Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. You know I don’t endorse stuff often. Sure, I might be enthusiastic about watches from time to time, but I let you make your own mind up. But listen to me when I tell you: I found a sensational watch podcast. It’s a very specific kind of watch podcast, one that you should share with your friends who are just getting into watches. But even if you are seasoned in the industry, I guarantee you’ll learn something new.

Best of all? It’s a podcast done by one of you, a reader of IAT. What's on Your Riste? is produced by Riste Simnjanovski, also known as Watchovski, and it’s not a daily news thing. It’s a deep exploration of our obsession, with incredible music, fantastic delivery and considered opinions. I crushed the entire first season this weekend and I can’t wait to hear more. You can listen to the episodes here on Spotify or here on YouTube.

100+ Claude Code hacks to ship code 10X faster

Top engineers at Anthropic and OpenAI say AI now writes 100% of their code.

If you're not using AI, you're spending 40 hours doing what they do in 4.

These 100+ Claude Code hacks fix that and help you ship 10x faster.

Sign up for The Code and get:

• 100+ Claude Code hacks used by top engineers — free

• The Code newsletter — learn the latest AI tools, tips, and skills to code faster with AI in 5 minutes a day

Claim your free playbook

In this issue

• Doxa Brings Back the Diving Chronograph With The SUB 200 T.Graph II

• Hanhart Believes The Best Firefighting Watch Just Might Be Their Already Cool Diver

• ochs und junior Strips The Brushed Titanium Annual Calendar Down To Its Basics

• Chopard Returns to the Raticosa Pass With a Glass-Box Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph Raticosa

• Urwerk Sends Off The UR-120 With A Blue-And-Gold Final Edition

👂What’s new

1/

Doxa Brings Back the Diving Chronograph With The SUB 200 T.Graph II

In 1969, while everyone else was watching the moon landing or getting muddy at Woodstock, Doxa was busy creating their first diving chronograph. It wasn’t the first diving chrono, not the most expensive or perhaps even not the most capable. But the SUB 200 T.Graph quickly became a cult classic. How popular these watches was evident in how quickly the 2019 anniversary reissue sold out quickly, and good luck getting one these days for decent money. Tankfuly, Doxa just gave us the SUB 200 T.Graph II, a permanent dive chrono in their lineup.

The case is made out of stainless steel, 42mm wide and 14.6mm thick, which shaves a bit more than a hair off the original's 43mm by 15.15mm. The cushion case is still pure Doxa, which means it looks huge in photos but actually wears smaller than the numbers would suggest. Water resistance is 200 meters with a screw-down crown and screw-in caseback, and the unidirectional steel bezel clicks with no slop, as you would expect from a Doxa.

The dial layout is exactly the no-nonsense arrangement the brand is famous for: printed indices packed with Super-LumiNova, a 30-minute counter at 3 o'clock, a running seconds counter at 9, and a date at 6. Four colors are available at launch. Three are heritage Doxa: Professional orange, Sharkhunter black, and Searambler sunburst silver, and the fourth is Caribbean blue, a near-navy that's been on the standard SUB line for years and looks great here.

Inside is the Sellita SW510, an automatic running at 28,800vph with about 56 hours of reserve, built on the Valjoux 7750 architecture. You get a choice of the beads-of-rice bracelet or a rubber strap in black or matched color, both with folding clasps and wetsuit extensions, and the price gap between them is only about €40.

The Doxa SUB 200 T.Graph II costs €3,950 on rubber and €3,990 on the bracelet. That's a crowded price bracket with some good competition, but Doxa has a rabid fan base. The watches go on sale late June 2026. See more on the Doxa website.

2/

Hanhart Believes The Best Firefighting Watch Just Might Be Their Already Cool Diver

Hanhart has spent decades making pilot's chronographs, so a tool watch aimed at fire crews comes as a bit of a left turn. The move is even more interesting when you consider the fact that they base this new Thermosphere watch on their very cool Aquasphere diver. It is a clever repurposing: the same countdown logic that times a dive works just as well counting down a cylinder of air. Built with the Baden-Württemberg State Firefighters Association and limited to 112 pieces, the number nods to Europe's emergency line.

The case is 42mm wide and 12.95mm thick in satin and polished steel, with a lug-to-lug of 49mm that keeps it wearable despite the tool-watch heft. A convex sapphire crystal with internal anti-reflective coating sits on top, the case back screws down, and water resistance is rated to 300 meters. Each piece is individually numbered from 001/112.

The dial is dark blue with yellow, red, and blue accents pulled from fire-service visual language, and the contrast does real work for legibility. The bezel carries triangular Super-LumiNova markers set to breathing-apparatus checkpoints, with the prominent minute hand designed for fast reading when you can see almost nothing. The "1" in the 112 at twelve o'clock is picked out in a contrasting color, and the Baden-Württemberg flame-and-lion emblem appears on both dial and case back.

Inside is either a Sellita SW 200-1 or a Soprod P024, both running at 28,800 vph with 25 jewels and a 38-hour power reserve, regulated by Hanhart to 0 to +8 seconds per day. It ships on the elastic Hookstrap textile band that adjusts fast and fits over protective gear, with a steel bracelet or rubber strap as alternatives.

The Hanhart Thermosphere Limited Edition is €1,540 including tax, limited to 112 pieces. See more on the Hanhart website.

3/

ochs und junior Strips The Brushed Titanium Annual Calendar Down To Its Basics

ochs und junior builds watches around Ludwig Oechslin's conviction that a complication should be as simple as the math allows, and the anno sandblasted renders that idea in titanium. It's an annual calendar, so it tracks the date, weekday, and month and only needs correcting once a year, on March 1st. What sets it apart from every other annual calendar is how little is happening inside to make that work. Oechslin manages the whole thing on a handful of custom parts, with the calendar information printed directly on the functional components rather than on separate discs.

The case is made out of brushed grade 5 titanium in either 39mm or 42mm, and at 11mm thick including the crystal it’s pretty flat for an annual calendar. On top is a sapphire crystal, on the side is a screw-down titanium crown that Oechslin designed himself, and water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is rhodium-plated and sandblasted, and instead of hands sweeping over printed text, everything is indicated with holes. Thirty-one holes around the center mark the date, with the 10-minute track markings as reference points. Seven holes right underneath the central pinion show the weekday, twelve above the pinion show the month, and a pair of dots tells you day from night. You can even choose which weekday sits at the top. The sandblasted surface shifts with the light, and a yellow gold leaf seconds hand is the one major pop of color.

The movement is an ETA calibre 2824-2 with a 38-hour power reserve, with the super simple calendar mechanism built on top of it. Not only is it a super-simple addition to a common workhorse movement, you can adjust everything through the crown, with no need for additional pushers. The strap is black Ecopell leather, handmade by Sabina Brägger and offered in four sizes.

The anno sandblasted is priced at CHF 5,177 before tax, available now from ochs und junior.

4/

Chopard Returns to the Raticosa Pass With a Glass-Box Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph Raticosa

Chopard has been the Mille Miglia's timekeeper since 1988, and the collection has spun off enough limited editions over the years to fill a small garage. The Raticosa ones have always been among the more interesting ones. Named for the mountain pass between Florence and Bologna where Enzo Ferrari claimed the race was actually won, this latest version leans hard into vintage racing-chronograph cues.

The case is 40.5mm wide and 12.88mm thick, made from Chopard's in-house Lucent Steel, an 80% recycled alloy the brand has used across its entire steel catalog since 2023. On top is a beautiful, vintage-inspired, glass-box sapphire crystal. Knurled pushers, a crown engraved with a steering wheel, and welded lugs round out the package. Water resistance is modest 50 meters, which is fine for what this is. It could be a bit better

The dial is eggshell with a matte varnish finish, an eggshell railway track with black transfers, and beige Super-LumiNova markers. Rhodium-plated baton hands tell the time, and there's a red-tipped central chronograph seconds hand for a bit of Mille Miglia color. Small seconds sit at 3, the date tucks between 4 and 5, a 12-hour counter lives at 6, and the 30-minute counter is at 9. It's a busy but mostly legible layout.

Inside is a self-winding chronograph beating at 28,800vph with a 54-hour power reserve, COSC chronometer-certified. The closed caseback gets an engraved titanium insert built like a postcard from the pass, complete with a car and roadside spectators. The watch comes on a brown perforated calfskin strap with a Lucent Steel pin buckle.

The Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph Raticosa, ref. 168619-3020, is priced at €11,100. See more on the Chopard website.

5/

Urwerk Sends Off The UR-120 With A Blue-And-Gold Final Edition

Urwerk does not let a collection retire quietly. The farewells tend to be among the best versions a model ever sees, and recent send-offs like the UR-10 SpaceMeter Blue and the UR-220 RG proved that point. Now it's the UR-120's turn. The model that fans call the "Spock" for its split, rotating hour blocks first introduced in 2022 in titanium and steel, bowing out of the collection as the Blue Planet.

You still get the 47mm by 44mm case with its shaped crystal, integrated strap connections, and the swivelling crown cover at noon. The surface treatment is new, sandblasted steel with a blue PVD coating. The gold hinge on the crown cover is the first hint of where this is going. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The familiar satellite display, with its two-part hour markers splitting, rotating, rejoining and sliding along the arched minute track over each hour, gets a blue finish set against 24k-gold plating on the functional elements. Everything is lumed, so the choreography stays legible in the dark.

Driving all of it is the automatic Calibre UR-20.01 with Urwerk's Windfänger airscrew governing the rotor, running at 28,800vph with 48 hours of power reserve. The watch ships on a blue Cordura-textured calfskin strap with a satin-brushed steel pin buckle.

The Urwerk UR-120 Blue Planet is limited to 20 pieces at CHF 115,000 without taxes. See more on the Urwerk website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• A gunshot cracks a quiet San Antonio afternoon, and within minutes one of the Southwest’s richest men lies bleeding on a bungalow floor. Three women orbit the crime, but the story refuses to settle: was it self-defense, scandal, or something carefully buried by powerful friends? What really happened inside the Hunstock house that day?

• moonlit prison cell, a pen scratching across glued-together scraps of paper, and a manuscript destined to outlive the men who traded it for profit. The story swerves from obscenity to auction rooms to a spectacular financial collapse, asking how a treasure can become a trap. Gérard Lhéritier lured investors by selling shares in literary treasures. When suspicions grew, he was exposed as the architect of a massive fraud. This is the French mastermind behind a €1bn Ponzi scheme.

• A sentry box tips in a Boston street, and boys scatter as empire trembles at their game. From snowballs to cannon fire, play turns unruly, even dangerous, shaping a nation’s appetite for risk, spectacle, and defiance. How did rough, improvised games become the DNA of American sports—and what do they reveal about the country itself?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’m not exactly a Jacob Elordi fan, and Ridley Scott has been trailing downwards in his later years, but I’ll admit this looks pretty interesting.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Not much from me today, I’ll just wish you a good weekend.

Find out why 200K+ engineers read The Code twice a week

Staying behind on tech trends can be a career killer.

But let’s face it, no one has hours to spare every week trying to stay updated.

That’s why over 200,000 engineers at companies like Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here’s why it works:

• No fluff, just signal – Learn the most important tech news delivered in just two short emails.

• Supercharge your skills – Get access to top research papers and resources that give you an edge in the industry.

• See the future first – Discover what’s next before it hits the mainstream, so you can lead, not follow.

Join 200,000+ engineers who read The Code to stay ahead of the curve.

In this issue

• Seiko Brings The Fan-Favorite Green Back To The Alpinist GMT

• Vulcain Reimagines The Legendary Cricket In A Titanium Case With A Sensational Dial

• Spinnaker Lets DoodleBob, SpongeBob's Malformed Pencil-Drawn Doppelganger, Loose Across Three Dials

• Angelus Gives Us Three Measurement Scales In One Glorious Monopusher

• Chopard Revisits The Quattro With Revolution Media For A 9-Day, Doré-Dialed Re-Edition

👂What’s new

1/

Seiko Brings The Fan-Favorite Green Back To The Alpinist GMT

The Alpinist GMT has existed since 2023, but it's spent its whole life wearing the wrong colors. The blue SPB377 and black SPB379 were fine, the hornbill-inspired SPB493 was a nice curiosity, but none of them gave you the thing people actually wanted from the Alpinist: that emerald green dial with gilt accents, the look that turned the SARB017 and SPB121 into cult watches. The new HBC007 finally fixes that.

The case is unchanged from its GMT siblings, which is no complaint. Stainless steel with alternating brushed and polished surfaces, 39.5mm wide, 13.6mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 46.4mm. A sapphire crystal sits over the dial, a fixed 24-hour bezel rings the case, and there are two fluted crowns, the lower one at 4 o'clock driving the internal rotating compass bezel. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The dial is the entire point. That rich green surface carries gilt applied hour markers, gilt cathedral hands, and gilt minute track detailing, the warm vintage combination Alpinist fans have been asking the GMT line to deliver since day one. A central red GMT hand tracks your second time zone and the date sits at 4:30.

Inside is the automatic caliber 6R54, the same movement running the rest of the Alpinist GMT collection. It carries 24 jewels, beats at 3Hz, and offers 72 hours of power reserve, with an independently adjustable GMT hand. Seiko pairs it with a new dark brown leather strap certified by the Leather Working Group.

The Seiko Alpinist GMT HBC007 joins the permanent lineup, going on sale in July 2026. Price will be around $1,490. See more on the Seiko website.

2/

Vulcain Reimagines The Legendary Cricket In A Titanium Case With A Sensational Dial

Vulcain has been making the Cricket alarm since 1947. Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon all wore one, which is why it picked up the nickname "The Presidents' Watch." The brand has spent nearly 80 years building movements around that distinctive chirping alarm, and I’ve always wanted one. However, it’s this very limited edition that just might be the ultimate version of the Cricket, one that’s hyper modern while keeping its heritage alive.

The case is 39mm wide, made out of grade 5 titanium, with a titanium bezel and a sapphire caseback. Through that caseback you can see the alarm anvil and Vulcain "V" — both titanium as well. Titanium is also very well known in the watch world as a good resonator in minute repeaters, so it works great for the alarm function.

The dial is grey titanium with a guilloché effect, nickel-plated indices and white printed text. It’s incredibly cool and looks like it’s moving a million miles per hour. Blued hour and minute hands sit against it, the seconds hand is black, and the alarm hand is nickel-plated with a black arrow tip.

Inside is the new calibre V14, hand-wound, assembled at Le Locle, running at a slow 2.5Hz with 52 hours of reserve. Two independent barrels split the work, one for timekeeping and one to power the roughly 20-second alarm. The interesting part is acoustic: titanium changes how the Cricket sounds, softening the traditionally shrill chirp into something lighter and more refined. The bridges get Côtes de Genève, the screws are blued, and the train bridge is engraved "Titane." It comes on a black calfskin strap with a quick-change system.

The Vulcain Cricket Titanium is limited to 100 pieces, priced at €6,760. See more on the Vulcain website.

3/

Spinnaker Lets DoodleBob, SpongeBob's Malformed Pencil-Drawn Doppelganger, Loose Across Three Dials

Spinnaker has done the licensed-cartoon watch before, and done it well. Their first SpongeBob run a few years back sold out instantly. That repeated itself a couple of more times since. This time the villain gets the spotlight. DoodleBob, for the uninitiated, is SpongeBob's malformed pencil-drawn doppelganger who terrorizes Bikini Bottom until he's trapped inside a book, and he now causes the same mischief across three watches in this capsule collection.

The trio shares a theme but spreads it across three cases. The Hull California runs 42mm wide and 14.4mm thick in a cushion-shaped steel case with a screw-down crown and 100 meters of water resistance. The Croft Mid-Size is the tidiest of the three at 40mm wide, 14.15mm thick, steel, screw-down crown, rated to 150 meters. The Fleuss is the largest at 43mm wide but the thinnest at 13.2mm, also steel, also 150 meters. None of them are doing anything clever in their construction, and they don't need to. The case is just a delivery system for the dial, and on that front Spinnaker has been generous.

The Hull's "Patty Parade" uses a California layout, Roman numerals up top, Arabic down below, split by bar markers at 3 and 9, all rendered in the deliberately wonky SpongeBob typeface. DoodleBob sits at 6 o'clock with his magic pencil, ringed by a pile of Krabby Patties that all glow in the dark. The Croft's "Minute Sketch" swaps the minute hand for the magic pencil and stamps "Me Hoy Minoy" at 12, the garbled line DoodleBob blurts before he learns to say his own name. The Fleuss "Ripped Reality" is an open-heart dial where DoodleBob has torn through the surface to expose the movement, and the burst-paper effect around the aperture is very well done. Another cool detail: six watches per variant hide UV-activated graffiti lume, a lucky-ticket for whoever lands one.

The two smaller watches have the Miyota calibre 8215, a 3 Hz automatic with a 42-hour power reserve and a date, and the Croft puts a DoodleBob illustration on the rotor. The Fleuss instead uses the Seiko calibre NH70, the open-heart variant beating at 3 Hz with a 41-hour reserve, which along with the skeletonized dial and the two-tone black-and-lumed-white 60-minute bezel makes it the priciest of the three. All three ship on a steel bracelet with an extra silicone strap in the box.

The Hull California (ref. SP-5174-11) is priced at $425, limited to 500 pieces. The Croft Mid-Size (ref. SP-5176-11) is also $425, limited to 600. The Fleuss (ref. SP-5175-11) is priced at $525, limited to 600. See all three on the Spinnaker website.

4/

Angelus Gives Us Three Measurement Scales In One Glorious Monopusher

Angelus spent the last three years working through its own back catalogue one instrument at a time: the Chronographe Médical in 2023, the Instrument de Vitesse in 2024, the Chronographe Télémètre in 2025. Each pulled a single function from the brand's chronograph history and built a watch around it. The Instrument de Mesures stops splitting them up and puts the telemeter, pulsometer, and tachymeter on one dial. It's the logical end of the series, and also, perhaps, the best of the bunch.

