Apple’s annual Black Unity Collection has just been unveiled. As well as iPhone and iPad wallpapers and a Watch face, the standout is the Apple Watch Black Unity Sport Loop, a head-turning strap that’s both audacious and intensely comfortable.
The new collection was “designed by Black creatives and allies at Apple,” as the sleeve note in the Watch band case reveals. Even this piece of card is attractive, a black slice of thick paper with alternating black, red and green stripes artfully ridged to create a tactile experience.
Those colors are taken from the pan-African flag, woven in raised and recessed loops to create a dazzling effect. As you move the strap in the light, with green flicking into red and vice versa. Cleverest of all, as the colors appear to change, you could swear there was yellow in the mix. There isn’t, it’s an optical illusion.
The Sport Loop is not my favorite of Apple’s many bands, I’ll be honest. But here, it works wonderfully, the visual highlights matching with the superbly soft feel. It is comfortable and highly tactile, inviting you to touch it repeatedly. The band comes in two sizes, compatible with Apple Watch Series 4 and newer.
The matching Watch face (available whatever band you have on your Watch, obviously), has a similar visual gleam. Raise your wrist and the gyroscope in the smartwatch makes the colors swirl—and this time there is yellow, pulsing through the digital threads. The threads make up a number, specifically the hour, so it changes every 60 minutes. You’ll know when it’s happening because the Watch face includes a rhythmic chime on the hour.
The Watch face needs the latest software update, watchOS 11.3, released on Monday, Jan. 27.
The Black Unity initiative is important because the launch applies to more than a Watch band and wallpapers. In the course of it, Apple is supporting several organizations, such as the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in New Orleans; Battersea Arts Centre in London; Music Forward Foundation in Los Angeles; Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney; and The National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee.
