The latest watch from Swedish GoS watches is the Sarek Blue, which is inspired by co-founder Patrik Sjogren’s childhood growing up in Sweden. Recalling the look of frost accumulating on windows during cold winters, Sjogren, who now runs the GoS brand, developed a novel dial design for the Sarek Frost series. I call it a series as opposed to a single model because, in addition to having an optional Damascus steel bezel (a specialty of the brand), the Sarek Blue is available in two dial colors, both shades of blue with one being a more frost/ice blue and the other being a more midnight metallic blue. The total Sarek Frost series will be produced as a limited edition of 100 pieces.

This is probably the most expensive current watch on the market to house the Swiss Made La-Joux Perret G100 class movement. Inside the Sarek Frost is the LJP G101 which has a special anthracite color for GoS and is fitted with a customized automatic rotor produced from heavy tungsten. This 4Hz automatic movement has about three days of power reserve and can be seen through the caseback’s sapphire crystal window. I believe that the difference between the LJP G100 and G101 movement is the lack of a date window in the latter.

The dial of the Sarek Frost is very interesting in its construction. The base blue sunray-finished dial has a frost design applied on the periphery of the dial to evoke the look of wintery windows. There are also sections of applied sapphire crystal blocks, which even have luminant on the bottom of them and gently glow in the dark after being charged by light. With that said, this decorative effect doesn’t assist with reading the dial in the dark given that the hands are both highly polished (you need a fair bit of light to see them) and contain no luminant. Look closely and you’ll see that in the sapphire sections are small minute markers, which is a nice touch to remind people that this is a time-telling instrument before it is a work of art. I will say here that while the shape of the hands is lovely, they are the weakest part of the design given that they are entirely too polished and blend into the dial under certain light conditions. I think that a frost finish or satinized finish for the hands would have been more appropriate. The sapphire crystal sections themselves aren’t the hour markers, but rather the hour markers are the gaps between the sections. Note that the specific watch I photographed is a pre-production model and I was told by GoS that some improvements will be made to the dial for the final production models of the Sarek Frost.

What GoS did nicely with the Sarek Frost is design a novel case that has a beautiful design feature on the edges in the form of carefully cut notches that make for an impressive effect. The steel case is 41.5mm wide, 11mm thick, and has a 49.5mm long lug-to-lug distance. That isn’t huge, but this does wear a bit larger than some current dress watch tastes. This is, however, a case size that I really like to wear on my wrist. The 50-meter water-resistant case has an equally attractive crown as well as a domed sapphire crystal over the dial. This is one of the rarer GoS watches that by default has no Damascus steel elements to it. This is perhaps an attempt to make the Sarek Frost more entry-level priced, but it is still a rather pricey timepiece overall. We also see another frost pattern applied to the steel caseback around the window for the movement.

There is one small element of Damascus steel on the watch (in addition to the optional Damascus steel bezel) in the form of the strap buckle. The roughly 21mm wide strap that comes with the watch is apparently salmon leather (no it doesn’t smell like fish) and black with an interesting texture to it. This is an overall spirited and beautiful watch from GoS that well-celebrates the wintry wonders that you can find in the Swedish homeland where the GoS brand (and Patrik Sjogren) were born. The price for the limited edition of 100 pieces GoS Sarek Frost watch is $9,500 USD for the standard steel bezel and $10,500 USD for the optional Damascus steel bezel. Learn more at the GoS watches website.