The stainless steel case is 39mm wide and 9.25mm thick, with twisted lugs, a thin polished bezel, and a box sapphire crystal on top. A sapphire caseback shows off the movement. Those proportions are quite something. Water resistance is 30 meters, which is not great.

Four scales on one dial should be a mess, but Angelus is well known for perfect scale integrations. They keep things in check here with a color coded approach. There are two base colors available, black and ivory. The black is paired with blue, orange, and cream; the ivory version with blue, red, and green scales. The telemeter sits on the outer edge for measuring distance by sound delay, the minutes track and a 15-beat pulsometer come next, and a spiral tachymeter for 20 to 500 km/h speeds toward the center. The dial is built in levels, a domed center, a sloped middle, a raised outer ring, with the markings laser-cut into the structure so each function physically steps away from its neighbour. Syringe hands are filled with Super-LumiNova, and the central seconds hand reads keeps things simple.

Inside is the in-house calibre A5000, the manually wound monopusher already used across the Instrument series. It beats at 3Hz with 42 hours of reserve, built around a column wheel and horizontal clutch. Through the caseback you get 3N gold finishing against palladium-treated chronograph parts, a deliberate contrast that makes the chronograph works easy to pick out, along with circular graining, Côtes de Genève, and polished bevels. The watch comes on calfskin, black for the ebony dial or tobacco brown for the ivory, with a steel pin buckle.

The new Angelus Instrument de Mesures is limited to 25 pieces per colorway, priced at CHF 18,400 including VAT. See more on the Angelus website.

5/

Chopard Revisits The Quattro With Revolution Media For A 9-Day, Doré-Dialed Re-Edition

Chopard has been winning over the collectors I known and trust, slowly and without much noise. The dateless L.U.C 1860 with the salmon dial in 2023 was the moment a lot of people started paying more attention to what the brand is doing. At the time, Chopard teamed up with Revolution, the legendary magazine, to create two very cool takes on the watch, one in untreated 3N yellow gold and a Lucent Steel case, with dials supplied by Metalem, the same outfit that makes them for Philippe Dufour's Simplicity. That idea is back now, applied to the Quattro, 26 years after the original arrived with its 9-day power reserve.

The case measures 38mm by 9.54mm thick, which is truly compact for a watch carrying four mainspring barrels. Chopard's own recycled alloy, returns for the case. Water resistance is 30 meters, which is all it needs.

The dial is pretty sensational. It’s pure untreated 3N yellow gold, made in-house this time rather than by Metalem, with hand-guilloché radiating from the central post and a filet-sautant ring framing it. Kite-shaped applied markers get a faceted mirror-polished finish, and the dauphine hands are high-polished.

Inside is the calibre 98.01-L, manually wound, running at 4Hz with that 216-hour power reserve from four large barrels arranged in two stacks of two, all visible through the caseback. There's a power reserve indicator at 12, small seconds, and a date at 6. It comes on a leather strap with a pin buckle.

The Chopard L.U.C Quattro Revolution Re-Edition is limited to 20 numbered pieces at CHF 32,500, sold through Revolution's shop.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Todd Kliman’s son Theo loves cooking—not that much of a surprise when your father’s an acclaimed food critic and writer. Todd Kliman’s son Theo had never been to New Orleans. So Todd Kliman took Theo for his first plane ride, his first culinary pilgrimage, and his first blush of what a life of eating really looks like. If you see Theo’s name in a decade or two attached to the word “chef,” you’ll think back to this piece and realize: yup, this is how passions are born. A remarkable piece about family, food, and finding one’s way.

• Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s audacious, format-breaking 1938 play, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and remains a dark, daring cultural touchstone. (It plays a prominent part in Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake and Jon Mooallem’s This is Chance!, among others.) The Emporium, Wilder’s daring follow-up, ultimately escaped his grasp. Decades after Wilder shelved it, Kirk Lynn, another playwright, surfaced the pieces of Wilder’s abandoned masterpiece and, in a task worthy of a Wilder play (or a Charlie Kaufman script), sets himself to completing The Emporium.

• A small change in the human world can be catastrophic in the animal kingdom: the introduction of a new NSAID drug destroyed India’s vulture population after it entered their food chain and caused kidney failure in the birds. In turn, the destruction of just one species proved fatal right back—with no vultures to compete with them, scavenging street dogs have exploded in number, bringing a rise in rabies cases in humans. A study of how easily the intricate ecology of a city can be unraveled.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I had no idea Sorkin was working on a sort of sequel to the Social Network, which he’s directing, but this looks pretty good.

Learn how to code faster with AI in 5 mins a day

You're spending 40 hours a week writing code that AI could do in 10.

While you're grinding through pull requests, 200k+ engineers at OpenAI, Google & Meta are using AI to ship faster.

How?

The Code newsletter teaches them exactly which AI tools to use and how to use them.

Here's what you get:

• AI coding techniques used by top engineers at top companies in just 5 mins a day

• Tools and workflows that cut your coding time in half

• Tech insights that keep you 6 months ahead

Sign up and get access to the Ultimate Claude code guide to ship 5X faster.

Join 200K+ engineers

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’ve been saying for a while that I want a modern, 80s inspired ana-digi watch. Thanks Autodromo!

The Tech newsletter for Engineers who want to stay ahead

Tech moves fast, but you're still playing catch-up?

That's exactly why 200K+ engineers working at Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here's what you get:

• Curated tech news that shapes your career - Filtered from thousands of sources so you know what's coming 6 months early.

• Practical resources you can use immediately - Real tutorials and tools that solve actual engineering problems.

• Research papers and insights decoded - We break down complex tech so you understand what matters.

All delivered twice a week in just 2 short emails.

Join 200K+ engineers

In this issue

• TAG Heuer Adds A Sand Dial To The Carrera Chronograph Glassbox 39

• Seiko Takes Inspiration From Crystals For The New Astron GPS Solar Dual-Time Chronograph Dials

• Autodromo Doubles Down On 80s Turbo Nostalgia With An Extremely Cool Ana-Digi

• The Gerald Charles Maestro 2.0 Ultra-Thin For The Asian Market Gets A Jade Dial

• MB&F Unveils The Horological Machine No. 12 The Guardian, A Wristwatch That Is Literally A Robot's Head

👂What’s new

1/

TAG Heuer Adds A Sand Dial To The Carrera Chronograph Glassbox 39

The Carrera Chronograph Glassbox has had a busy few years. Blue, panda, reverse panda, purple, teal, black — TAG Heuer has been running through the dial color spectrum like there’s no tomorrow. And I don’t mind it at all. The latest is a European limited edition on the 39mm Glassbox chassis, this time with a sand-colored.

The case is 39mm wide and 13.9mm thick in stainless steel, with a mix of brushed and polished surfaces, a steel crown, and round pump-style chronograph pushers. The defining feature remains the highly domed sapphire crystal sitting flush with the case, unsupported by a bezel, the detail that gave this platform its Glassbox name. A sapphire caseback shows the movement. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is a finely grained sand color, paired with anthracite azuré chronograph registers in a tricompax layout, with counters at three and nine o'clock and a silver-finished running seconds at six. The anthracite tachymeter flange carries the same dark tone as the sub-dials. Rhodium-plated applied markers and hands contrast clearly against the sand, and beige lacquered hands on the counters echo the base color. Date display sits at six o'clock.

Under the caseback is the TH20-00, TAG Heuer's in-house integrated automatic chronograph built on the architecture of the Heuer 02, with column wheel and vertical clutch. It runs at 4Hz with an 80-hour power reserve. The watch ships on a beige perforated calfskin racing strap with a steel folding clasp featuring double push-buttons and an engraved TAG Heuer shield.

The TAG Heuer Carrera Chronograph Limited Edition is limited to 500 pieces for the European market, priced at €7,900. See more on the TAG Heuer website.

2/

Seiko Takes Inspiration From Crystals For The New Astron GPS Solar Dual-Time Chronograph Dials

The Astron GPS Solar line has been Seiko's flagship technological statement since the original launched in 2012, and the recently redesigned generation got its anniversary release earlier this year. These two new limited editions follow directly from that redesign, keeping the same updated case architecture and adding a new dial concept. Neither the green nor the pink is an understated option, and Seiko isn't pretending otherwise.

The case is made out of titanium, 43.4mm wide, 12.4mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 50mm. A super-hard coating protects the metal, and the new two-piece octagonal bezel contrasts brushed upper surfaces with polished faceted edges. It's a more complex-looking bezel than what the previous generation offered, and it gives the case a sharper profile. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dials feature a pressed motif meant to evoke the natural facets of quartz crystal, distinct from the geometric patterning on earlier Astron dials. The Crystal Green (SSHB05) references green quartz, and the Crystal Pink (SSHB06) takes its cue from rose formations. Applied hour markers and hands carry LumiBrite, and there's a minute track and UTC scale around the outer edge. The sub-dials for the calibre 5X63 sit at three, six, and nine o'clock, which gives the dial a more balanced layout than earlier versions.

Powering both is Seiko's calibre 5X63 GPS Solar movement, which connects to the GPS satellite network to set the correct time zone automatically, making time zone adjustment entirely hands-free. The solar charging gives it a six-month power reserve when fully charged. Functions include dual time, chronograph, date, day, and perpetual calendar. Each watch ships with both an integrated titanium bracelet and a black silicone strap, swappable without tools via Seiko's quick-release system.

The Seiko Astron GPS Solar Dual-Time Chronograph Crystal Green and Crystal Pink are each limited to 1,200 pieces worldwide, priced at €3,000. Both go on sale in July 2026. See more on the Seiko website.

3/

Autodromo Doubles Down On 80s Turbo Nostalgia With An Extremely Cool Ana-Digi

I’ve always had my eye on Autodromo watches, but never actually owned one. Which is strange, as they sit on the intersection of vintage cars and 70s and 80s nostalgia, two things I’m very much a fan of. I was close to getting a Group C, a digital watch they released a couple of years ago, bot no go. Now, however, it seems that I don’t have much of a choice. You see, Autodromo just released the Group C Turbo Sport, an ana-digi watch. And you know how much I love an ana-digi.

The case is very cool, made out of anodized aluminum with a stainless steel caseback, measuring 38.5mm wide and 11.4mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 40mm — compact enough. It weighs 58 grams. Lug width is 20mm, fitted with an FKM rubber strap with a nylon inlay. Three colorways are available: silver case with gray dial and neon green hands; black case with black dial and pink-red details; gold case with black dial and yellow details. Each has four pushers, with the bottom-right pusher color-coded per model (blue on silver and gold, red on black). Water resistance is 50 meters, which could be better.

The dial gets a background grid pattern that is properly '80s. Up top, the Autodromo name sits below 12 o'clock with "Group C" text at 6 — the latter clearly influenced by Porsche. The digital display occupies the lower portion of the dial and is kept proportionally small, calling back to early LCD odometer readouts on period tachometers. Combined, the analog and digital functions cover three time zones, a daily alarm, a 1/100th chronograph, and 12H/24H formatting.

I have no idea what the movement inside is, and I’m not particularly bothered by it. The watches come on a rubber/nylon strap combination.

The Autodromo Group C Turbo Sport is available now at $450. See more on the Autodromo website.

4/

The Gerald Charles Maestro 2.0 Ultra-Thin For The Asian Market Gets A Jade Dial

While not exactly my cup of tea, the Gerald Charles has been doing interesting things with the Maestro 2.0's dial lately. The meteorite version was their first real material play for the model, and now they're following it with something considerably harder to pull off — a jade dial, done for and dedicated exclusively to Asian markets.

The Maestro case is what it always has been: that distinctive rounded octagon assembled from 35 individual steel components, with the stepped, CNC-machined bezel and Gerald Charles' Ergonteq architecture for wrist comfort. Here it measures 39mm wide and 41mm long, just 9mm thick. The polished finish suits it well. The crown has a Clous de Paris texture and a screw-down design, and you get 100 meters of water resistance, which is impressive for something this thin and this dressy.

The jade dial is the new thing about this release, and the technical story behind it is compelling. Jade is harder and more brittle than most stones used in watches, and the specific challenge here was machining it to the exact contours of the Maestro case. The final dial thickness is 0.4mm. Getting there required custom supports, near-zero vibration tolerances, and super slow speeds. The rejection rate on these is high. I assume that Gerald Charles went with a completely uninterrupted surface, no indices and no numerals, for that exact reason — cut down on the risk of dial fracture. Baton-shaped polished hands in silver have white Super-LumiNova with a green tint at night.

Inside is the manufacture Calibre GCA2000. It runs at 4Hz and has a 50-hour power reserve. The bridges get a colimaçon, Côtes de Genève, and perlage treatment, with yellow gold engravings. The central oscillating weight is gold-finished. The white rubber strap has a Clous de Paris texture on top and GC logos on the lining.

The Gerald Charles Maestro 2.0 Ultra-Thin Asia Edition is limited to 80 pieces and priced at CHF 23,000. I would say see more on the Gerald Charles website, but it’s not on the website just yet.

5/

MB&F Unveils The Horological Machine No. 12 The Guardian, A Wristwatch That Is Literally A Robot's Head

This is it, boys and girls. This is the wildest watch I’ve seen in Geneva and I couldn’t talk about it while it was embargo. MB&F had so much fun introducing us to this… thing. It was all hush-hush, behind closed doors, quite serious and cloth covered. Until they pulled the cloth back, that is, because that’s when the giggles started. You don’t get to see a wrist watch that comes with a companion robot. And not just a statue of a robot, but the new MB&F HM12 The Guardian actually slots into the robot and becomes its head. It’s wild, it’s fun and it’s serious watchmaking.

The case is Grade 5 titanium, 49.3mm long, 43.6mm wide, and 13.8mm thick. For an MB&F Horological Machine, those numbers are relatively restrained, and the curved profile with articulated upper lugs makes it wear like a dream. Even if it is a bit large, it’s hilarious enough to not mind. Extensive sapphire construction forms the upper section and floods the movement with light from multiple angles; the flying tourbillon is visible from above and laterally through a sapphire window at 12 o'clock. Parts of the case also have colored lume inserts.

The dial, or what could be interpreted as a dial, is very robotic in its look. The jumping hours subdial on the left and the trailing minutes on the right seem to make up the eyes, while the open aperture at 6 o’clock looks like an open mouth that holds one side of a battle-axe-shaped micro-rotor that moves constantly as the watch is worn. The flying tourbillon occupies the brain position above. Then there is the face shield. Yeah, a face shield that’s activated with the crown on the left side of the case. Rotate it and you slide out the metal louvers that slide across the dial to cover or reveal the robot's face. This mechanism is entirely independent of the movement and accounts for over 200 of the watch's components on its own. The shield assembly is mechanically more complex than many complete watches.

The movement is a new in-house calibre built specifically for this watch: 646 components, 86 jewels, jumping hours, trailing minutes, flying tourbillon, double-sided micro-rotor, face shield integration, and 84 hours of power reserve. Flip it over and you see why it’s a brand new movement. Not just because of the shape that matches the case, but also because of the geometry that mimics another robot face on the back. The guilloché on the domed rotor was executed in collaboration with Kari Voutilainen. The watch ships on a Velcro strap.

The MB&F HM12 The Guardian will be produced in three colour editions — green, blue, and purple — each limited to 12 pieces. Price is set at CHF 280.000, without tax. See more on the MB&F website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• For The New York Times, Rukmini Callimachi reports from a thatched village in Suffolk, England, on the dying craft of long-straw thatching, and the feud it has sparked within England’s small community of “master thatchers.” Drawing on conversations with craftspeople and historians— and time spent alongside a long-straw thatcher—Callimachi explores a simmering debate: long-straw, believed to be England’s original roof material; versus water reed, which is more durable, easier to source, and imported from Eastern Europe and China. With only 20 or 30 long-straw specialists left, the people who can even tell the difference are disappearing, too.

• For some people, the triggers are the sounds of eating—chewing, slurping, crunching. For others, they may be other sounds heard every day. What they share is misophonia, a neurophysiological disorder characterized by two things: a severe aversion to certain sounds, and a struggle to convince others of the severity of their condition. Because misophonia isn’t yet recognized with an official code in either the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) or the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), sufferers can find themselves dismissed by doctors and forced to reshape their lives around a condition the medical establishment has yet to officially name. Sloane Crosley’s illuminating feature examines what misophonia looks like, how debilitating it can be for sufferers and their families, and what treatments are currently available, from CBT and talk therapy to AI-enhanced noise-canceling headphones.

• Utah’s health care providers are being forced to adapt to America’s new reality, in which vaccine-preventable diseases become common again. Unable to contain the spread of measles—now detected in every health jurisdiction in the state—providers are trying to mitigate harm.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’m a bit heavy on the car rotation over the past few days, but I’m not sorry about it.

The World Cup Has a Market for Every Match.

From the group stage to the final, trade real outcomes on Kalshi, official regional partner of the Argentine National Team. Who wins, who advances, who takes the trophy. Peer-to-peer, no house, cash out anytime. Get $10 free.

Trade Every Match

_{Trade responsibly.}

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Now that Yema seems to have dug themselves out of quality control issues, they just keep making great watches. Great to see.

Free gummies for better weather

The sun is here and we're back outside!

Longer days, lighter hangs, and THC gummies that fit the vibe. Grab a free pack of gummies from Cycling Frog! Just cover $4.99 shipping. Fruity, perfectly dosed, and made for campfires, park days, and whatever summer turns into.

Get your free 10-pack

Must be 21+ and only valid on 10ct bags of gummies

NOT VALID IN OH, CA, CO, AL, LA AND NJ.

