Don't miss the next drop
Two inner links at each end of this bracelet run straight into slots cut in the case. There are no lugs in the usual sense, so the steel cushion and its bracelet read as a single shape, the broad outer links picking up the width of the case shoulders and the narrower paired links carrying the line down the wrist. On the Omega Constellation 168.045 that junction is the design, not an accessory chosen later. It also means a generic strap has nowhere to go.
Omega was doing this in the late 1960s. The steel day-date version with caliber 751 belonged to its 1969 international collection, at a moment when the Constellation, a line most people knew as a dress watch, was giving up faceted dials for flat ones and trying new case shapes.
The folding clasp is signed Omega and stamped 1155/146, the bracelet number that goes with this reference. Owners of a bare 168.045 search for a replacement by that number, since the slotted case accepts so little else. The understatement is the part we enjoy: from the front, the bracelet simply seems to grow out of the steel.
The movement inside matters as much as the shape. It is caliber 751, the chronometer-grade version of the day-date automatic family Omega introduced in 1967, and the lower half of the dial says so in three lines: Omega, Chronometer, Officially Certified. It winds itself as the wrist moves.
Even the day disc has a bit of factory paperwork behind it. When a watchmaker ordered a replacement day disc for the 751, Omega’s 1967 spare-parts sheet asked one extra question: “Indicate the desired language.” This one reads in English: MON, in the framed aperture at three that also holds the date.
Around that window the dial stays calm. It is silver with a fine horizontal grain, with applied batons whose faces are dark, a doubled marker at twelve, slim stick hands with pale inserts and an applied Omega symbol above the Constellation and Automatic lettering. The coin-edged bezel sets a ring of fine grooves around it. The case measures 36mm across and 41mm from end to end, and the screw-in back carries the Constellation’s observatory medallion and its eight stars. Light scuffs show on the case and bracelet.
Even the crown follows the plan. Signed with the Omega symbol, it sits partly recessed in the broad flank of the case, where a conventional watch would leave it standing out on its own.
