NOMOS Glashütte Tangente watches

The Nomos Glashütte Tangente is the brand's slim, round dress watch and, in Nomos's words, its first watch. Nomos started production with it in 1992, alongside the Orion, Ludwig and Tetra. Susanne Günther drew up that first collection with the purist Bauhaus style in mind, and Nomos still ties the Tangente to the principle of form following function.

The first Tangente was hand-wound, with an optional date and power reserve indicator and a white or champagne dial. Today it comes with hand-wound or automatic movements. The hand-wound DUW 4601, Nomos's twelfth in-house calibre, brings the brand's patented date mechanism, with the date ring set around the movement, and a 52-hour power reserve. The automatic neomatik date, DUW 6101, also has the ring date, and Nomos says an automatic Tangente stays as slim as a hand-wound one. In 2018 the Tangente Update won Nomos a prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève.

The Tangente 35 is the core watch: 35 mm across and 6.2 to 6.9 mm thick, in steel or in rose or yellow gold, with date and power reserve versions. The Tangente 33 measures 32.8 mm, and the numbers in the larger names are rounded up: a Tangente 38 measures 37.5 mm and a neomatik 39 38.5 mm. Within the neomatik 39, the 141 Silvercut has a silver dial and the 142 Nachtblau a blue one. The Tangente Sport moves to a 36.5 mm case, and the Tangente Sport neomatik 42 date to 42 mm and 10.9 mm thick, well beyond the 6 to 8 mm of the dress models.

Nomos made Tangente editions for Doctors Without Borders in the UK, the US and Germany, in runs of 1,000 for the Tangente 33 and 38 versions and 250 for the neomatik ones. A Century of Bauhaus came in blue, red and yellow at 33, 35 and 38 mm, 100 pieces each. Other editions include 70 Jahre Grundgesetz (70 pieces), the Four Seasons series, Red Dot editions and a 300-piece grey-dial Tangente Sport made for Hodinkee.