In this issue

• Yema Updates The Granvelle Collection With The More Refined Renaissance CMM.29

• King Seiko Brings Back The Vanac HKF004 In Silver And Blue For Seiko's 145th Anniversary

• Charlie Paris Refreshes The Alliance With Sapphire Dials And A Necessary Water Resistance Upgrade

• Chronoswiss Delphis Glacier Brings Glacial Ice Textures to a 30-Year-Old Watch With A Cult Following

• Blancpain’s Very Cool Fifty Fathoms Tech With Three Hour Bezel Makes Its Way To The Regular Collection

👂What’s new

1/

Yema Updates The Granvelle Collection With The More Refined Renaissance CMM.29

Yema has been doing something interesting lately. The brand best known for Superman divers, has been building a credible dress watch line with the Granvelle, a cushion-cased architectural piece named after the Museum of Time in Besançon. The original 2025 Granvelle led with a rare selling point: a manufacture micro-rotor movement at an accessible price. This new Renaissance CMM.29 keeps that proposition and refines everything around it.

The case drops from 39mm to 37.5mm, which is a very welcome change, especially due to the cushion shape and wide dial opening which make the watch appear a bit larger. It's 9mm thick including the crystal and has a lug-to-lug of 46.3mm, so you know this will be easy to wear. The redesigned lugs are a bit more elegant, the mixed polished, vertically brushed, and sunray-brushed surfaces are carried over, and the distinctive fluted caseband remains. The crown is new, redesigned specifically for this collection with alternating finishes and an embossed logo. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The original Granvelle dial used a stamped guilloché-inspired texture. The Renaissance takes it a step further, building the dial in layers: a central medallion engraved with geometric patterns drawn from the roof motifs of the Granvelle Palace, a recessed hour track, an outer chapter ring, and a small seconds display at nine o'clock. Different surface treatments across the layers mean the dial shifts character as the light changes. Applied faceted hour markers and polished hands carry Super-LumiNova BGW9. Colors are black, blue and salmon. Very nice.

The movement carries a new designation, calibre CMM.29, an evolution of the CMM.20 from the original Granvelle. It’s an automatic micro-rotor developed and produced in Yema's Morteau workshops, running at 4Hz with a 70-hour power reserve and a rated accuracy of -3/+7 seconds per day. The tungsten micro-rotor runs on ball bearings and is visible through the sapphire caseback on rhodium-plated bridges finished with a radiating Côtes de Genève pattern. The leather strap tapers from 18mm at the lugs to 14mm at the buckle, and the redesigned pin buckle mirors the cushion geometry of the case and crown.

The Yema Granvelle Renaissance CMM.29 is priced at €2,100 and is available now. See more on the Yema website.

2/

King Seiko Brings Back The Vanac HKF004 In Silver And Blue For Seiko's 145th Anniversary

The Vanac has had a good comeback run. King Seiko revived the angular, integrated-bracelet sub-line last year with a handful of new models, and the reception was strong enough to keep the momentum going. Now Seiko is adding a limited edition to the family, tying it to their ongoing 145th anniversary celebrations and the Seiko Blue color theme that dates to the 1960s. This is the new King Seiko Vanac HKF004.

That case is stainless steel, 41mm wide and 14.3mm thick, with a short lug-to-lug of 45.1mm. The Vanac's character comes from its angularity, and Seiko plays that up with a mix of brushed and polished surfaces across the case and the integrated bracelet. The bracelet links carry both finishes, mirror on some, brushed on others. The caseback carries a blue King Seiko shield logo pulled from the original 1960s emblem. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is white, with blue details borrowed directly from the Seiko Blue language used elsewhere in the 145th anniversary lineup. A blue ring runs around the perimeter of the dial, breaking up all that white and creating contrast against the lighter center. The hands are also blue, and the hour markers have Lumibrite inserts for legibility in dim light. A horizontal stripe texture runs across the dial surface for a bit of depth. There are a few Vanac-specific design touches you'll notice: the V-shaped marker at 12 o'clock, and a matching V-shaped counterweight on the seconds hand.

Inside is the calibre 8L45, the same movement that powered last year's Vanac series. It's based on the Grand Seiko 9S65 architecture, beats at 4Hz, and delivers a 72-hour power reserve, with a rated accuracy of +10 to -5 seconds per day. Seiko exposes the movement through a sapphire caseback, where striped finishing is visible on the rotor, bridges, and plates. The watch ships on an integrated steel bracelet.

The King Seiko Vanac HKF004 is limited to 800 pieces, available from July 2026, and priced at €3,400. See more on the Seiko website.

3/

Charlie Paris Refreshes The Alliance With Sapphire Dials And A Necessary Water Resistance Upgrade

Not that they’re know as a brand with wild designs, but Charlie Paris’ Alliance has always been the more straightforward model for the French brand. Just a well-proportioned steel everyday watch at a price that doesn't require a lot of mental gymnastics to justify. The new Alliance lineup carries all of that forward and adds two interesting variants with semi-transparent sapphire dials, plus a water resistance jump from 30 to 100 meters.

The case is unchanged from previous Alliance models: 39.5mm wide and 9mm thick, with a mix of polished and brushed surfaces and circular brushing on the bezel. The double-domed sapphire crystal sits above, and with 100 meters of water resistance now on the spec sheet, this is a watch you can actually wear every day without much worry.

Five dial options are available: blue, silver-white, and sage green in the standard Alliance, plus blue and white in the Alliance Sapphire. The sage green is a great look, but I have a hunch the Sapphire versions will be super popular. The dial is a smoked semi-transparent sapphire disc that lets you see parts of the movement and the date wheel beneath, tinted in the corresponding dial color. Applied hour markers appear at 12, three, six, and nine o'clock with Super-LumiNova inserts, and a date display sits at six.

Power comes from the Swiss-made Soprod P024 automatic movement, the same calibre you'll find in plenty of other watches in this price tier. It's a sensible choice — reliable, easy to service, and essentially Soprod's take on the ETA 2824. It beats at 4Hz, has a 40-hour power reserve, and is rated to -0/+14 seconds per day. Strap options include coloured leather, rubber, or the H-link steel bracelet with brushed and polished surfaces and screw-down links.

Pricing starts at €895 for the standard Alliance on leather or rubber and €975 on the steel bracelet. The Alliance Sapphire runs €995 on leather or rubber and €1,075 on the bracelet. See more on the Charlie Paris website.

4/

Chronoswiss Delphis Glacier Brings Glacial Ice Textures to a 30-Year-Old Watch With A Cult Following

The Delphis has been part of Chronoswiss' identity since Gerd-Rüdiger Lang introduced it in 1996: a jumping hour at 12 o'clock, a retrograde minutes hand sweeping an arc, small seconds at 6. It's one of the most distinctive takes on the regulator concept in independent watchmaking, and the Lucerne brand has used it as a canvas for increasingly elaborate dials over the years. The new Delphis Glacier is another limited edition in that tradition, this time drawing its palette from Swiss glaciers.

The case is 42mm wide and 14.5mm thick, built from Grade 5 titanium and assembled from 17 individual components. The signature details are all there: fluted caseband, polished bezel, oversized onion crown. A cambered sapphire crystal with double-sided anti-reflective coating sits on top, a sapphire display caseback on the reverse, and water resistance is rated to 100 meters, which is genuinely better than you'd expect from something like this.

The dial divides into two zones. The upper section gets a silver galvanic finish with hand-guilloché patterns inspired by fractured glacial surfaces. Below it, the seconds sub-dial is finished in a rich blue CVD coating and decorated with its own hand-guilloché work, done in-house at the Chronoswiss Atelier. The retrograde minutes hand sweeps across the upper arc and snaps back at the top of the hour; the jumping hour changes instantly at 12. Both hands are skeletonised, which helps legibility against the contrasting textures underneath them.

The calibre C. 6004, developed by La Joux-Perret, powers the watch. It's an automatic running at 4Hz with a 55-hour power reserve, 37 jewels, a Glucydur balance, Nivarox hairspring, and Incabloc shock protection. Through the sapphire caseback you can see Geneva-striped bridges, polished screws, and a skeletonised tungsten rotor on ball bearings. The Glacier comes on a black rubber strap.

The Chronoswiss Delphis Glacier is a limited edition of 50 pieces. Price is set at €18.400. See more on the Chronoswiss website.

5/

Blancpain’s Very Cool Fifty Fathoms Tech With Three Hour Bezel Makes Its Way To The Regular Collection

I have an extreme soft spot for the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Tech. Last year, this mega-diver became a staple in the regular Blancpain collection, and now they’re bringing a more conceptual version of the Tech back as well. The Tech collection draws its roots from the Tech Gombessa model, developed with explorer Laurent Ballesta, with a patented three-hour diving bezel that lets technical divers and rebreather users track extended bottom times the same way any diver reads a conventional 60-minute bezel. And it’s that three hour bezel that shows up on the new Ref. 5019A, alongside the more practical tool-free strap change system and date complication.

The Grade 23 titanium case measures 47mm wide and 14.81mm thick. It uses the same central lug construction introduced with the original Gombessa version. There’s no denying this is a massive watch, but thanks to me having huge wrists and the central lug giving the impression of a lugless watch, making it slightly more wearable than the numbers might suggest. That “slightly” is doing a lot of work here. Water resistance is 300 meters, and there's a helium escape valve at the 10 o’clock position.

The dial uses Blancpain's "Absolute Black" surface treatment, which absorbs up to 97% of incoming light. The design logic is legibility, and to reinforce it, the brand uses two different Super-LumiNova colors: blue-emission for all diving indications, including the three-hour hand and bezel scale, and green-emission for standard timekeeping. Hour markers and cardinal numerals are all in the green emission. There’s also a third hand done in bright orange that tracks the three hour dive time. The date aperture, despite being horribly positioned at 4.30 is well integrated.

Inside is calibre 13P5A, an automatic based on Blancpain's calibre 1315 with a triple-barrel construction that delivers a five-day power reserve at 4Hz. The strap system uses the central lug design for tool-free swaps and the watch ships on an orange rubber strap, with black and white rubber alternatives available separately.

The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Tech Ref. 5019A is a permanent addition to the collection, priced at CHF 20,500. See more on the Blancpain website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• A few weeks ago, a seven-year-old boy reached the top of El Capitan in Yosemite. For many, this was an extraordinary achievement: Joey Danger Evermore became the youngest person in history to ascend El Cap. But did he really climb it? Within the climbing community, some argue that the Evermore family’s style of ascent means the answer is no. Neither Joey, his brother, nor his father led or even cleaned any of the pitches. Instead, they relied on guides whose role may have crossed legal and ethical lines. According to reports, the boys were pushed to keep climbing through tears at their father’s urging. So where do we draw the line? When do we celebrate a climb, and when do we acknowledge that it should never have happened in the first place?

• “Come test wearable tech in Midtown!” Max Callimanopulos joins a few dozen Craigslist respondents for four hours of testing wearable technology prototypes for Meta, playing a series of boring videogames while his temperature, heart rate, and muscle movements are recorded for use by the company. “So far,” Callimanopulos writes of AI-powered wearable tech, “the pins, glasses, and pendants launched at us have been unwieldy, redundant, and irredeemably unsexy.” They also seem to accomplish very little, save for closing the distance between our bodies and the digital world.

• Sheila Liming recalls watching a university library discard books to make room for a renovation. To trash a library book is to deaccession it, and as she remembers what she learned studying Edith Wharton’s marginalia, Liming suggests we lose not only the text itself, but also the conversation that take place between a careful reader and the author that appear as comments, questions, and provocations in the margins.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’m getting a bit tired of the whole restomod trend, but a 325 horsepower engine that spins to 10k rpm and sits in a sub 900kg cool looking Escort? Yeah, give me more of that.

What 200K+ Engineers Read to Stay Ahead

Your GitHub stars won't save you if you're behind on tech trends.

That's why over 200K engineers read The Code to spot what's coming next.

• Get curated tech news, tools, and insights twice a week

• Learn about emerging trends you can leverage at work in just 5 mins a day

• Become the engineer who always knows what's next

Join 200k+ engineers

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. This PADI Seiko got me thinking that I haven’t owned a lot of the classic Seiko and Citizen divers. It just might be time to get my hands on some.

Bet Better, Win Bigger With Novig

Novig is America's #1 sports exchange, built for smarter bettors who want better odds and more control. Sign up now and get $50 in Novig Coins for your first $5 deposit.

Skip the traditional sportsbook markup and trade directly against other users in a transparent market. With real-time pricing, lower fees, and sharper lines, every wager works harder for you. Whether you’re hedging risk or maximizing value, Novig gives you the tools to bet like a pro and keep more of your winnings.

Start Winning Now

In this issue

• Seiko Celebrates 60 Years Of PADI With A Special Edition Of The King Turtle

• The Chopard Mille Miglia GTS Power Control Gets A Grigio-Blu Dial For The 44th Race Edition

• March LA.B Shrinks The AM2 Down To 32mm With An Ultra-Thin Dress Version Called The XS

• Trilobe Trente-Deux Expands With New Dial Colors And Rose Gold Case

• Piaget Teams Up With Wristcheck For A Very Handsome Blue Altiplano Ultimate Automatic 910P

👂What’s new

1/

Seiko Celebrates 60 Years Of PADI With A Special Edition Of The King Turtle

The Seiko and PADI partnership started in 2016 with a Turtle-cased Pepsi bezel watch and has produced a reliable stream of collaborative divers since. Ten years in and with PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, marking its 60th anniversary, Seiko has reached back to one of the more beloved platforms in the Prospex lineup, the King Turtle, for the new limited-edition Prospex Diver's Watch PADI 60th Anniversary HBB002.

The case goes untouched, measuring 45mm wide and 13.2mm thick, stainless steel with a mix of brushed and polished surfaces. The rounded cushion shape does real work on this watch as it wears much smaller on the wrist than its dimensions suggest, which is the main reason Turtle fans have always tolerated the size. Up top is a sapphire crystal with a day-date magnifier and inner AR coating. A screw-down crown and 200 meters of water resistance round out a case that does everything a dive watch should.

The dial is the thing that sets this apart from a standard King Turtle reissue. The blue of the dial is lifted from PADI's anniversary logo palette , with red appearing on the seconds hand and the "Diver's 200m" text at six. The base is engraved with a globe motif, also a reference to the legendary PADI logo. Lumibrite fills the hands and applied markers, and a day-date window sits at three o'clock.

Inside is Seiko's automatic calibre 4R36, beating at 21,600 vph with a 41-hour power reserve. The solid caseback keeps it out of sight, which is probably fine given that the 4R36 is a dependable but unglamorous workhorse. The watch ships on a stainless steel bracelet with a three-fold clasp and push-button diver's extension, plus an additional black silicone strap printed with the full "Professional Association of Diving Instructors" name.

The Seiko Prospex Diver's Watch PADI 60th Anniversary HBB002 is limited to 8,000 pieces, available from July 2026. Price is €750. See more on the Seiko website.

2/

The Chopard Mille Miglia GTS Power Control Gets A Grigio-Blu Dial For The 44th Race Edition

Chopard has been the official timekeeper of the Mille Miglia since 1988, which makes the annual race edition watch a reliable fixture on the calendar. Last year they released the GTS Power Control in salmon, a color that very well receieved. This year's version swaps it for Grigio-Blu, a blue-grey that the brand describes as dashboard-inspired.

The case is unchanged: 43mm wide, 11.43mm thick, made from Chopard's proprietary Lucent Steel, an 80% recycled alloy, with alternating brushed and polished surfaces. The bezel has a thin 60-minute/60-second scale on a black aluminium insert, and you know how much of a fan of aluminium over ceramic I am. Crown guards flank a screw-down crown with a steering wheel engraved on its end. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial in Grigio-Blu has a grained texture meant to evoke asphalt, which looks good and gives the dial a bit of an interesting look. Applied metallic hour markers and oversized Arabic numerals at 12 and 6 sit alongside broad faceted hands, all filled with black Super-LumiNova. You get red details the tip of the seconds hand, the "E" on the power reserve indicator, and the 1000 Miglia arrow at the date window. That arrow is a replica of the original Brescia-Rome road sign. The power reserve arc runs between 8 and 10 o'clock, fuel-gauge style.

Inside is calibre 01.08-C, COSC-certified, automatic, beating at 4Hz with a 60-hour power reserve. Functions are hours, minutes, hacking seconds, power reserve, and date. The caseback is closed with eight screws over a sapphire crystal; the movement has a simple bridge pattern, polished bevels, and an openworked rotor. It comes on a black technical textile strap with a rubber tyre-tread lining and a Lucent Steel folding clasp.

The new Chopard GTS Power Control is limited to 250 pieces, priced at €7,940. Available exclusively in Italy and at Chopard boutiques. See more on the Chopard website.

3/

March LA.B Shrinks The AM2 Down To 32mm With An Ultra-Thin Dress Version Called The XS

March LA.B has covered a lot of ground with the AM2 — GMT complications, DLC coatings, bronze dive variants, annual limited Millésime editions. The one thing that never really changed was the size. The angular, octagonal-ish case stuck around the 36-39mm range, while trending to smaller sizes. Now the brand has taken things considerably further with the AM2 XS, a 32mm, 6.7mm-thick version they're positioning as a dress watch.

The case is in stainless steel or gold PVD, 32mm wide and just 6.7mm thick. Six of the signature sloping facets are polished, which gives the watch a surprising amount of visual presence for its dimensions. The two flat sections at noon and six o'clock carry a vertically brushed finish that continues onto the thin octagonal bezel. The V-shaped pointed lugs extend slightly beyond the case body and connect to a seven-link steel bracelet or leather strap with quick-release spring bars. The large screw-down crown at 4 o'clock — still there, still oversized relative to the case — maintains a 50-meter water resistance rating.

