Max Büsser collaborates with British-Nigerian artist Yinka Ilori on the colourful M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’
Jamie Weiss- Max Büsser taps British-Nigerian artist and designer Yinka Ilori MBE for M.A.D.Editions’ second collaborative model, the M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’.
- Three colourways are available, featuring bold mismatched colours across their dials, rotors and rubber straps.
- As we’ve come to expect from M.A.D.Editions, they’re limited editions of 400 pieces each, available via a free-to-enter raffle in the first week of September.
MB&F is a brand that’s always had collaboration at its core. Indeed, that’s the ‘F’ in its name – Maximilian Büsser & Friends. The ‘Friends’ part is utterly essential: Büsser enlisting the support and genius of some of the most talented watchmakers and designers in the watch industry to bring his outlandish, fantastical watches to life. MB&F’s more accessible offshoot, M.A.D.Editions, is equally collaboration-focused – but in a much more direct way, it seems. 2024 saw the arrival of the M.A.D.Editions M.A.D.1 ‘Time to Love’, co-signed by French artist and designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. 2025 sees a second collaborator join the fold: British-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist and designer Yinka Ilori MBE.
For those unfamiliar with Ilori’s work, it’s distinctly colourful and optimistic, blending stylised forms and patterns with bold colours and uplifting slogans. His design language draws on Nigerian parables and verbal traditions yet has a contemporary, pop art mien – and Ilori has worked on everything from consumer goods like sporting goods and homewares to large-scale art installations, architecture and even customised McLarens. Seems like a watch was the natural next step.
Something I’ve always loved about MB&F is Büsser’s pure, uncomplicated and playful approach to collaboration and watchmaking. Freed from the constraints of a large traditional brand, Büsser just does whatever he wants. Fittingly, this Yinka Ilori collab arose rather spontaneously, too: during a summer holiday in 2023, M.A.D.Editions tells us, “Max was rifling through a stack of magazines for respite when he unknowingly landed on a page featuring Ilori’s work. Inspired and dreaming big, he reached out. Just six days later, Ilori was in Geneva.”
So, what did the two come up with? The M.A.D.Editions x Yinka Ilori M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’ is a particularly playful take on an already playful watch that melds M.A.D.Editions’ signature dial-less design with Ilori’s trademark colours and motifs. Based on the slimmer M.A.D. 1S first introduced last year (I am slightly surprised that it’s not based on the newer M.A.D.2) it comes in three eclectic, colourful variants with intentionally mismatched rubber straps: ‘Sun’, which has a yellow rotor plus a yellow and green strap; ‘Nature’, with a green rotor plus purple and red strap; and ‘Water’, with a blue rotor plus a dark and light blue strap.
While the bicolour straps are a defining element of the collab, all three colourways also come with a plain white strap if you’d rather not distract from its watch head. The straps are embossed with a leaf-shaped motif, while the rotor of the M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’ is milled with a tree motif, with the ‘Grow Your Dreams’ affirmation appearing on the rotor’s blades alongside additional dabs of Super-LumiNova.
M.A.D.Editions explains that months of dedicated development went into reimagining the rotor, which is milled from titanium and anodised to produce the three different bold colours, to make it slimmer and more intricate, without compromising its signature high-performance rotation. Anyone who’s passingly familiar with a M.A.D.Editions watch knows that the insane speeds you can make their dial-side rotors spin at is the watch’s biggest allure and party trick – these Ilori models should prove to be particularly dynamic.
Speaking of the rotor, it’s connected to a La Joux-Perret G101 movement – a significant, Swiss-made upgrade over the (albeit heavily modified) Miyota 821A powering the M.A.D. 1 – which provides for a 68-hour power reserve. The movement’s mainplate is finished with côtes de Genève, then surrounded by an anodised coloured ring and framed by a rippled aluminium baseplate.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how you tell time with this watch (which you might want to, seeing as it’s, well, a watch), time is told via a rotating hours cylinder on the watch’s caseband, with a lumed marker at 6 o’clock pointing to the time. That’s right, it only tells the hours, but as you may have guessed by now, telling the time is almost a secondary consideration of this colourful piece of kinetic art for one’s wrist.
Another first for M.A.D.Editions that the ‘Grow Your Dreams’ brings to the table can be found in its bezel, which is made out of HyCeram: a high-tech liquid ceramic that can be imbued with bold colours, which is injected into a groove, hardened through heat and then finished with hand-polishing.
This watch is an interesting juxtaposition between extremely modern, grown-up, technical Swiss watchmaking and an almost unaffected celebration of colour and nature. Any watch that’s super colourful can feel a bit like a toy, but the M.A.D.Editions x Yinka Ilori M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’ really leans into childlike joy. But it’s also a horological call for mindfulness and self-belief. Just as its hour cylinder slowly rotates, it calls on its wearer to patiently grow their dreams.
“I’ve always been obsessed with trees,” Ilori says. “Harvesting and growing them because you invest time in it. It’s pouring love into something you care about, and that starts a conversation. It’s the same for this process, and the way of thinking behind it with Max. You have to be patient and harvest a watch. There are similarities between our universes. Typically, mine are very public, but there’s something very private and public about a watch. Everyone sees it, but it’s you who has that connection with it.”
M.A.D.Editions x Yinka Ilori M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’ pricing and availability
The M.A.D.Editions x Yinka Ilori M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’ collection consists of three limited editions of 400 pieces for each colourway. Like previous M.A.D.Editions releases, the watches will be available to purchase via a free-to-enter raffle in the first week of September 2025. Price: CHF 3,200 (excl. VAT)
| Brand | M.A.D.Editions x Yinka Ilori |
| Model | M.A.D.1S ‘Grow Your Dreams’ |
| Case Dimensions | 42mm (D) x 15mm (T) |
| Case Material | Stainless steel, HyCeram coloured accents on bezel |
| Water Resistance | 30 metres |
| Crystal(s) | Sapphire crystal and mineral glass |
| Colourways | Sun (yellow and green Water (deep and sky blue) Nature (purple and red) |
| Strap and bracelet | Rubber strap with stamped leaf pattern, steel folding buckle Each watch is delivered with a mismatched coloured strap and a white strap |
| Movement | La Joux-Perret G101, extensively modified by M.A.D.Editions, automatic |
| Power Reserve | 68 hours |
| Functions | Wandering hours and minutes |
| Availability | Limited edition of 400 pieces for each colourway, offered via raffle, raffle open 2-8 Sept 2025 |
| Price | CHF 3,200 (excl. VAT) |