News of Apple’s “watch” outselling Switzerland’s entire watch export of 2019 by a margin of 50 per cent won’t worry the boardrooms dotting the Jura Mountains, where most of the world's traditional watchmakers continue to toil. The value of their own “wearables” happens to be up three per cent after all, with their particular stock in trade pushing incomparable forms of innovation in all manner of mechanical directions – all of which, with due TLC, promise zero obsolescence.

Just take HYT. Bearing as little resemblance to a normal wristwatch as Apple’s miniaturised telephone, it is powered by ingenious micro-tech that could only come from the minds of the tweezer-wielding Swiss. The brand is less than a decade old, underpinned by centuries-old horological horsepower, yet crowned by outrageously creative dials sharing one thing in common. It’s the thing countless casemakers have worked hardest to resist over all these years: liquid.

Every HYT watch tracks each 12-hour period using two immiscible liquids inside a watertight gasket. Their molecules form a perfectly crisp interface, or “meniscus“, which forms the hours hand. It’s pushed and pulled about the circumference of a calibrated glass tube by two tiny bellows, made of a flexible alloy four times thinner than a human hair. At midday and midnight, the system “rewinds” in just 60 seconds.

Formulating the liquids was the easy part; it’s the serpentine, 0.8mm-thin capillary that proves the real challenge. Pioneered by sister company Preciflex, the inner coating alone, which eliminates almost all friction, ranks as one of HYT’s most expensive components.

Which you’d think would be impressive enough. But ever since industry visionary Mr Francois Nuñez came on board last year and mixed things up on the aesthetic front, it seems HYT is deliberately setting out to make things even more complicated. For a start, you have the Soonow Skull pieces, which bend the capillary tube into the traditional motif of memento mori, reminding you that nothing lasts forever. Throw in 313 18-carat gold pins into the mix, surrounded by nearly 1,000 tiny holes.

And then there’s HYT’s pure, unadulterated boy’s toy, which MR PORTER (and you, if you so wish) now get to play with: H1.0, the inner works of which are turned inside-out, like a Lord Richard Rogers building. The two bellows are framed by cowling more suited to a Bugatti Chiron, now blending into a Batman-worthy monochrome that have been spec’ed exclusively in just five pieces for MR PORTER. You can keep your smartwatch.