Three dials are available: green (Grall), white (Shelter), and golden (Golden Hour). All three carry a houndstooth-stamped texture, a detail that fits the dressier nature without losing the AM2's tactile personality. No date window, no lume also hint at a dressier watch. The markers are polished and faceted, the hands are baton shaped.

The movement is the La Joux-Perret D101, a 23.3mm-wide, 2.5mm-thick manual-wind calibre that's functionally related to the Peseux ETA 7001. It beats at 3Hz and offers 50 hours of power reserve. A green-tinted sapphire porthole on the caseback shows you the movement. Three strap options are available: lizard, integrated steel bracelet, and black wasp-waist alligator.

The new March LA.B AM2 XS is available now, priced at €1,995 for the lizard strap and steel bracelet options, €2,795 for the alligator. See more on the March LA.B website.

4/

Trilobe Trente-Deux Expands With New Dial Colors And Rose Gold Case

Trilobe has been one of the more interesting stories in recent independent watchmaking. The Paris-based brand spent years refining its three-disc display before launching the Trente-Deux last year, and with it, the Calibre X-Nihilo — their first movement conceived, developed, and assembled entirely in Paris. This round of new Trente-Deux references tests whether the platform has the range to support a broader collection. I say it does.

The Trente-Deux case measures 39.5mm wide and 10.15mm thick, built from seven individually finished components with polished, satin-brushed, and microblasted surfaces. The fluted bezel keeps its polished ridges against matte grooves, and the signed crown sits between understated guards that mirror the case architecture. The steel grey reference with integrated bracelet is the more subdued of the two. The rose gold version gets a green dial and rubber strap, a warmer and more relaxed design. Water resistance is 50 meters.

Both versions have Trilobe's patented display system: three rotating discs at different levels, with hours on the outer ring, and minutes and seconds in a figure-eight layout at center. There are no conventional hands anywhere on the dial.

Inside both is the Calibre X-Nihilo automatic, 218 components, 28,800 vibrations per hour, 42 hours of power reserve. Through the sapphire caseback, the elevated balance wheel sits above an open layout with an openworked rotor that keeps the brushed bridges visible.

New steel Trente-Deux references start at €17,500 before taxes; rose gold from €35,500. See more on the Trilobe website.

5/

Hermès Arceau Cavalier en Formes Combines A Tourbillon Minute Repeater With A Hand-Painted Horse

The Arceau has been the most serious thing Hermès does with watchmaking. Henri d'Origny drew the asymmetrical case with its stirrup-shaped lugs back in 1978, and Hermès has spent the years since using it as a vehicle for their most ambitious complications. The Arceau Cavalier en Formes is as ambitious as it gets: a tourbillon and minute repeater built into a watch whose dial is also a miniature painting of a cubist horse.

The case is yellow gold, measuring 43mm wide. It still keeps the asymmetry of the Arceau case is intact, with the crown offset on the trigger side and the minute repeater slider positioned on the left flank of the case. The asymmetry means that you have super short lugs on the bottom of the case and stirrup-shaped lugs at the top. Water resistance is 30 meters.

Then, the incredible dial. The source material is Gianpaolo Pagni's 2023 Cavalier en Formes scarf, which hides a horse under a geometry of colored squares and circles. The dial makers reproduced that scene in depth, with applied palm leaf elements sitting at different heights, gold-engraved horse with raised front leg in a more classical vein, and a rider rendered in purely abstract forms. Openworked hands tell the time through the composition. The tourbillon cage at 6 o'clock displays the twin "H" motif from the wrought-iron lift door at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Inside is the H1924, a manual-winding movement developed with Manufacture Haute Complications in Geneva and first seen in the 2020 Arceau Lift. The repeater chimes hours, quarters, and minutes on demand, activated by the left-side trigger. Power reserve is 90 hours. The caseback carries barrel bridges shaped as twin horse heads. It ships on an Hermès Abyss Blue alligator strap.

The Hermès Arceau Cavalier en Formes is limited to six pieces and price is available on demand. See more on the Hermes website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• A tense airboat chase opens this excellent feature from Carlyle Calhoun, with photos from James Collier, about how climate change is complicating public access to waterways in southern Louisiana. Sea-level rise is sending more and more privately owned land under water, at a rate too fast to accurately map. Oil and gas companies, fearful of losing access to mineral rights should their submerged lands become public property, have zealously fought to keep their grip on sunken land, making it increasingly difficult for people to enter their rising waters.

• Longtime New Yorker writer Peter Hessler began his career in journalism delivering copies of the Columbia Missourian. Here he recounts his preteen years of setting out before dawn each day to do his job, the trials of which included heavy loads and vicious terriers. There was also Mr. Wood.

• Six decades ago, behavioral psychologist James McConnell wanted to prove that worms could learn. He did, using a series of somewhat gruesome experiments that culminating in feeding worms other worms. (Sorry, worms.) This turned into a bit of a cultural Thing, with McConnell going on talk shows, calling himself “McCannibal,” and publishing a zine called The Worm Runner’s Digest. And then . . . the worms stopped learning. What happened? Claire L. Evans checks in with the scientists who are trying to figure that out, her usual curiosity and low-key wit in tow.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

It’s quite simple: I see a Harry’s Garage Video, I click a Harry’s Garage video, and it never disappoints.

Need a reset? Your free gummies are waiting.

The sun is finally here, and it’s the perfect time to reset your routine. Lazarus Naturals' CBD gummies are crafted to help you find your center, no matter what your summer plans look like.

Grab your free gummies- choose from any of our bestselling 10-packs. Just pay $4.99 for shipping!

Get your free gummies

Only valid on select 10ct bags of gummies. Offer subject to availability.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Take a good look at that Raymond Weil… Does that remind you of something? I know it reminded me very much of it when I got a chance to try it on in Geneva.

Free gummies for better weather

The sun is here and we're back outside!

Longer days, lighter hangs, and THC gummies that fit the vibe. Grab a free pack of gummies from Cycling Frog! Just cover $4.99 shipping. Fruity, perfectly dosed, and made for campfires, park days, and whatever summer turns into.

Get your free 10-pack

Must be 21+ and only valid on 10ct bags of gummies

NOT VALID IN OH, CA, CO, AL, LA AND NJ.

In this issue

• TAG Heuer Monaco Speed 12 Uses Louis Vuitton's Display For An Extremely Cool Radial Jump Hour

• Raymond Weil Enters the Integrated-Bracelet Category for the First Time With the New A.R.T. Date 38mm

• Glashütte Original Seventies Chronograph XV Brings the Reverse Panda To A Cult German Watch

• Piaget Teams Up With Wristcheck For A Very Handsome Blue Altiplano Ultimate Automatic 910P

👂What’s new

1/

TAG Heuer Monaco Speed 12 Uses Louis Vuitton's Display For An Extremely Cool Radial Jump Hour

The Monaco has always had an identity that runs on tension: a square, water-resistant chronograph that became famous for being worn by a racing driver in a film, then spent decades trying to live up to both the watch and the myth simultaneously. TAG Heuer's recent Monaco releases have been truly interesting: the Split Seconds, the Evergraph, and last year's in-house calibre TH20-11 version showed a brand willing to push the model technically rather than just aesthetically. The Speed 12 continues that trajectory and then does something else entirely, pulling in La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton and their patented Spin Time jumping hour display to build what has to be a first — an automaton of a 12 cylinder radial engine that stands in for the jump hour display.

The case is 40mm wide Grade 5 titanium with alternating brushed and polished surfaces, a sapphire bezel, a domed sapphire crystal, and a sapphire caseback. Four black DLC-coated openworked arches at the corners hold the suspended movement in place. The crown sits at 3 o'clock with the TAG Heuer shield. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The dial is entirely open and built around 12 rotating titanium pistons arranged in a ring, each engraved with a black-lacquered Arabic numeral. As the minute hand completes one revolution, the active piston returns to its parked position while the next rotates 90 degrees to display the current hour. The central surface has a vertically grooved texture looking like an engine cover, and the skeletonized minutes hand has a red tip. The black opaline display ring around the perimeter uses white markings with red accents at five-minute intervals. The whole thing is a piece of kinematic theater.

The automatic calibre TH84-00 was developed and manufactured by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, reworking the Spin Time concept originally created by Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini. It runs at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 45-hour power reserve. The strap is black rubber with a textile-style embossing, red stitching, and a titanium folding clasp with double safety push-buttons.

Limited to 50 individually numbered pieces, the TAG Heuer Monaco Speed 12 is available from December 2026. Pricing is set at €77,000. See more on the TAG Heuer website.

2/

Raymond Weil Enters the Integrated-Bracelet Category for the First Time With the New A.R.T. Date 38mm

Raymond Weil has spent nearly five decades as one of Geneva's most consistent family-owned watchmakers, building a reputation on accessible Swiss watches and, more recently, some quite interesting vintage-inspired releases. What they've never done is make an integrated-bracelet sports watch. Kind of unusual, considering the waves the genre trend has hit the market. The A.R.T. Date 38mm changes that, and if the acronym — Art, Refinement and Timekeeping — sounds a little forced, you’ll forget about it the moment you see the watch. Even though it looks very familiar to one of the other major integrated sports watches on the market.

The case measures 38mm wide and 9.95mm thick, which puts this firmly in the versatile daily-wearer camp rather than the aggressive sports-watch territory. The construction leans on flowing transitions between surfaces rather than the angular geometry that dominates this category, with satin-brushed surfaces carrying most of the visual work and polished bevels providing contrast. The signed fluted crown sits at 3 o'clock, the caseback is solid, and water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is available in graphite, metallic blue, or sage grey, all with the same multi-level construction: a sunray-brushed center, a recessed groove separating it from an outer azuré-textured minutes track. Applied faceted indices, a double marker at 12 o'clock, and green Super-LumiNova give it a contemporary feel without being loud about it. A date window at 3 o'clock sits at 3 o’clock.

Inside is a Sellita SW200-1, the reliable workhorse that powers much of the Swiss industry at this price level. It runs at 28,800 vibrations per hour and delivers 41 hours of power reserve. It comes on an integrated bracelet constructed with H-shaped links, polished bevels, and subtly chamfered intermediate links, it tapers from the case down to a folding clasp and does what a good integrated bracelet should: make the watch look like a single object rather.

The stainless-steel-only models start at €1,995; two bi-colour references combining steel with rose-gold-coloured accents on the bezel, crown, and intermediate bracelet links add a slightly dressier option for €2,095. See more on the Raymond Weil website.

3/

Glashütte Original Seventies Chronograph XV Brings the Reverse Panda To A Cult German Watch

Glashütte Original keeps finding new reasons to release the Seventies Chronograph. When I covered the Swimming Pool and Watermelon in August 2024, the schtick was audacity through color. The XV Limited Edition goes the exact opposite way — the same TV-shaped case and integrated bracelet work just as well when stripped back to a black-and-silver reverse panda. They're right. And this one's for Germany, Austria and Switzerland only, the mirror image of the panda-dial Seventies X they made for the American market.

The case here is unchanged from every other Seventies Chronograph Panorama Date you've seen: 40×40mm brushed and polished stainless steel with integrated lugs, a 46.4mm lug-to-lug, and 14mm of thickness. The square pushers sit on either side of the crown and the case wears more compact on the wrist than the dimensions suggest. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial has a matte black lacquer base, with silver galvanised subdials. White gold hands and applied hour markers fill with Super-LumiNova. The display is everything the Seventies is known for: central hours, minutes, running seconds subdial, power reserve indicator, the signature panorama date with two non-overlapping discs, central chronograph seconds, a 30-minute counter, and an arched 12-hour totaliser window.

Inside is the in-house calibre 37-02, a column-wheel automatic flyback chronograph with Glashütte stripes, a skeletonised double-G rotor with polished bevels, a silicon hairspring, and 70 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on an integrated steel bracelet with a fine-adjustment clasp.

The Glashütte Original Seventies Chronograph XV Limited Edition is limited to 100 pieces and available exclusively through Glashütte Original boutiques and retailers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Price is set at €17,100. See more on the Glashütte Original website.

4/

Piaget Teams Up With Wristcheck For A Very Handsome Blue Altiplano Ultimate Automatic 910P

Piaget rarely does limited editions. When they do, it's always something really nice. The brand has spent almost 70 years building a reputation around ultra-thin movements, starting with the 9P in 1957 and the self-winding 12P in 1960, and the Altiplano Ultimate Automatic 910P is the current extreme end of that lineage — a 41mm watch in 18K white gold that measures just 4.3mm thin, made possible because the movement is not housed inside the case; it is the case. 30 of these now exist in a Wristcheck edition, painted in the Hong Kong platform's signature blue.

The case is 18K white gold, 41mm wide and 4.3mm thick, with an anti-reflective sapphire crystal. Given how the 910P is constructed, with movement components integrated into the case middle, there is no display caseback. Instead, a solid back engraved with both the Piaget Coat of Arms and the Wristcheck logo. Water resistance is 20 meters, but this watch does not like water in any meaningful quantity. And you should treat it accordingly.

The dial is Wristcheck blue lacquer with a sunburst finish, and Piaget has carried the blue through the screws, the hour hand, and the peripheral rotor. That rotor is worth describing: rather than a central oscillating weight, the 910P uses a bi-color peripheral rotor in pink gold with blue CVD and grey PVD coating that spins around the outer edge of the movement.

Powering all of this is the Piaget manufacture 910P, an ultra-thin automatic with 238 components, a 50-hour power reserve, and hours and minutes only. The movement won the Mechanical Exception Prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève in 2021. The strap is deep blue calfskin with Wristcheck blue topstitching and an 18K white gold ardillon buckle.

The Piaget x Wristcheck Altiplano Ultimate Automatic 910P (ref. G0A51127) is limited to 30 pieces and price is set at $46,300 before taxes. See more on the Wristcheck website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• When their parents ripped two young sisters from their privileged lives, gave them fake names, and took them on the lam, they thought it was because their father was in trouble with the IRS. It would be years before they learned the truth about his life of crime.

• Frank, Lincoln, and Paul met over a chess board more than a decade ago. They didn’t share much in the way of circumstances, just a love of the game. After one of them disappeared, though, another of them checked in—and set in motion a chain of events that brought them closer together than any of them might have thought possible. John Leland has long specialized in telling the stories of everyday New Yorkers, and once again manages to make a city of eight million feel as tight-knit as a small town.

• How did a college football town in Georgia spawn the B-52s, R.E.M., and Widespread Panic, to name just a few of the bands who’ve called Athens both home and inspiration? The maestros and misfits who led Athens’ rise to one of the world’s most influential and improbable music towns tell all in this oral history.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’m supremely jealous of how good these videos are. If only did something similar for watches…

The Odds are Finally in Your Favor

Novig is giving you better odds and lower fees by trading directly with other users. Skip the sportsbook markup. Sign up now and get $50 in Novig Coins for your first deposit of $5 using America's Sports Exchange

Claim Your Coins

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Have a good weekend everyone.

Bet Smarter on America’s Sports Exchange

Novig is redefining sports betting by putting you in control. As America’s sports exchange, it lets you trade directly with other users for better prices, tighter spreads, and lower fees than traditional sportsbooks. There are no hidden margins—just a transparent marketplace built for smarter decisions and bigger potential returns.

Whether you're a casual fan or a seasoned bettor, Novig gives you the edge you’ve been missing. Sign up now and get $50 in Novig Coins for your first deposit of $5, and experience a better way to bet on sports today.

Start Trading

In this issue

• MING And J.N. Shapiro Team Up For The 37.06 Lightning With A Stunning Guilloché Dial

• Timex Expands Their Premium Atelier Collection With Two Chronographs

• Delma's Commander Makes Itself More At Home On The Wrist With A New 40mm Case

• The Alexander Shorokhoff Kandy Avantgarde Blue Is Fifty Pieces Of Avant-Garde You Either Get Or You Don't

• The Girard-Perregaux Laureato Fifty Joins The Permanent Collection In Four New References

👂What’s new

1/

MING And J.N. Shapiro Team Up For The 37.06 Lightning With A Stunning Guilloché Dial

Ming and J.N. Shapiro have been friends and collaborators since the early days of the Alternative Horological Alliance, which they formed together; and their previous joint effort, the Project 21, showed what happens when you let two people with very strong design instincts work on the same object. The 37.06 Lightning is a deeper collaboration: Shapiro cuts the guilloché pattern on his rose-engine lathe in Inglewood, California, and the dial then travels to Kuala Lumpur, where Ming's team applies heat with a butane torch until titanium's crystalline structure blooms into colour.

The stainless steel case follows the established 37-series proportions: 38mm wide, 10.9mm thick, lug-to-lug of 44.5mm. The pagoda lugs are a Ming signature by now. Finishing is mixed brushed and polished, the crystal is domed sapphire with AR coating on both sides, and water resistance is rated to 100 meters.

The "lightning guilloché" pattern is new to Shapiro's repertoire: a design that radiates from the centre and then breaks into jagged zigzags rather than the concentric or basket-weave patterns more common to engine-turning. Under normal conditions that would be interesting enough, but the heat treatment turns the titanium dial through orange and yellow in the centre, deepening to purple at the mid-zone and settling into dark blue at the edges. How good looking is that? These dials are also difficult to get right, so the two brands say that they have a 30% failure rate. Lume sits in laser-hollowed cavities within the sapphire crystal for the indices, filled with HyCeram; the hands get Super-LumiNova X1.

Inside is the Sellita SW210.M1, a manual-wind calibre with a 42-hour power reserve, customised here with skeletonised bridges and an anthracite-coated baseplate, visible through the domed caseback crystal. The strap is blue Barenia calfskin from Jean Rousseau, fitted with quick-release spring bars and a flying blade buckle with micro-adjustment.

