In Depth · MING

MING × Massena LAB 57.09 Secret Honey asks a dial to move

Three sapphire discs create a changing honey-coloured pattern, but the real test is whether the time remains easy to find.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 5 min read · 18 October 2026

• The 57.09 Secret Honey uses three rotating sapphire discs to turn an earlier honeycomb idea into a moving display for hours and minutes.
• Honey-coloured indications sit below fixed crystal engravings, with orange and white luminous materials separating the time from its shifting background.
• Massena LAB lists 125 examples at CHF 7,250 before import taxes and duties, with orders having opened through MING on 15 October.

Some watches show the time by moving hands over a fixed dial. Others make the dial itself do the moving, which is a far more demanding proposition: the display has to stay interesting without making its two essential numbers a chore to find. The MING × Massena LAB 57.09 Secret Honey asks that question with three rotating sapphire discs, a dark brown base and two separate layers of luminous detail. The attraction is the changing pattern; the test is whether the hours and minutes can keep their place within it.

Three discs, two jobs

The official Massena LAB page describes a lacquered, circular-brushed brass dial beneath sapphire discs that make one turn every 24 hours, 12 hours and 60 minutes. Each disc has openings and colour of its own, so the shapes overlap differently as they rotate. Massena LAB calls the resulting effect dynamic guilloché. It is a useful description of the visual motion, although this is not the fixed, cut-metal surface that the word guilloché usually brings to mind. Here the pattern comes from layered transparency and timekeeping parts in motion.

The 12-hour and 60-minute discs carry the honey-coloured hour and minute indications. That matters because it gives the eye something stable to seek even while the backdrop changes. The indices and the two partners' logos sit higher, engraved in the box-shaped front sapphire crystal rather than printed on the discs below. Look from the outer edge towards the centre and there are effectively two reading planes: fixed markers above, moving indications beneath. Whether that arrangement feels immediate in ordinary daylight is a judgement for someone wearing the watch, not something a studio photograph can settle.

At night the distinction becomes more deliberate. Orange-emitting Super-LumiNova marks the hour and minute indications, while MING Polar White fills the crystal's engraved indices and logos. Separating the colours should make the functional indications easier to distinguish from the frame around them. It also gives the dial a second composition after dark, rather than simply illuminating the daytime one. I like the logic of that separation; a moving decorative layer can easily swallow the information it was meant to carry, and this design at least gives the time its own luminous signal.

The case keeps up with the dial

The case is grade 5 titanium, 40mm across, 10.17mm thick and 47.8mm from lug to lug, with 20mm between the lugs. Those measurements describe a watch that should occupy less vertical space than the layered display suggests, although the shape and fit remain matters to judge on the wrist. Massena LAB gives it 100m water resistance and sapphire crystals front and back. The rear crystal opens a view of the movement, a sensible choice when the watch's mechanism is part of the visual conversation.

The stepped lugs are more than a case detail. Their outer step remains natural titanium, the middle step has a titanium nitride coating in a yellow-gold tone, and the inner step uses titanium silicon nitride for a rose-gold tone. The colours could have looked like three separate embellishments, but in the brand's photographs they echo the shifting warm notes of the dial. Massena LAB says this is the first MING case to give each lug step a different colour. That is a specific claim from the partners, and it helps explain why the side view deserves as much attention as the dial shot.

The self-winding Sellita for MING 330.M2 runs at 4Hz, has 25 jewels and offers approximately 50 hours of power reserve. Through the exhibition back, the brand shows skeletonised, brushed bridges with an anthracite coating over a matching baseplate. It is worth turning this watch over: the dark finish continues the front's restraint, while the apertures in the bridges give the rear a different kind of layered depth. None of that tells us how the movement performs beyond the published figures, and the company does not present it as a chronometer-certified calibre.

Two straps come with the watch. Jean Rousseau Paris makes a vachetta-coloured goat-leather option, and MING supplies a black FKM rubber alternative. Both use curved quick-release spring bars and a stainless-steel flying-blade tuck buckle with micro-adjustment. Leather picks up the case's warmer tones; rubber makes the dial and its moving indications the main event. The pair is genuinely useful on a watch whose character changes so much between bright light and darkness, even if no strap can answer the bigger question of reading it at a glance.

A pattern with a history

This collaboration has a reference point of its own. Massena LAB's page places the 57.09 after the partners' 17.09 Honey and 17.09 Black, two earlier treatments of a honeycomb idea. Secret Honey keeps the warm and dark palette while moving away from a literal honeycomb surface. It is a more ambitious way to revisit the theme: the motif is no longer something placed on the dial, but something that emerges as the indications turn. The premise is clever precisely because it makes the decorative effect depend on the time display rather than sit beside it.

There is a cost to that ambition. With three moving discs, fixed crystal engraving and two kinds of luminous material, the wearer has more information to sort than on a conventional two-hand dial. The official images make a convincing case for the watch as an object, especially in profile, but they cannot prove instant legibility in changing light. That is the editorial question this piece cannot honestly close from a product page alone. What the page does establish is that MING and Massena LAB have given the hour and minute indications a distinct position and colour within the spectacle, rather than hoping the pattern will take care of readability by itself.

MING × Massena LAB 57.09 Secret Honey pricing and availability

Massena LAB lists a production run of 125 pieces and a price of CHF 7,250, excluding import duties and taxes. It says orders opened through MING on 15 October 2026. The page does not list an Australian price. Its public presentation was scheduled for WatchTime New York from 16 to 18 October 2026.