By Kien Lee
Hublot unveils its fourth partnership with SORAI with the unveiling of the Spirit of Big Bang SORAI, the first Spirit of Big Bang to be involved in this collaboration.
SORAI – Save Our Rhinos Africa and India – is the rhino conservation organisation founded by former international cricketer and Hublot ambassador Kevin Pietersen. SORAI’s mission is to unite complementary communities, businesses and actors to ensure that Africa and India’s keystone species survive and thrive in the world – forever.
Among the many organisations and projects funded by SORAI is Care for Wild in South Africa, a grassroots organisation that rescues and cares for abandoned, injured or orphaned endangered species, particularly rhino.
Poaching is a highly complex problem fuelled by poverty and the international criminal network, and much of SORAI’s vision is to support pioneering anti-poaching education and enforcement programmes. These are problems for which there is no quick fix, but SORAI is in it for the long haul, enabled by the support of businesses such as Hublot.
For this year's edition, the Spirit of Big Bang from Hublot, the tonneau-shaped hand-wound tourbillon, is released in a 30-piece limited-edition. Its 42mm case is cast in the same micro-blasted and polished “warm grey” ceramic created by Hublot for SORAI to capture the distinctive colour of a rhino’s skin and first seen in the Big Bang Unico SORAI 2023.
The watch is set on a grey fabric strap and supplied with a second strap in black rubber with a striking grey and beige camouflage pattern.
Powering the watch is the HUB6020 Manufacture calibre, a hand-wound, skeletonised tourbillon with a five-day power reserve. It provides the watch with an asymmetrical display that sits poised between two sapphire crystals and that delicately balances a time display at 3 o’clock and a power reserve indicator between 8 and 9 o’clock.
As has been the case before, part of the proceeds from sales of the watch will be donated to the organisation as it continues the fight to protect the rhino.