Orders open today, 5 June, at 13:00 GMT. Production is uncapped in theory but could be limited in delivery speed by the handcrafted nature of the dial. After the initial batch going on sale today, Shapiro and Ming are targeting around 10 pieces a month going forward. Price is CHF 6,250 excluding tax. See more on the Ming website.

2/

Timex Expands Their Premium Atelier Collection With Two Chronographs

The Atelier collection is moving fast. Timex launched the Marine M1a diver last year, added the GMT24 M1a barely a month later, and now the collection doubles in size again with two chronograph references — the automatic M1a Ti and the quartz M1q. These will very much be controversial watches. They look fantastic, but they’re quite large and sit in a price point Timex hasn’t existed in before.

The M1a Ti gets a titanium and stainless-steel construction with a black IP-coated middle case, measuring 42mm wide and 15.75mm thick. Sure, automatic chronographs are usually quite thick, but this very much hurts to see. A fixed tachymeter bezel in titanium with black IP coating sits on top, surrounding a double-domed sapphire crystal. The skeletonized case and bracelet design carries over from the diver and GMT, with partially hollowed, sandblasted bracelet links and a hollowed mid-case that reveals the black inner core. A flat sapphire crystal sits in the screw-in caseback for a view of the movement. Water resistance is 50 meters. The M1q has the same aesthetic in skeletonized stainless steel at 40mm wide and 12.7mm thick, with 100 meters of water resistance and no exhibition caseback.

Both dials have the same matte black base with silver two-register chronograph layouts. The M1a Ti's setup is a classic panda configuration: the 30-minute counter sits at 3 o'clock, running seconds at 9. The hour markers are cutouts in the metal ring rather than applied indices, which is more minimal and, honestly, less legible than what the diver and GMT offer. Faceted dauphine hands in polished metal add a dressy note that reads as intentional against the sport case. The M1q adds guilloché texture to the dial and a date window at 6; the M1a Ti stays flat matte.

The M1a Ti runs on a Landeron L72 automatic chronograph at 28,800 vph with a 43-hour power reserve and 28 jewels, finished with perlage, blued screws, and a Geneva-striped rotor — genuinely nice for the price. The M1q uses a Ronda 5021D quartz. Both movements are Swiss-made. The bracelet carries over Atelier's toolless link-removal system along with quick-release spring bars and a flat butterfly clasp; the rubber strap option integrates into the case with quick-release bars and a titanium deployant.

The M1a Ti is priced at $2,250 on bracelet and $2,100 on strap; the M1q at $800 on bracelet and $700 on strap. See more on the Timex website.

3/

Delma's Commander Makes Itself More At Home On The Wrist With A New 40mm Case

Delma has been making dive watches long enough that anything without a unidirectional bezel and a 300-meter rating comes off as a surprising experiment. I say experiment because these watches come and go. The Commander, however, is an exception. The pilot’s watch has been in the brand's lineup for years, typically in sizes that leaned large, including a previous 45mm iteration. This new version shrinks things down to 40mm.

The case is 316L stainless steel, 40mm wide and 11.5mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 48mm. The surfaces are satin-brushed with polished bevelled edges, and the crown is fluted with Delma's logo. The caseback is transparent. Water resistance is rated to 100 meters. A sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating sits on top.

Dial legibility is clearly the priority here, and the Commander delivers. Large Arabic numerals fill the dial, printed with C3 Super-LumiNova, and the central hour, minute, and running seconds hands get the same treatment. The minute track around the periphery mixes dots and numerals at five-minute intervals, and a 24-hour scale sits closer to the center, giving the dial a proper instrument-watch feel without collapsing into clutter. Date at 3 o'clock. Four colors at launch: black, navy, olive green, and a salmon option.

Inside the automatic the Sellita SW200-1, running at 4Hz with a 41-hour power reserve. The SW200-1 is reliable and widely serviced, which is the case for using it. Each version ships on a handmade Italian leather strap with matching stitching and a stainless steel pin buckle.

The Delma Commander 40mm is available now at €1,050. See more on the Delma website.

4/

The Alexander Shorokhoff Kandy Avantgarde Blue Is Fifty Pieces Of Avant-Garde You Either Get Or You Don't

I have a friend who is deeply in love with Alexander Shorokhoff watches. I can’t say I understand the obsession, despite the fact that I am usually a fan of weird and quirky watches. For some reason, Shorokhoff didn’t really do it for me for ages. They are, however, slightly growing on me. The Kandy Avantgarde series sold out entirely, which for a 41×41mm square watch named after Wassily Kandinsky is either a testament to how good it was or a reminder that fifty people will always exist who want exactly this. The Kandy Avantgarde Blue is the follow-up: same unconventional geometry, same Alzenau provenance, same commitment to color as a design language.

The square stainless steel case measures 41×41mm and is 9mm thick, which is surprisingly thin. The recessed case sides are threaded with blue wire, which sounds weird, and it is weird, but everything is weird on this watch, and it gives the profile an interesting structural detail you don’t get to see very often. A domed, anti-reflective sapphire crystal caps the dial, while out back is a caseback with three openings covered in colored glass. Also strange, but cool. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The dial where things get really weird. A blue-and-white striped frame surrounds the central field, the hour and minute hands are blue, and a blued central seconds hand ties it together. Mother-of-pearl elements appear across the dial surface. The overall effect is genuinely Kandinskian — geometric, saturated, and not trying to look like a traditional dial. In fact, I’m struggling a bit to put it down into words. It doesn't need to be for everyone; it needs to be for the fifty people buying it.

Inside is either the ETA 2892 or the Sellita SW300, functionally equivalent movements, 42 hours of power reserve, 25 jewels. The rotor is hand-engraved and finished. Two straps ship with the watch: a light-blue fabric-covered rubber option and a blue horse leather strap, both with an engraved solid steel pin buckle on a 22mm lug width.

The new Alexander Shorokhoff Kandy Avantgarde Blue is limited to 50 pieces, priced at €3,900. See more on the Alexander Shorokhoff website.

5/

The Girard-Perregaux Laureato Fifty Joins The Permanent Collection In Four New References

When Girard-Perregaux launched the Laureato Fifty last year as a 200-piece limited edition, the watch made a strong point: the GP4800 movement deserved a proper home, and the Laureato's 50th anniversary deserved more than a token nod. GP solves this now with four permanent-collection variants, which adds a very interesting 36mm size and three dial treatments.

All four share a stainless steel case, 9.8mm thick, with 150 meters of water resistance. The 39mm and 36mm versions are otherwise identical in construction — alternating brushed and polished surfaces working the geometry of the octagonal bezel and tonneau mid-case as they always have. The Laureato has historically skewed toward 38 and 39mm territory, so a properly compact version at 36mm opens the collection to wrists (and preferences) the larger sizes couldn't serve.

The standout dial is the blue enamel, available only in 39mm. Clous de Paris under translucent enamel is not a new idea, but Girard-Perregaux has executed it well here. The other 39mm and one of the 36mm models get rose-gold-toned Clous de Paris dials. The remaining 36mm pairs a silver-toned dial with 64 brilliant-cut diamonds on the bezel, roughly 0.55 carats total. The rose-gold and silver models include a date at 3 o'clock; the blue enamel does not, and is better for it. All four use luminous baton hands and applied indices, with a double index at 12 in place of the GP logo, a detail carried over from the limited edition.

The GP4800 powers all four watches. It's an in-house automatic with a silicon escapement, variable-inertia balance, and ceramic ball bearings in the winding system, running at 28,800vph with roughly 60 hours of power reserve. The rose-gold balance bridge is exclusive to the Laureato Fifty line and visible through the sapphire caseback, where you'll also find Geneva stripes, anglage, circular graining, and sunray finishing across the movement. The bracelet is the integrated steel unit updated for the Fifty generation, with a micro-adjustment system built into the folding clasp offering up to 4mm of additional range.

The new Laureato Fifty is available now, priced at CHF 20,500 for the 39mm rose-gold-toned dial, CHF 21,800 for the blue enamel, CHF 20,500 for the 36mm standard, and CHF 21,500 for the 36mm diamond-bezel version. See more on the Girard-Perregaux website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Katy Vine and Meher Yeda explore the Heartsills, a West Texas family whose lives revolve around competitive hot‑air ballooning. As they note, “Joe has spent a lifetime building a fierce bond with his family, and their shared dedication to ballooning—the determination, discipline, and devotion they bring to the sport—is part of what binds them so tightly.” Each member contributes in the air or on the ground, but it is patriarch Joe who sits at the heart of it all, and as he nears retirement, the family rallies around him for one more collective push skyward.

• Art’s distance “from the prerogatives of the powerful,” writes Zadie Smith, “is precisely where its force of resistance lives.” Smith considers the value of making art during a time of atrocities, looking to E.M. Forster, Macbeth, and Edward P. Jones’s The Known World for guidance. Her essay is a searing case for the damages done to humanity when power tries to subject everything to notions of “progress” and “convenience.”

• Austin is home to a lively sandlot baseball scene. In this story for Fast Company, Max Ufberg takes us to two venues, The Long Time and The Wishing Well; and introduces us to Jack Sanders, who founded the home team (The Texas Playboys) and built these baseball fields, piece by piece. This is a story about art and design that serves communities, especially poor and rural ones; Black baseball culture; and building authentic spaces where people can gather and play.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I love how uncomfortable this guy makes me.

Dermatologists Say This Drugstore Gem Is "All You Need" to Tighten Wrinkles

Women over 50 say this viral Costco serum makes their skin look tighter, smoother, and visibly younger in weeks. Experts say it targets the underlying cause of wrinkles many skincare brands ignore.

Learn More

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. The Oris will take the cake today, but I’m more and more impressed by what Squale is doing.

Find your balance this spring (free gummies!)

The sun is finally here, and it’s the perfect time to reset your routine.

Whether you’re gearing up for a weekend hike, a quiet park day, or just some well-deserved relaxation at home, Lazarus Naturals has everything you need to feel your best. Our CBD gummies are crafted to help you find your center, no matter what your spring (and almost summer) looks like.

Grab your free gummies and choose from any of our bestselling 10-packs. Just pay $4.99 for shipping!

Get your free gummies

In this issue

• Oris Brings The Artelier Calibre 113 Back For Good With Two Very Nice Variants

• Squale Opens The Elusive 2001 Marina Militare To Civilian Buyers

• Bell & Ross Packages Its BR-05 Chrono In A Humidor For The Fourth Time, This Time With S.T. Dupont

• G-SHOCK Teams Up With Mobile Suit Gundam For A RX-78-2 Themed DW-5600

• Jaeger-LeCoultre Expands The Reverso "Or Deco" With White Gold, Gemstones, And A Smaller Case

👂What’s new

1/

Oris Brings The Artelier Calibre 113 Back For Good With Two Very Nice Variants

There are watches Oris makes and forgets, and there are watches Oris keeps circling back to. The Calibre 113 is clearly in the second group. The movement launched in 2017 in an Artelier case, disappeared for a while, then reappeared last year in the Big Crown platform and again in the Year of the Fire Horse limited edition earlier this year. Now, after also refreshing the Artelier Complication and the Artelier Date 38mm, Oris is properly returning the Calibre 113 to the Artelier family as a permanent catalog entry. This is the watch the movement was always supposed to live in.

The case is stainless steel, 43mm wide, 13.1mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 50mm. That's a big watch, and Oris isn't hiding it as they need quite a lot of space for that movement inside. The domed sapphire crystal softens the impression somewhat, but you'll know this is on your wrist. You’ll also notice that there is just a single crown on the right side, with no additional pushers, which is quite the feat as the crown adjusts day, date, and week displays. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is where this gets interesting. Compared to the mint-and-pink Big Crown version, the Artelier calms things down a bit. Both the white and green options lean on softer tones, and thanks to the size of the watch, and by extension the dial, there’s plenty of space of the business calendar that includes the day, date, week of the year, as well as the power reserve, and small seconds. The date has migrated from the six o'clock position to nine, the small seconds dropped the railway-style track of the Big Crown for something planer, and the power reserve shifted from a circular indicator to an arc-shaped retrograde display. The slight asymmetry in the layout adds a touch of style without being distracting.

Inside is the hand-wound Oris Calibre 113, part of the in-house 100-series the brand introduced in 2014. It runs at 21,600 vibrations per hour and draws 10 days of power reserve from a single oversized barrel. The non-linear power reserve becomes more precise as the mainspring winds down, so the last day are more accurate than the first, which is very cool. White dial is available on either a cordovan leather strap or a steel bracelet; green dial comes on leather only.

The Oris Artelier Calibre 113 is available now in three references: white dial on leather strap, white dial on steel bracelet, and green dial on leather strap, each priced at CHF 6,350. See more on the Oris website.

2/

Squale Opens The Elusive 2001 Marina Militare To Civilian Buyers

The Squale 2001 was one of the more consequential dive watches of the 1960s: crown at 4 o'clock, hidden lugs, push-to-release bezel lock, 100-atmosphere water resistance. Charles Von Büren's original design was working-diver hardware before most brands were catering directly to a working diver. The Marina Militare connection came later, with a version ordered by the Italian Navy for their personnel. That version never made it to retail. Until now. Squale has reached an agreement with the Italian Navy to release 500 numbered pieces to the public, with the exact same specifications issued to Italian servicemen.

The case here is distinct from anything else in Squale's lineup. The cushion shape measures 41.5mm wide, 13mm thick, and 47mm lug-to-lug. This case geometry exists nowhere else in the 2001 collection and was developed specifically for the Navy brief. Construction is stainless steel with a screwed caseback, and water resistance is rated to 600 meters. The bidirectional bezel uses the push-to-release locking mechanism the 2001 collection is known for, topped with a sapphire crystal insert in blue, at the Navy's request. The 60-minute scale on the bezel has luminous inserts throughout.

The dial is dark blue with a sunray brushed finish at center. Applied domed indices sit across the surface for legibility, and the Marina Militare logo is printed at 6 o'clock. White hands have SLN lume, with one exception: the minute hand is orange, which makes it the functional and visual anchor of the whole dial. That orange-on-blue combination is sharp, and the orange minute hand reads as a deliberate tactical choice rather than decoration.

Inside is the Sellita SW 200-1 in Elaboré grade, running at 4Hz with 38 hours of power reserve — a solid movement that services easily. The watch ships with a 19/16mm blue rubber strap unique to this edition, and a stainless-steel bracelet is also included in the box.

The Squale 2001 Marina Militare is limited to 500 individually numbered pieces. Price is set at €1,990. See more on the Squale website.

3/

Bell & Ross Packages Its BR-05 Chrono In A Humidor For The Fourth Time, This Time With S.T. Dupont

Bell & Ross has been doing cigar-themed limited editions since 2006, and the formula has stayed consistent: brown dials, gold tones and humidor packaging. The new BR-05 Chrono S.T. Dupont is the fourth entry in the Edición Limitada series and the first to bring in an outside partner. S.T. Dupont, the French maker of lighters and lacquerwork based in Faverges since 1924, supplies the matching lighter and cigar cutter that come with the watch. The result is 150 numbered sets aimed squarely at the overlap between watch people and cigar people, which is not a small group.

The BR-05 Chrono comes in a 42mm wide, 14.25mm thick steel case with satin and polished surfaces and a sapphire caseback. The bezel and integrated bracelet are two-tone, combining satin-finished steel with rose gold accents, and the crown is screw-down with a crown guard. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial gets a sunray brown finish, and the applied numerals and indices are rose gold-toned with polished and satin treatments. Hour and minute hands are skeletonized and rose gold-colored, filled with beige Super-LumiNova that glows green. The S.T. Dupont logo sits at 6 o'clock, alongside the small seconds. At 3 o'clock is the 30-minute chronograph counter; the central chronograph seconds sweeps from the middle.

Inside is Bell & Ross's BR-CAL.326, an automatic chronograph movement with 60 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on either a two-tone rose gold and steel bracelet with folding clasp, or a brown calfskin strap with a faux alligator texture and black patina finish. .

Each of the 150 pieces arrives in a box made from Macassar ebony with a Spanish cedar interior that can be converted into a humidor for 50 cigars. Flanking the watch inside the box are a S.T. Dupont Ligne 2 lighter in steel and gold with gradient brown lacquer matching the dial, and a matching cigar cutter. The set is priced at €17,900. See more on the Bell & Ross website.

4/

G-SHOCK Teams Up With Mobile Suit Gundam For A RX-78-2 Themed DW-5600

G-SHOCK's collaborative output ranges from interesting to cynically slapped-together, and it seems to me that the new DW-5600 built around Mobile Suit Gundam's RX-78-2 falls in the former category. The original Gundam series premiered in 1979, which puts it in roughly the same era as the DW-5600's own origins, and that shared vintage makes it seem that the designers had a lot of fun looking back to the early 80s.

The case is the classic DW-5600 square — resin construction, the usual G-SHOCK toughness baked in — finished in translucent material, standing in for white, and blue to reference the RX-78-2's iconic color scheme. [

In a rather rare move, a large portion of the Gundam references, happens on the straps which have the Earth Federation Space Force logos and emblems printed across them, and there's a yellow Converter System detail that mimics the technical schematics of the original mech. The caseback gets a custom engraving of a winged horse insignia — a nod to the Pegasus-class assault carriers, most famously the White Base.

Activate the backlight and you get a "SINCE 1979" motif glowing across the display, a clean way to tie the watch's subject matter to a specific moment in cultural history rather than just slapping a logo on the dial.

The Gundam DW-5600 releases June 4, 2026, exclusively through G-SHOCK Korea. I’m sure that there will be a way to get it in other countries as well. Price is as great as ever, around €125. See more on the G-Cosmo Official Online Mall.

