs the broader design: black-plated titanium screws, rounded luminescent markers, and a stripped-back monochrome palette that Ross described in conversation with Wallpaper as a deliberate departure from the explosive materiality of his earlier Hublot tourbillon work, which used carbon fibre in acidic greens and oranges. "I wanted a deep contrast, so as not to cannibalise the structure we've established with the tourbillons," he said. "When it comes to the chronograph, it has a completely different case."

The SR_A timeline with Hublot is now seven years deep. Ross first connected with the brand after winning the Hublot Design Prize in 2019, then launched an active SR_A tourbillon series starting around 2022 that produced three editions before this chronograph. Hodinkee flagged the Big Bang Unico SR_A as the standout among Hublot's early 2026 releases, noting it arrives at a meaningfully lower price point than those tourbillon predecessors, though no retail figure has been confirmed publicly.

For Hublot CEO Julien Tornare, the timing carries additional weight. "It also represents an important milestone for Hublot as this year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of our first All Black timepiece, making this edition with Samuel Ross even more special for us," Tornare said. He framed the release as a broadening of the collaboration rather than a departure from it: "It represents a natural development of our collaboration — more open, more accessible, and driven by the same commitment to innovation that has defined the SR_A story from the beginning."

Ross, for his part, was explicit about what drove the design brief. "I have been obsessed for quite some time with this dynamic between performance and tactility, discretion and material contrast, which is happening within the luxury watch sector surrounding automatic and chronographic movements," he told Wallpaper. "Most of the aesthetics have been driven by functionality first. We've spent a little bit of time refining them, but it's always going to be practicality which leads."

At 200 pieces, the Big Bang Unico SR_A is the most attainable entry point yet into the SR_A collection — and the first one built for someone who wants a chronograph rather than a tourbillon as their statement.