Hodinkee
Hands-On: The Hublot Classic Fusion Tributo
"The first two days, almost nobody came to see us. We were very anxious," Carlo Crocco, the founder of Hublot, tells us, casting his mind back to Baselworld in 1980, when he stood in a booth with a single window displaying a single gold-cased watch on a black rubber strap. "On the third day, we realised that everyone was speaking about us, because it was really something different from all the other watches." We are sitting together in Milan on the eve of the Classic Fusion Tributo launch, which Hublot presents as a return to that very first design. After spending time with it in the metal, I would argue the most interesting thing about it is how firmly it refuses to be a reissue. At a time when brands can reproduce their back catalogues down to a 3D-scanned dial, Hublot has presented an evolved expression of its first watch, combining it with a design language that's taken shape over four decades. That decision makes more sense when you consider where Hublot stands today and why this watch is arriving now. Since Julien Tornare took over as CEO in late 2024, the brand has been working through a deliberate reset, investing in its Nyon campus and its movement strategy and reworking the Big Bang twice this year, with Tornare signaling early on that a Classic Fusion built around the Italian elegance of its founder would follow. The two things Crocco focused on for the Tributo, the twelve screws and the black rubber strap, are precisely what make it read as the original at a gl...