5/

Jaeger-LeCoultre Expands The Reverso "Or Deco" With White Gold, Gemstones, And A Smaller Case

Last year's Reverso Tribute Monoface "Or Deco" in 18K pink gold, the one with the Milanese mesh bracelet, turned out to be a real hit for the company. The pairing made immediate sense: the Reverso's Art Deco lines finally had a beatufiul metal bracelet that matched the beautiful case. Jaeger-LeCoultre is now building on that momentum with five new references, spanning white gold, gemstone-set cocktail pieces, and a smaller, purer Solo Tempo variant.

The white gold "Or Deco" (ref. Q713312J) has the same 27.4mm wide, 45.6mm long, 7.56mm thick case as the pink gold original, with the full gadroon detailing intact. The Milanese mesh bracelet is also rendered in matching white gold and I assume it will look fantastic in real life. If you get to see one, because it’s limited to 200 pieces. The silvery grained dial gets black minute track and small seconds markings where the pink gold used brown, which keeps everything tonally consistent. Dauphine hands and applied gold indexes complete the package.

The three "Or Deco Cocktail" models (refs. Q713311J, Q713313J, Q713211J) swap the gadroons for 46 baguette-cut stones in blue sapphires, emeralds, or rubies respectively — rail-set in a continuous line around the case mid. It removes a defining Art Deco feature and replaces it with something more glamorous. Each is limited to 30 pieces. All five models share the same hand-wound calibre 822, beating at 21,600 vph with a 42-hour power reserve.

The fifth model, the Solo Tempo (ref. Q716216J), is the most interesting one. It drops the small seconds entirely and shrinks to 24.4mm wide by 40.1mm long, closer to the original 1930s case proportions. The fine-grained gold-toned dial, dauphine hands, and pink gold Milanese mesh bracelet give the watch a very warm look. Good news is this is part of the regular catalogue.

The white gold "Or Deco" is priced at €54,000, roughly €10,000 more than the pink gold version. The Solo Tempo comes in at €44,200, making it the most accessible entry point into the series. The Cocktail trio is priced on request, anticipated near six figures. See them all on the JLC website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• “That was only the beginning” is a headline cliché, a promise of twists and turns that most stories don’t bear out. Lyz Lenz’s latest, for Rolling Stone, is a rare exception: a genuinely surprising tale of trolling, counter-trolling, fandom, sleuthing, and cowardice, with a cast that includes a women’s basketball team, a T-shirt store, a Boston Globe journalist, a few odious college students, and a good-hearted family that deserves, at the very least, an apology.

• Suzy Hansen reviews two of Pete Hegseth’s six—yes, six—books, and finds him to be the product of an essentially American ethos, which means the country has no choice but to ask what to do with him, and what to do with itself.

• In 1935, over 60 percent of Kentucky’s population had no access to libraries. Enter the Pack Horse Library Project, a New Deal program that put reading material, including handmade scrapbooks filled with parts of books, magazines, and pamphlets, into the hands of local residents. As Kirsten Chervenak reports for Oxford American, the project was a critical way to share information among people with limited resources living in rural areas of the state.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I didn’t even start this video, I just had to post it here because that’s one of the most dramatic clickbait titles I’ve seen in a while. Love it!

The Odds are Finally in Your Favor

Novig is giving you better odds and lower fees by trading directly with other users. Skip the sportsbook markup. Sign up now and get $50 in Novig Coins for your first deposit of $5 using America's Sports Exchange

Claim Your Coins

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. What an incredible lineup of watches today. Not a single one I don’t like. But those DiaStars are just fantastic!

The Tech newsletter for Engineers who want to stay ahead

Tech moves fast, but you're still playing catch-up?

That's exactly why 200K+ engineers working at Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here's what you get:

• Curated tech news that shapes your career - Filtered from thousands of sources so you know what's coming 6 months early.

• Practical resources you can use immediately - Real tutorials and tools that solve actual engineering problems.

• Research papers and insights decoded - We break down complex tech so you understand what matters.

All delivered twice a week in just 2 short emails.

Join 200K+ engineers

In this issue

• Tudor Shrinks The Black Bay Chronograph Down To 39mm With A Bold Yellow Bumblebee Dial

• Rado Gives The DiaStar Skeleton Three Reasons To Wear Bright Colors This Summer

• Oris Adds Lou Gehrig To Its Baseball Hall Of Fame Big Crown Series

• Christiaan van der Klaauw Brings the Eclipse Dial Back for Reijersen's Taste of Time Festival

• Zenith Teams Up With Naoya Hida For A Double Signed G.F.J. Calibre 135

👂What’s new

1/

Tudor Shrinks The Black Bay Chronograph Down To 39mm With A Bold Yellow Bumblebee Dial

Tudor's "Daring Watches" range has been doing interesting work lately — the pink Inter Miami Chrono and the Flamingo blue edition proved there's demand for a Black Bay Chrono that commits to color. This is exactly what we’re getting with the new Bumblebeem which comes in a bright and quite unexpected yellow. But the dial is only half the story. More importantly, Tudor is shrinking down the Black Bay chronograph to a much, much more wearable size. They’re launching the smaller chrono with a very bright color, but you know that regular colors are coming soon. Those will sell like crazy.

The case comes in at 39mm wide, 13.1mm thick, and with a 47mm lug-to-lug — meaningfully more compact than the outgoing 41mm, which measured 14.2mm thick with a 49.9mm lug-to-lug. That 1.1mm reduction in thickness doesn't sound dramatic until you remember how tall the flanks of the older Chrono appeared on the wrist. The anodised aluminium tachymeter bezel and domed sapphire crystal carry over unchanged. The pushers remain screwed, which gives you the 200 meters of water resistance.

The dial is matte yellow, but a yellow that will most pleasantly burn your retinas. Tudor has used black sub-counters, hands, and applied indices against it, filling everything with white Super-LumiNova. The contrast between the matte yellow field and the blackened elements is sharp and the whole thing is very loud, but it's coherent.

Inside is the calibre MT5813, the same one you’ll find in the larger version. The movement is based on the Breitling B01 architecture, beats at 4Hz with a column wheel, has COSC certification, and offers around 70 hours of power reserve. The Bumblebee comes on a three-link steel bracelet, with no rivets just to note, with a folding clasp and the T-Fit micro-adjustment system.

The Tudor Black Bay Chrono 39 Bumblebee is part of the "Daring Watches" collection, which means it won't be sitting in every Tudor boutique window, but it's a permanent addition rather than a limited edition. Price is set at €6,200. See more on the Tudor website.

2/

Rado Gives The DiaStar Skeleton Three Reasons To Wear Bright Colors This Summer

The DiaStar Original has been on quite a roll over the past several days. Since the skeleton version arrived, they’ve has been expanding the lineup steadily. And now we’re getting three summer limited editions in blue, green, and red. The concept is straightforward: same distinctive oval case, same openworked calibre, with great color combinations.

All three share identical dimensions: 38mm wide, 45mm long, and 11.9mm thick. The convex bezel is made out of Ceramos, Rado's proprietary ceramic-metal composite, with a radially brushed surface on the blue and red models, and a yellow-gold PVD coating on the green. The blue and red versions pair the Ceramos bezel with a stainless steel case and caseback; the green matches PVD coating across all metal components. A faceted sapphire crystal rises above the dial in the DiaStar tradition, with a display back showing the movement. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Each dial is surrounded by a ring that takes its colour from the edition: blue, green, or red. The floating index design and the rotating anchor logo, both signature DiaStar elements, are still present here. Lume choices are deliberately contrasted: the blue model uses yellow Super-LumiNova on rhodium-coloured hands and indices; the green has red lume with gold-coloured hands; the red gets green lume with rhodium hands.

The calibre is the R808, an ETA-based automatic running at 21,600vph with a Nivachron hairspring and 80-hour power reserve. It's regulated in five positions. Each watch comes on a colour-matched rubber strap with Rado's EasyClip quick-change system and a stainless steel pin buckle.

The Rado DiaStar Original Skeleton Summer Editions are each limited to 555 pieces, with the edition number engraved on the caseback. The blue and red models are priced at €2,500; the green PVD edition is priced at €2,750. See more on the Rado website.

3/

Oris Adds Lou Gehrig To Its Baseball Hall Of Fame Big Crown Series

Oris has now released three baseball-themed Big Crown Pointer Date limited editions, and there’s a clear pattern: each watch is built around a specific legend, with the production number tied directly to a career stat. The Roberto Clemente was limited to 3,000 pieces for his career hits; the Hank Aaron edition was made in 2,297 pieces for his runs batted in. This new Lou Gehrig model will be made in 2,130 pieces — the number of consecutive games he played for the New York Yankees, a record that stood for over 50 years.

The case is the standard steel 40mm Big Crown, 12.2mm thick, with the fluted bezel and oversized crown that define the model. Finishing alternates between brushed and polished surfaces. On top is a domed sapphire crystal while the caseback is engraved with Gehrig delivering his 1939 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium. Water resistance is 50 meters, which is modest.

Even I, who don’t really know much about baseball, can tell that the dial is heavily inspired by the Yankees. The brushed grey background references the team's road uniform. Hour numerals and indices are outlined in blue with white Super-LumiNova fill; the minute track adds blue-framed lumed markers throughout. The pointer date hand tip is blue, and Gehrig's retired number 4 appears in blue on the black peripheral date track. Cathedral-style hour and minute hands have green-emission SLN, as do the indices and markers.

Inside is the Oris calibre 754, a modified Sellita SW 200-1. It runs at 28,800vph with a 41-hour power reserve. The watch ships with two straps: a brown double-stitched suede that looks a bit like baseball glove leather, and a NATO in Yankees pinstripe. Both close with steel buckles.

The Oris Big Crown Pointer Date Lou Gehrig Limited Edition is priced at CHF 2,400, limited to 2,130 pieces. A portion of proceeds benefits the Lou and Eleanor Gehrig Family Foundation. See more on the Oris website.

4/

Favre Leuba Deep Raider Revival Gets A Very Vintage Inspired Orange Colorway

/

Favre Leuba has been around since 1737 but has had a complicated relationship with staying in business. They relaunched with 22 new watches at Geneva Watch Days in 2024, and since then have been cranking out a steady stream of new releases. Now, they’re expading the Deep Raider collection with the Revival Orange which borrows its colorway from the Bathy 160, the brand's 1970s dive watch.

The stainless steel case measures 39mm wide and 12.75mm thick, with softly curved sides and a mix of brushed and polished surfaces. Those are pretty decent dimensions in a world of 40mm+ and 13mm+ divers. A unidirectional rotating bezel is set with a black sapphire crystal insert that has orange accents, vintage-style typography, and a luminous triangle at 12 o'clock. Water resistance is 300 meters.

The dial follows the Revival's crosshair layout with a sunray finish. Orange details run through the whole watch. The date sits between four and five o'clock. You get a sword-shaped hour hand, arrow-tipped minute and seconds hands, all with Super-LumiNova.

The movement is the automatic FLD01 calibre, based on the La Joux-Perret LJP-G100, running at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 68-hour power reserve. The integrated five-link bracelet has a very retro feel and you get an additional orange fabric strap.

The Favre Leuba Deep Raider Revival Orange is priced at €2,900 and available now. See more on the Favre Leuba website.

5/

Zenith Teams Up With Naoya Hida For A Double Signed G.F.J. Calibre 135

The G.F.J. launched at Watches & Wonders 2025 as Zenith's tribute to founder Georges Favre-Jacot, built around the revived Calibre 135, the most decorated observatory movement in history. A year later, the G.F.J. serves as a launch vehicle for Zenith’s Double Signed Program in which they plan on collaborating with other watchmakers to create double signed watches. This first one happens with Naoya Hida & Co., the Tokyo-based independent whose watches are extremely desired, especially by collectors outside of Japan. Hida's affinity for mid-century dress watches and his obsessive attention to typography and proportion translate naturally onto a watch whose entire identity is built around a 1948 chronometer movement.

The platinum case measures 39.15mm wide and 10.5mm thick, with stepped lugs and a slim polished bezel that give it an architectural quality. There are sapphire crystals on top and bottom of the case. Water resistance is 50 meters.

But it’s the dial where Hida's involvement becomes obvious. Solid silver, with indices, numerals, and all text hand-engraved by Keisuke Kano and filled with deep blue urushi lacquer. The hour and minute hands are machined from solid gold and hand-polished, while the small seconds at 6 is heat-blued steel.

Inside is the updated Calibre 135, beating at 18,000vph with a Breguet overcoil hairspring and Charles Fleck's double-arrow regulator, both retained from the original 1948 design. Power reserve has grown to 72 hours, stop-seconds has been added, and every movement is individually regulated to +/−2 seconds per day before COSC certification. The movement is finished with broad Geneva stripes, hand-chamfering, and a dark ruthenium treatment with gold-coloured engravings. Three straps are included: a Himeji Kurozan leather with urushi lacquer finish, a handcrafted Wagyu leather from Kyoto, and a deep indigo Kaihara denim. All three close with a platinum pin buckle engraved with the G.F.J. emblem.

The new Zenith G.F.J. Calibre 135 Double Signed with Naoya Hida & Co. is limited to 10 pieces and priced at CHF 58,900. The website says the watch is sold out, but they might have some in stores. Maybe? See more on the Zenith website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Modernist architecture—with all its glass, steel, and concrete—baffled America. American artist Alan Dunn, a longtime New Yorker contributor, captured that bewilderment perfectly with his incisive cartoons. In this adapted excerpt of his new book, Alan Dunn: The Cartoonist as Architectural Critic, Gabriele Neri shows how Dunn elevated the art of cartooning into sharp architectural criticism.

• A journalist has conversations with three Britons who, after life-changing incidents, have fully active minds but cannot move or speak, and can communicate only via the blink of an eye. This is a story about the remarkable capacities of the human mind.

• Who among us hasn’t wished for sunshine or hoped for rain? For Harper’s Magazine, Wyatt Williams brings us a lyrical look at weather manipulation. Surprisingly, some attempting to alter the weather are doing so in the name of God. Yes, you read that right. Humans have been trying to make it rain since we started walking the earth and, even with the benefit of the latest technology, our results have been questionable at best.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Jon Stewart is just getting better and better.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I can’t even begin to explain to you how nice the weather is here. Perfect temperature, sun just bright enough to warm you during a casual walk, light breeze to make everything feel even better… And here I am, stuck at home because I’m sick as a dog. Great.

Bet Smarter on America’s Sports Exchange

Novig is redefining sports betting by putting you in control. As America’s sports exchange, it lets you trade directly with other users for better prices, tighter spreads, and lower fees than traditional sportsbooks. There are no hidden margins—just a transparent marketplace built for smarter decisions and bigger potential returns.

Whether you're a casual fan or a seasoned bettor, Novig gives you the edge you’ve been missing. Sign up now and get $50 in Novig Coins for your first deposit of $5, and experience a better way to bet on sports today.

Start Trading

In this issue

• Oris Celebrates 122 Years With The Hölstein Edition 2026 Artelier Small Seconds

• Frederique Constant Puts Solar Power Inside The Elegant Classics Moneta Solarmetre

• The Barrelhand Monolith Wants The Be the Watch The Modern Space Age Actually Deserves

• Christiaan van der Klaauw Brings the Eclipse Dial Back for Reijersen's Taste of Time Festival

• Audemars Piguet Brings Out A Summer Themed Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph in 42mm and 37mm

👂What’s new

1/

Oris Celebrates 122 Years With The Hölstein Edition 2026 Artelier Small Seconds

Oris has been releasing a Hölstein Edition every June 1st since the early 2000s, each one tied to the brand's birthday and its roots in the small Swiss village that gives the series its name. This year's edition uses the newly redesigned Artelier, a collection that got a full makeover in 2026 under Lena Huwiler, a 24-year-old product design engineer Oris brought in specifically to move the very traditional collection to a more younger audience. The result, at least in this limited edition form, is quite good.

The case is 39.5mm wide and 11.1mm thick, with polished steel and clean, unpretentious lines. Lug-to-lug is 45.5mm, making it very wearable. There’s not much more to this case other than the 30 meters of water resistance and a closed caseback with a laser-engraved image of the Oris Bear peeking from the side.

The dial is light grey and minimal, with one deliberate focal point: a mirror-polished small seconds sub-dial at 6 o'clock with a bright red hand. It's a bold choice. The wedge-shaped hour markers, polished to catch light at different angles, were pulled from Oris' 1960s catalog but don’t look artificially retro. The blunt-tipped hands carry slim lume inserts and echo the shape of the stepped indices.

Inside is Oris calibre 401, a variant of their in-house calibre 400 introduced in 2020 that swaps central seconds and a date for the small seconds sub-dial at 6. The 400-series is genuinely good — antimagnetic, two barrels, 5-day power reserve, with decent accuracy stats. The watch comes on a grey suede leather strap with a butterfly clasp, which suits the overall mood.

The Oris Hölstein Edition 2026 is limited to 250 pieces and retails for CHF 3,800. See more on the Oris website.

2/

Frederique Constant Puts Solar Power Inside The Elegant Classics Moneta Solarmetre

The Classics Moneta has become one of Frederique Constant's more interesting lines. When it launched in 2024, the coin-edged case and quartz movement were a delightful little watch. The Moonphase that followed last year made it onto my list of the best quartz watches of 2025. Now the collection gets its most significant update yet, with Frederique Constant's first solar-powered movement in the new Classics Moneta Solarmetre.

The case has grown slightly to accommodate the new movement, up from 37mm to 39mm wide and from 7.65mm to 8.52mm thick. The coin-edge fluting on the case middle that defines the whole Moneta line is still there, flanked by a steel case with sapphire crystal on top. Water resistance is 50 meters.

Three dial colors are available: ice blue, burgundy, and cloud white. They look opaque but are actually translucent, which allows light to pass through them to reach the photovoltaic cells just beneath, feeding the FC-120 calibre. The grained texture is new to the Moneta line and adds a tactile dimension to otherwise simple dials. Dauphine hands, faceted applied hour markers, and a date window at 3 o'clock complete the package.

