Watchmaker Le Jour is another resurrected vintage brand that returns to the scene with the Le Jour Mark I watch collection including this compelling reference LJ-MI-007 model that has a meteorite dial. The Mark I is a lot like the Omega Speedmaster Mark II, and the similarities are of course not an accident. The Le Jour Mark I is thematically based on the Omega Speedmaster Mark II, but it isn’t a carbon copy as there are notable case and bracelet differences. While it’s not cheap either, the Le Jour Mark I is really supposed to be a more affordable and slightly distinct alternative to the Omega Speedmaster Mark II for people who want a different personality that still has the distinctive looking tall tonneau-shaped case with its mix of brushed and polished surfaces.
Le Jour Mark I: Concept
The LJ-MI-007 is currently the only Le Jour Mark I model that has a meteorite dial and actually costs about $1,000 extra for this option. So the concept of this particular model is taking the core look of the Mark I and adding the space-theme to it. The resulting watch has an interesting personality which is difficult to articulate – due much in part because Le Jour themselves don’t really say anything special about the model on their website.
So what about the other Le Jour Mark I models? Featuring contrast-polished steel or black-coated steel watches (with a matching bracelet) these vintage-style sports watches have strongly legible dials with an aesthetic which is very reminiscent of late 1960s and 1970s-era designs. By the early 1980s the original Le Jour brand was dead due to the quartz crisis – so today’s Le Jour doesn’t have too much design inspiration to pull from. With that said, there aren’t too many other watches out there which try to emulate the look and feel of the Speedmaster Mark II case – so it is interesting to see it in action here.
Most of the Le Jour Mark I watches further offer a look that you can’t actually get from Omega – such as a black-coated case and bracelet. Dial colors are pleasant and eye-catching with a mix of styles that are mostly non-standard with an overall look that feels very old-school Porsche Design. The all black Mark I dials look about as conservative as can be, but the brand tries to mix it up with other treatments such as a black dial with a brown sloped internal flange ring around the watch face. Overall these are traditional looking sports watches with a look that is somewhere between military aviation and professional racing. They are designed to be familiar, while just a little bit different, and with a quality higher than you’d find on most small brand sports watches.
Le Jour Mark I: Design
The Le Jour Mark I and the Omega Speedmaster Mark II cases are similar but hardly identical. The biggest difference is the bezel – which doesn’t exist on the Speedmaster. The Le Jour, however, has a steel polished bezel around the dial and no floating horizontal tachymeter scale. This makes the Mark I a thicker watch, but actually by not as much as it looks. The Speedmaster has a thicker overall case, which on the Le Jour Mark I is compensated for given that the case is a bit thinner given the use of the bezel.
In other areas Le Jour clearly wanted the Mark I to be as “Speedmaster” as possible which is something you can see in the crown and pusher design, as well as arguably the shape of the hands. The Le Jour is a more robust feeling watch, being heavier and with a wider bracelet. I actually like how the bigger Le Jour bracelet fits the look of this case as compared to the bracelet that comes on the Omega. Le Jour’s tapering bracelet has nice-looking wide polished edges that allow it to play with the light in a manner that is superior to the Speedmaster, that is relatively straightforward with its conservative three-link bracelet.
On the dial, I’ve not seen many other meteorite dial watches that are more legible than this Mark I model. It does so because of high-contrast between the hands and the dial, as the matte black and green-colored luminant (not to mention the orange hands) easily visually pop when placed against the metallic gray meteorite dial. Legibility is what you get, but you also have colors that contrast so much, at times it is hard to feel that they work well in harmony. Or perhaps my issue with the colors is related to the shade of orange Le Jour uses. On the Mark I Meteorite dial the orange chronograph hands are a bit too pink in my opinion. I’m certainly choosing to focus on very minor details – so for many people, this isn’t even going to be something they notice. I’m just saying that I would have preferred the orange hands to be a bit more deeply orange. That would have given this aesthetic just a bit more of a masculine vibe.
Le Jour Mark I: Watch
Water resistant to 200 meters, the Le Jour Mark I’s steel case is 42.5mm wide and about 16mm thick. Lug-to-lug distance is about 47mm and while that isn’t a small watch, it actually wears pretty well on all wrists. I will, however, suggest that anyone wearing the watch size it snugly so as to prevent it from flopping around on your wrist. The bracelet (for me) was a bit of a hair-puller. Not everyone will have that experience, but for me, this bracelet did have the tendency to pull hair a bit. I’ve worn much worse, but the way the bracelet links very closely meet too easily allows hairs to get caught between them in my opinion. The bracelet deployant itself feels solid and nicely made. Though it is simple and doesn’t have a micro-adjust (which the modern Omega Speedmaster Mark II does). I feel that all brands should focus on putting no-tool micro-adjust features on bracelets since they are genuinely useful to a lot of wearers.
Over the dial is a flat AR-coated sapphire crystal which means that glare is minimized. The tall bezel makes for a steep, angled flange ring which gives the watch more of that Porsche Design Chronograph look as opposed to a Speedmaster look. Aside from the bracelet, the dials of the Mark I will echo Omega much less than a lot of other watches out there that it homages. The dial has green Super-Luminova-painted baton hour markers and matching hands which are outlined in black and then filled with luminant. Lume is actually pretty great on this watch and it’s nice to see that Le Jour didn’t at all scrimp on that feature. A lack of reflective surfaces on the dial further make for good readability – which is also true for the meteorite dial which is minimally shiny. Given the applied chronograph subdials and overall look of the meteorite as a material, you get an enhanced sense of “depth” in this meteorite version of the Mark I versus the other more standard dials.