The FC-120 is co-developed with La Joux-Perret, the same movement partner behind the TH50-00 solar calibre in TAG Heuer's Solargraph. One minute of light exposure gives a day of running time, with a theoretical maximum reserve of ten months in complete darkness. In practice, solar movements don't run out — they just need to see light occasionally, which a worn watch does by default. Both a crocodile-embossed leather strap and a Milanese steel bracelet are included in the box.

The Frederique Constant Classics Moneta Solarmetre is priced at CHF 1,150 for all three colors. See more on the Frederique Constant website.

3/

The Barrelhand Monolith Wants The Be the Watch The Modern Space Age Actually Deserves

The Speedmaster didn't win NASA's qualification trials because it was designed for space. It won because it was the best of the commercial watches Omega happened to be making for motorsport at the time — and crucially, because no one had yet built a watch with those tests in mind. Barrelhand, a brand that has spent six years developing the Monolith, is making the argument that someone finally should. The premise is straightforward enough: take the ambition of the original NASA procurement process and apply it to hardware designed from scratch to survive a crewed deep-space mission.

The case is 38mm wide and 45mm lug-to-lug, 11.8mm thick, and 3D-printed from Scalmalloy — a modified aluminum alloy used in aerospace applications that exceeds titanium's yield strength at roughly half the weight. The whole watch, minus the strap, weighs 31 grams. The case geometry is angular and recessed to use as little material as possible, and the casebacks and strap bars are fastened with Torx screws sized to match existing ISS toolsets. Water resistance is rated to 200 meters, and the watch has also been tested at 0 ATM — in a vacuum. The 8mm crown is glove-operable and can be wound and set underwater. An internal shock-absorption system Barrelhand calls an "engine mount" is rated to withstand over 3,000 g. Aircore insulation handles temperature and pressure variation. The sapphire is lab-grade C-plane with a magnesium fluoride coating to cut glare.

The dial's central feature is what Barrelhand calls the Aerolight X2: a monolithic ceramic lume structure produced in collaboration with James Thompson, known in watch circles as Black Badger. It's welded into a brass plate assembly with no adhesives or paint, and it's rated to hold up between -120 °C and 120 °C. Legibility is clearly the first priority, but the structure has real visual depth — a stacked, almost architectural quality that gives the matte black dial a very dramatic look.

The M1 engine is an automatic movement built on the Sellita SW300-1b, running at 4Hz with a Glucydur balance, a nickel-phosphorus escape wheel and fork, and a 50-hour power reserve. It’s also regulated to ±5 seconds per day across six positions, antimagnetic to ISO 764. The strap is a fabric hook design with separate configurations for EVA and IVA use, closing with a grade-5 titanium hook. The caseback, rather than showing the movement or a polished cap, holds a holographic disc — a 3 GB NanoFiche cultural archive encoded into a nickel-based film, containing among other things UNESCO preamble translations, a visual sound artifact by Richard D. James, and the original French edition of Le Petit Prince. It's rated to last 1,000 years.

The Barrelhand Monolith is priced at $9,750, currently on pre-order, with deliveries expected in Q4 2026. This has been quite the controversial pricing strategy, but it’s quite a unique watch. See more on the Barrelhand website.

4/

Christiaan van der Klaauw Brings the Eclipse Dial Back for Reijersen's Taste of Time Festival

You know how much I like the Christiaan van der Klaauw Ariadne. It’s one of those watches that looked OK in photos, but completely blew me away on wrist. What I wasn’t familiar with was the Eclipse edition which had a combination of a Dutch church and windmill rendered above the moon disc. I didn’t know about it because it’s sold out everywhere. However, CvdK just brought it back with the Ariadne Holland Heritage Edition made for Reijersen Juweliers of Oudewater for their third annual Taste of Time show.

The case remains unchanged from the ragular Ariadne, which means a steel case measuring 40mm wide, polished and domed across its surfaces, with straight lugs that carry a screw-like cabochon, an onion-shaped crown, and double-gadroon pushers. It's a case that has a certain old-world gravity to it without tipping into pastiche. Just don’t dip it too deep with its 30 meters of water resistance.

The dial is where things get really interesting. The church and windmill that made the Eclipse so appealing to anyone with a Dutch heart reappear here above the moon phase disc at 6 o’clock. You can get the dials in either turquoise or silver, both with orange details. Both versions have chronograph subdials, a 24-hour indicator, a peripheral date hand, and month and day-of-week displays — the last of these printed in Dutch, which is a very CvdK thing to do. Applied Breguet numerals and the brand's "Sun with 12 Claws" logo at 3 o'clock, both in blue, appear on both dials.

Inside is the calibre 7751, a calendar and moon phase variant of the Valjoux 7750 — a workhorse by any measure, but one that does the job well and is easily servicable. The rotor was engraved by Jochen Benzinger with a guilloché pattern and finished with a hand-engraved gold-plated sun, which makes the caseback at least as interesting as the dial. Both versions come on an FKM rubber strap with a sailcloth texture, in blue or orange.

The Christiaan van der Klaauw Ariadne Holland Heritage Edition is limited to 50 pieces in each colorway priced at €10,990. Here’s a bit of a problem. I kind of messed up and didn’t realize that the Taste of Time event was this past weekend, and that’s where you could have made orders for this edition. However, it might not be late to get one, so reach out to Reijersen Juweliers to see if they have any. You can do so here.

5/

Audemars Piguet Brings Out A Summer Themed Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph in 42mm and 37mm

"The Beast" stuck as a really good nickname of the Royal Oak Offshore because in 1993 a watch with those proportions, those exposed screws, and that Mega Tapisserie dial were actually radical, much like the Royal Oak itself had been radical two decades earlier. Now, a year past the 30th anniversary, Audemars Piguet is releasing the Offshore in a colorway that suits summer: six new chronograph references split across two case sizes, all with colour-matched accents, and a new movement making its debut in the smaller format.

The larger three of the group come in at 42mm wide and 15.3mm thick, made ou tof steel or titanium, depending on the color you go for. What they all share is the full Offshore treatment — Mega Tapisserie dial, sapphire front and back, 100 meters of water resistance — and a single accent colour threaded through the chronograph hands, tachymeter scale, and the start-stop pusher at 2 o'clock. The colour choices are pink accents on a black dial, orange on silver-toned, and yellow with turquoise on a dark grey titanium version. The movement is Calibre 4404, introduced back in 2019 with the Code 11.59 collection. It's an in-house integrated chronograph with column wheel and vertical clutch, 4 Hz, 70-hour power reserve. All three come on interchangeable calfskin straps with colour-matched stitching, and all three are priced at CHF 33,600.

The 37mm group is three watches with a different character altogether. These come on rubber straps rather than calfskin, and they’re equipped with a brand-new movement: the Calibre 6401, designed specifically for the smaller case and measuring 27mm in diameter against the 4404's 32mm. Same beat rate of 4 Hz, but a shorter 55-hour power reserve as the trade-off for the reduced size. The three versions break down as such: titanium with a turquoise tapisserie dial and flat bezel bezel; titanium with a pink dial and diamond-set steel bezel; and pink gold with diamond-set bezel and a light blue dial. Pricing is CHF 32,500 for the plain titanium, CHF 36,300 for the diamond-set titanium, and CHF 54,100 for the gold and diamonds version.

The six Royal Oak Offshore Chronographs are available now. See more on the Audemars Piguet website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Do you remember the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan? The village of Glod certainly does. Paid a tiny fee to participate, villagers believed they were taking part in a “report.” Instead, the film portrayed them as the impoverished and violent inhabitants of a fictional Kazakh village, leaving many feeling humiliated and deceived. In this piece, Miles Ellingham returns to Glod twenty years later to meet the people behind the punchline and show readers the real village.

• Jonathan Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize winner and professor of science journalism, is “The Memory Man” in his family. His brother Eric, a creator of Dora the Explorer, is not. Weiner, a professor of science journalism, explores the ways in which autobiographical memory—from “highly superior” to “severely deficient,” “relentless remembering” to dry, factual recall—affect our sense of self over time. As with “Double Exposure,” his excellent essay about childhood amnesia, Weiner tests his own boundaries, finding a neuropsychologist to run a memory test on himself and his brother.

• In this personal essay for Off Assignment’s No Equivalent series, Iranian-American writer Yasmin Roshanian reflects on darde ghorbat, a Farsi phrase that means “the sorrow of exile,” and what it means to inherit a homeland she’s never visited. Roshanian writes about having no interest in her family’s culture when growing up, and how her Farsi speaking skills slowly faded away. She also writes about grief across her family’s generations—including the inability to communicate with her grandparents, and her fear of not being able to pass Farsi or Iranian culture down to her future children—and whether she can reclaim what is slipping away.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

We’re due to get a new car soon and I can’t explain how annoyed I am that the vast majority of the offering right now are SUVs. And I do not want to change my wagon for a hatchback on stilts. Why can’t we make cool wagons again?

The New Trick to Reducing Stress Without Losing Focus

Trapped in the cycle of workplace burnout making it hard to focus, leading to more stress? You need CBDistillery’s new Daytime Calm gummies. With 50mg of CBG, shown to increase focus and reduce stress, each gummy is formulated for daytime focus and stress support – and code COOL saves you 25%.

Keep Your Cool

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I have no idea what’s going on, but the industry has shifted into seventh gear before this summer. There are so many releases over the past 10ish days that I’ll have to catch up for weeks, so sorry if your favorite release is not here yet. But it’s all good news.

Clarity has arrived: 50% off your first order

Summer is almost here, and it’s the perfect time to reset your routine.

Lazarus Naturals, a legacy "farm-to-door" hemp brand, is proud to introduce Clarity, the first in our new line of CBD-free supplements. These premium mushroom gummies are designed to boost your mood, sharpen your focus, and support overall cognitive function. Thoughtfully formulated with precise, effective doses of Lion’s Mane, Panax Ginseng, and Alpha-GPC, Clarity mushroom gummies combine the powers of nature and science to help you feel your best.

Get 50% off your first order of Clarity gummies and experience the difference for yourself!

Get 50% Off Clarity

Valid for first-time customers only. Discount applies to 20ct and 60ct bottles of Clarity mushroom gummies.

In this issue

• Zenith Celebrates 250 Years Of The United States Of America With A Special A384 Revival Duo

• Formex's First Integrated Bracelet Watch Is Also Its Thinnest, Most Ambitious And Most Expensive

• Kollokium Gives The Projekt 02 A Summer Makeover With The Turquoise Water Theme

• Albishorn Type X-Graph Adds A Transparent Dial To The Type 10 Family

• David Candaux Goes Back to Where It All Started, In Platinum And Onyx

👂What’s new

1/

Zenith Celebrates 250 Years Of The United States Of America With A Special A384 Revival Duo

Zenith has a knack for wrapping a good story around a reissue, and that’s what they’re doing with the Chronomaster A384 Revival Liberty II. Sure, on its surface, a watch celebrating 250 years of the United States isn’t exactly the most original story. But there’s another story right behind if: Zenith founder Georges Favre-Jacot visited the United States in the 19th century, came back impressed by how Americans organized factory production, and rebuilt his Le Locle manufacture on the same integrated model. That building has been standing since 1865, still operational. So this isn't just anniversary marketing. There's an actual line between American manufacturing philosophy and the way Zenith makes watches.

The A384 is a faithful revival of the 1969 original, which means a 37mm wide, 12.6mm thick barrel-shaped case with pump-style pushers and angular proportions that read as thoroughly period-correct. The steel version gets a radial-brushed bezel with polished crown, pushers, and bevels. The forged carbon option does what forged carbon does, showing off the marbled grain across the case surfaces.

The Liberty II inverts the color scheme of last year's Revival Liberty by honoring the original A384's panda configuration: white lacquered background, dark blue sub-dials and tachymeter scale. The American flag references are worked in with restraint. The chronograph seconds hand alternates 13 red and white stripes for the original colonies. The "4" on the date disc and a "250" marker on the tachymeter scale are highlighted in red. No stars-and-stripes plastered across the dial. Zenith kept it subtle, and the watch is better for it.

Inside is the El Primero calibre 400, a direct descendant of the 1969 movement that made the A384 significant in the first place. It's an automatic, 5Hz column wheel chronograph with a horizontal clutch and 50 hours of power reserve. The steel version ships with a ladder-style steel bracelet inspired by the original Gay Frères design, plus a blue Cordura-effect rubber strap. The carbon model comes only with the rubber strap.

The Chronomaster A384 Revival Liberty II is a US-exclusive limited edition — 250 pieces in steel at $10,600, and 25 pieces in forged carbon at $13,400. See more on the Zenith website.

2/

Formex's First Integrated Bracelet Watch Is Also Its Thinnest, Most Ambitious And Most Expensive

The Biel-based independent Formex has spent years earning a reputation as the value-per-dollar champion of Swiss sports watches. Excellent ergonomics, practical engineering, the patented Case Suspension System, Formex built a loyal following by making tough, capable watches that punch well above their price. The new Aria Manufacture Chronometer is a different proposal entirely. Integrated bracelet, first proprietary movement, 6.9mm total thickness. This is Formex going somewhere it has never been before.

The Aria case is 40mm wide, 6.9mm thick including the sapphire crystal, and made from Grade 5 titanium. Lug-to-lug sits at 45.45mm, which is decently compact, and the whole package, watch and bracelet together, weighs just 78 grams. I tried one on in Geneva and its very light. The geometry here is nothing like previous Formex collections: rounded surfaces, soft transitions, brushed and polished areas blending without obvious borders. Each bracelet link is individually hand-brushed with mirror-polished bevels along the edges, and the patented micro-adjustment clasp extends 3mm on either side without any tools. Water resistance is mediocre at 30 meters.

Three dial colours launch with the Aria: Denso Blue, a matte navy; Selva Green, warmer and more organic; and Ardesia Grey, colder, more mineral. All three are stamped from a single brass piece, with a gently undulating surface that dips between each applied index and rises under each rose-gold-plated marker. That’s a really cool effect up close The recessed small seconds subdial sits at six o'clock, the rose-gold hands and indices contrast cleanly against the matte bases.

But even cooler than the already very nice dials is the calibre which Formex call the FX01. Developed by Horage and built on their K2 micro-rotor platform, its features full custom decoration in the Formex aesthetic. At 2.9mm thick, it runs a full silicon regulating organ (hairspring, escape wheel, pallet fork), beats at 25,200 vibrations per hour, and delivers over 72 hours of power reserve. The tungsten micro-rotor is integrated into the movement, and the finishing on the movement is substantive: black-gold galvanic treatment, vertically brushed bridges, laser-textured recesses, hand-finished bevels. The movement is also is COSC-certified.

The Formex Aria Manufacture Chronometer launches as a 100-piece founders edition with deliveries scheduled for September 2026. While this is undoubtedly a very, very cool watch, the most controversial thing about it since it was announced has been its price: €7,600, without tax. See more on the Formex website.

3/

Kollokium Gives The Projekt 02 A Summer Makeover With The Turquoise Water Theme

Kollokium has been doing really cool things since Manuel Emch, Barth Nussbaumer, and Amr Sindis launched the project in 2020. The Projekt 01, with its forest of individually set, Super-LumiNova-filled cylindrical pins, was one of the more original debut watches in recent memory. The Projekt 02 shifted the approach from pin art to topography, building nine-layer dial landscapes from individually hand-painted plates that evoke hypsometric relief maps. Variants A and B of the Projekt 02 already came and sold out. Now, for summer, there's Cooler Waters Variant C.

The case is unchanged from previous iterations. Die-cast steel gives you a monobloc construction with integrated lugs and bezel, 39mm wide and only 5.9mm thick. That measurement excludes the box sapphire crystal, which adds considerable visual height and lets you see the dial from the side. The valve-shaped crown and the K,P-nº2 relief on the left side of the case also remain unchanged. Water resistance is 50 meters. I wish they could go up to 100 with that.

The dial is just joyfully fantastic. Sixty-seven individually hand-painted plates are stacked into nine distinct layers, building up a topography that here looks like a bird's-eye view of open water with white-capped peaks as hour markers and progressively deeper turquoise settling into the troughs. The lacquer itself carries blue-emission Super-LumiNova, so the nine gradient tiers glow like crazy in the dark. Hour and minute hands in white are also filled with blue SLN.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G101, the same automatic calibre used throughout the Projekt 02 line. It beats at 4Hz and has a 68-hour power reserve. The watch comes on an elastic single-piece textile strap in a turquoise that matches the dial, with a hook buckle in die-cast steel.

The Kollokium Projekt 02 Variant C Cooler Waters is a limited edition of 299 pieces, priced at CHF 3,666.66 without taxes. Public sales open on Tuesday, 2 June at 14:00 CET. Delivery will happen between June 3 and June 15. See more on the Kollokium website.

4/

Albishorn Type X-Graph Adds A Transparent Dial To The Type 10 Family

I’ve said it a dozen times, Albishorn is truly one of the most interesting young brands working right now. The Swiss independent, founded by Sébastien Chaulmontet and designed by Fabien Collioud, builds watches that exist in a alternate universe — instruments that could have been built to serve specific ppurposes, but weren't. The Maxigraph imagined a 1930s regatta chronograph, the Type 10 a 1940s ancestor of the famous Type 20 pilot's watches. The Type X-Graph is the latest chapter: a 1948 prototype, a watch that would have been conceived in the gap between the Type 10 and the Type 20 that eventually defined the genre.

The case is 39mm wide, 12mm thick (11mm without the box sapphire), with a lug-to-lug of 47.7mm. It’s made out of, with satin-brushed surfaces and polished bevels. The bidirectional bezel is slightly larger than the case at 41.7mm, made from gunmetal PVD-coated steel and engraved with a 60-minute scale filled with lacquer and Super-LumiNova. Crown at 10:30. Alongside it, a large red anodized aluminium monopusher on the left side handles all chronograph functions — start, stop, reset — in one control activated with the thumb. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is what’s brand new and it’s very cool. It's polycarbonate, translucent, fumé anthracite, and its texture matches the granular finish of the metal-dial Type 10 models exactly. Depending on how light catches it, the surface appears near-black or smoky grey, and through that grey you can see the skeletonized dial side of the movement. Legibility is uncompromised: large luminous Arabic numerals and white-painted hands packed with Super-LumiNova. Sub-dials sit at 4:30 and 7:30, maintaining the Type 10's unusual dashboard-inspired layout. A patented operating indicator at 12 o'clock shows black, red, or white to confirm whether the chronograph is reset, running, or stopped.

The calibre ALB04 M is a proprietary movement built on a reworked Sellita SW510M Mp, which shares its architecture with the 7750. Slimmed to 5.7mm, COSC-certified, running at 28,800 vibrations per hour with 65 hours of power reserve. The watch ships with black and taupe leather straps and a steel bracelet is available as an option.

The Albishorn Type X-Graph goes on sale May 29, 2026, limited to 99 pieces produced over three years. Priced at CHF 4,250 on strap, and CHF 4,700 on the steel bracelet, excluding taxes. See more on the Albishorn website.

5/

David Candaux Goes Back to Where It All Started, In Platinum And Onyx

David Candaux grew up in Le Solliat, trained in the Vallée de Joux, spent years at Jaeger-LeCoultre working on the kind of projects most watchmakers never get near, and in 2017 launched his epnymous brand with the DC1. That watch established everything his work stands for: an asymmetrical case with a descending architecture, an off-center time display, a 30-degree inclined flying tourbillon, and the Magic Crown at 6 o'clock, a retractable pusher mechanism with 31 parts that vanishes flush into the case when not in use. The new DC1 Platinum Art of the Tourbillon is a throwback to all of those essentials, but now with new materials.

The platinum case measures 43mm wide and 10.02mm thick, rising to 12.9mm with the tinted, AR-coated sapphire crystal that slopes to follow the dial's descending construction. Platinum is punishing to finish, especially on a case built from steep transitions, polished curves, and sharp edges. Candaux does it entirely by hand. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The earlier DC1 used textured gold surfaces and a generally lighter look. Here, the central plate is made out of mirror-polished black onyx, and the difference in mood is immediate. Flanking the domed, faceted opal time display and the tourbillon cage are hand-finished 18k rose gold flanges. Hour markers at cardinal positions are hand-bevelled and polished 18k white gold; numerals and minute track are pad-printed in black. The hands are rose gold, hand-polished, syringe-shaped. A titanium hand at 12 o'clock indicates the power reserve through a small aperture.

The flying tourbillon at 9 o'clock is inclined at 30 degrees, a deliberate engineering choice that ensures that the tilted cage passes through more wrist positions during operation, helping keep more accurate time. The cage is black anodised titanium, finished via micro-arc oxidation directly into the metal. Inside the case, the hand-wound calibre H74 is tilted three degrees, reinforcing the cascading architecture visible through the sapphire caseback. The movement uses titanium for both bridges and plates, something very few independents bother with. Finishing is classical: hand-polished bevels, circular graining, Côtes du Solliat, gold chatons. The movement beats at 21,600vph and has a 55 hour power reserve. The watch is worn on a textured black rubber strap with a Velcro closure and quick-release system.

The David Candaux DC1 Platinum Art of the Tourbillon is a limited edition of eight pieces, priced at CHF 248,000. See more on the David Candaux website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• “Where are all the other landline people?” The question surfaces midway through Jeremy Rellosa’s brisk, sharply observed diary of his month-long experiment in bygone technology. He’s on the F Train where, relieved of his portable distraction device, he discovers that there are still advertisements for a decades-old sitcom above his fellow commuters. A beat later, he mourns his family group chat, replaced by voicemails from his mother that are only available through the cream-colored Trimline telephone he’s plugged into his modem for service. A testament to the cleverness, detail, and personal consideration that a scant 1,800 words can hold.

• Last year, after noticing more rabbits out and about, including one in his own backyard, The Local’s Nicholas Hune-Brown set off to find out whether there were, in fact, more wild bunnies in Toronto. Friends and neighbors also noticed them everywhere, but the wildlife experts, conservationists, and city employees he spoke to couldn’t confirm what everyone was seeing. Stranger still, it seemed like no one cared to know. Hune-Brown decided to dig deeper, turning his rabbit obsession into a delightful piece on urban nature—and a bunny-boom mystery that seems to remain unresolved.

• Cute and quirky-looking, capybaras are the internet’s favorite chill giant rodent. Erick Trickey’s Slate piece complicates that image considerably. Some of Brazil’s roughly 1.2 million capybaras have migrated from Brazil’s wild habitats into its cities, swapping its natural predators like jaguars and anacondas for a new set of dangers: cars, dogs, humans, and river detritus that can injure and strangle them. But Trickey also finds people who are doing good, from local vets to volunteers who look after the capybaras living along the Pinheiros River, cutting trash entangling their necks. The story is a sober one, and a reminder that internet fame offers wildlife zero protection.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’m still thinking about that whole “let’s start an EDC newsletter” and I’m not convinced there’s demand for it. Email me if you want me to do it, it will help some.

You Call the Shots

Novig lets you trade directly with other users giving you more control and better odds. Skip hidden margins and trade smarter in a transparent, real-time sports exchange built to maximize every wager.

Start Trading Smarter Today

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Not much to say today, enjoy the weekend!

Find out why 200K+ engineers read The Code twice a week

Staying behind on tech trends can be a career killer.

But let’s face it, no one has hours to spare every week trying to stay updated.

That’s why over 200,000 engineers at companies like Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here’s why it works:

• No fluff, just signal – Learn the most important tech news delivered in just two short emails.

• Supercharge your skills – Get access to top research papers and resources that give you an edge in the industry.

• See the future first – Discover what’s next before it hits the mainstream, so you can lead, not follow.

Join 200,000+ engineers who read The Code to stay ahead of the curve.

In this issue

• Breitling Refreshes The Chronomat Collection With A New Case And Dressier Approach

• The Glashütte Original Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2026 Looks Fantastic In Purple

• Nodus Adds Damascus Steel And A Better Movement To The Sector Deep

• Marco Tedeschi MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours Brings a New Name To A Quirky Brand

• Jaeger-LeCoultre Turns The Case Into The Canvas With The Reverso Hybris Artistica Pegasus

👂What’s new

1/

Breitling Refreshes The Chronomat Collection With A New Case And Dressier Approach

The Chronomat has always occupied an interesting position in the Breitling lineup. Originally conceived as a pilots' watch that could pass muster in a formal setting, it gradually lost that duality and started looking more like a dressed-down Avenger. For 2026, Breitling has made a concerted effort to correct that drift, touching all three sizes and introducing one new model. The changes center on a lug redesign that is more significant than it might sound, so let's start there before getting into the individual watches.

The big structural news across the whole collection is the new lug treatment. Previously the Chronomat showed visible lugs flanking the bracelet, giving it a stepped profile where the case met the strap. The new design buries those lugs under the case edge, so the bracelet flows directly from the case in a single smooth curve. The watch still takes interchangeable straps — the lugs are there, just hidden — but the visual effect is of full integration. Paired with the steel Rouleaux bracelet, it looks really good.

First up is the new size. The Chronomat Automatic has previously topped out at 36mm in the time-only range, with 40mm reserved for the GMT, so the B31 40 is the first three-hand Chronomat at this diameter. The proportions are good at 40mm wide and 11mm thick. The dial comes in three sunray-brushed finishes: white, blue, and green, all appropriately uncluttered for a time-and-date watch, with the date at 3 o'clock. A fourth reference pairs an ice blue dial with a platinum bezel on a steel case. Inside is the calibre B31, the movement Breitling rolled out recently in the Superocean Heritage, COSC-certified with a 78-hour power reserve. The standard steel versions are €6,400 on bracelet; the ice blue platinum reference is €8,350 on rubber and €8,750 on bracelet.

The B01 42 is the flagship chronograph and the one most people picture when you say Chronomat, mostly thanks to the recognizable sub-dials. It gets the same hidden-lug treatment, which is cool. But what’s cooler is the fact that they managed to cut down on thickness by a substantial 1.3mm. It’s still 13.77mm thick, but that’s down from a whopping 15.1mm. The crown guards have been slimmed to match, making the crown easier to operate, and the bezel has been consolidated from an 18-piece assembly of ring, insert, rider tabs, and separate screws into a single-piece unit. Dial options include a panda setup, blue, and green in all-steel; grey in bi-metal steel and gold; brown in full 18k red gold; and ice blue in steel and platinum, all with black chronograph counters. Each comes on either a metal bracelet or rubber strap. The B01 movement remains unchanged, in-house and COSC-certified with a 70-hour reserve. Steel references start at €9,200 on rubber and €9,600 on bracelet, climbing through €11,200/€14,200 for bi-metal, €11,950/€12,300 for steel-platinum, and €28,500/€49,900 for red gold.

Rounding out the update is the Chronomat Automatic 36, already the most wearable of the three and now slightly more so. Thickness drops from 10.01mm to 9.68mm, and the redesigned lugs bring the same cohesion as the larger models. The one thing to pay attention here is the movement: calibre 10 is Breitling's rebadged Sellita, COSC-certified but with a more modest 42-hour reserve than the B31 or B01. Entry is a blue dial in steel at €5,650, with a mother-of-pearl option at €6,900, and lab-grown diamond bezels and bi-metal cases pushing the range up to €13,650 at the top.

The updated Breitling Chronomat collection is available now. See more on the Breitling website.

2/

The Glashütte Original Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2026 Looks Fantastic In Purple

Every year, Glashütte Original produces a new dial for the Sixties Chronograph and calls it the Annual Edition. And every year, it’s a fantastic watch. The formula is simple enough: take the same polished steel case, the same reliable movement, and hand over the bronze dial blank to the team in Glashütte to do something interesting with colour. This year the colour is purple, which puts the 2026 edition squarely in psychedelic territory and is, frankly, fantastic.

The case hasn't changed, which is fine — it didn't need to. At 42mm wide and 12.4mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 48.5mm, it sits on the larger side but the soft curves keep it from feeling aggressive. Polished steel flanks, a slim bezel, domed sapphire crystal, piston-style pushers and a fluted crown complete the picture. Water resistance is 30 meters, which could be a bit better in 2026.

But who cares of water resistance when you have a dial like this. Starting as a thin bronze blank, it's embossed with a textured motif, domed, galvanised in gold, and then hand-coated with translucent purple lacquer before going into the kiln. The lacquer lets the gold base breathe through it, giving the colour depth. After firing in a kiln, the hour markers are manually incised directly into the lacquered surface, exposing the underlying material for contrast. You also get white Arabic numerals at 12 and 6, luminous dots along the minutes track, and slightly curved gold-plated hands. The bicompax sub-dials at 3 and 9 have a snailed finish, showing you seconds and elapsed 30 minutes respectively.

Inside is the automatic calibre 39-34, beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 40-hour power reserve. The three-quarter plate with Glashütte stripes, swan-neck fine adjustment, bevelled edges and polished screws are all expected and here. The watch comes on a black synthetic fabric strap with a pin buckle.

The Glashütte Original Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2026 in Purple is priced at €10,300, and available for a limited period before it exits the catalogue. See more on the Glashütte Original website.

3/

Nodus Adds Damascus Steel And A Better Movement To The Sector Deep

The Nodus Sector Deep is truly an impressive watch. The ball-bearing bezel alone is worth the price of entry, let alone its great finishing, the 500-meter water resistance rating and great price. Now, we’re getting a new model with two significant changes — a Damascus steel bezel and a new movement from Miyota instead of Seiko.

The case is 38mm wide and 13.6mm thick, made out of steel with a gunmetal grey DLC coating. And just like previous versions, the bezel sits proud of the case, making the measurement at the bezel 42mm. And that’s a new bezel that uses the same ball-bearing mechanism, but is now made out of Damascus steel and then covered with black DLC. It’s still fully lumed, which looks great on every Sector Deep, and has the dual scales: a 60-minute dive timer and a 12-hour display that lets the watch pull double duty as a second time zone.. The knurled crown screws down and gives you an ample 500 meters of water resistance.

The dial is clean black with square Swiss Super-LumiNova markers and white hour and seconds hands. The orange arrow-tipped minute hand is the one pop of color, and it looks good. The date aperture remains at 6 o’clock.

Inside is a Miyota calibre 8315, replacing the Seiko NH35 from the previous version. The 8315 runs at 21,600 vph and delivers a 60-hour power reserve, up from 41 hours of the Seiko. It's not a technically exciting movement, but it's reliable and the power reserve improvement is useful. The watch ships on a steel bracelet with matching grey DLC coating.

The Nodus Sector Deep Damascus is available now, priced at $800. See more on the Nodus website.

4/

Marco Tedeschi MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours Brings a New Name To A Quirky Brand

Chances are, you haven’t heard of Kross Studio, which is a real shame for two reasons. First, because they made some pretty groovy watches, most notably as collaborations with DC Comics and Warner Brothers. Second, because Cross Studio is undergoing major changes. No worries, though, they just changed their name to Marco Tedeschi. The name is new, but the fully openworked designs that marked Kross are here to stay. Last year, they teased the name change with the MT1 Tourbillon, and now fully under the new name (Kross Studio is supposed to stick around for the collaborations), we’re getting the MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours.

The case is a rounded, lug-free pebble, 44mm wide and just over 15mm thick. No lugs means it wears much smaller than the diameter might suggest and the pebble shape helps make it look a bit thinner. The case is rendered in one of four materials: grade five titanium, titanium with black DLC, tantalum, and pink gold. You get domed sapphire crystal on both sides, and you might have noticed that there’s a fully flush pusher in place of the crown. That’s because you use that pusher to select the crown function, be it winding or time setting, and then you flip out the flat titanium D-ring shaped crown that’s integrated into the back to operate it. I got to play with it a bit in Geneva and it’s very, very cool.

The dial is fully openworked, front to back, and there’s a lot going on over here. The new power reserve indicator at 12 o'clock sits directly across from the flying tourbillon at 6 o'clock. Rose gold-colored hands with white Super-LumiNova read well against the darker movement architecture, especially on the tantalum and DLC versions where the contrast is sharpest. The back is closed with a large bridge finished in concentric patterns, which makes for a tidier caseback than the typical openworked approach.

The MT 7010 IRM is an in-house manual-wind calibre running at 21,600 vibrations per hour with its seven-day power reserve delivered through a single oversized barrel. All four versions come on black calfskin with pusher-operated quick release.

The Marco Tedeschi MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours is priced from CHF 69,900 for the titanium, CHF 74,900 for the black DLC, CHF 79,900 for tantalum, and CHF 89,900 for pink gold. See more on the Marco Tedeschi website.

5/

Jaeger-LeCoultre Turns The Case Into The Canvas With The Reverso Hybris Artistica Pegasus

The Reverso has been many things over its 94-year history: polo player's companion, Art Deco icon, vehicle for enamel miniatures; but the Hybris Artistica line exists to push it somewhere else entirely. This is where Jaeger-LeCoultre brings in the Métiers Rares Atelier, its decorative arts division, and lets them do their best. The Pegasus is the fourth iteration of the Gyrotourbillon complication inside the Reverso case, and it pairs the calibre 179 with hand engraving across the entire pink gold case.

The case measures 51.1mm long, 31mm wide, and 12.41mm tall. Those are the stats of a Reverso at full stretch, and it’s made out of pink gold. The engravers at the Métiers Rares Atelier have carved Pegasus in relief across the rounded case sides, the winged horse surrounded by a field of clouds with polished profiles and grained interiors that extend from the flanking gadroons all the way out to the fixed lugs. Just spend a few minutes looking at the picture above. The finishing is impeccable.

Like a good Reverso, this one also has two dials, but they go above and beyond. Starting with the front dial, the blue lacquered sub-dial at 12 o'clock shows you local time, while the surrounding dial surface features 50 individually hand-filled cloud motifs in graduated shades of blue lacquer. Flip the watch and the reverse opens up to a skeletonised view of calibre 179: the hand-bevelled and skeletonised bridges are filled with blue lacquer, and the time zone ring and two-tone 24-hour indicator sit above the tourbillon aperture at 6 o'clock.

The Gyrotourbillon itself is the technical centrepiece. The inner cage, rendered in ultra-light hand-bevelled titanium, rotates 360 degrees every 16 seconds; the peripheral carriage, mounted on ball bearings, completes one rotation per minute and acts as the seconds indicator. The two axes run perpendicular to each other, which is what separates a Gyrotourbillon from a conventional tourbillon. The constant multi-directional rotation is meant to average out positional errors more thoroughly. A mirror-polished blue lacquer disc on the watch's supporting cradle reflects and amplifies the movement. The Calibre 179 winds manually; the greyed hemispherical balance spring and double-anchor balance are shaped to minimize air drag. The watch ships on a blue alligator strap with a pink gold folding clasp.

The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Artistica Pegasus is a limited edition of five pieces. Price is available on request, but many outlets report it to be over €650,000. See more on the JLC website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Not so long ago, authors whose work smacked of AI would own up to help from the bot. Not so now, according to Vauhini Vara, who covers the scandal clouding the Commonwealth Story Prize for The Atlantic. “The award came with 2,500 British pounds and publication on the website of Granta, a prestigious British literary magazine,” she writes. Three of the five regional winners have been accused of using AI to generate their stories in whole or in part. Vara reports that using AI to win a fiction prize is deeply troubling, of course, but the public responses from the prize itself and from Granta have been even more so.

• A gun on the conference table, a tenure dispute gone feral, and a single meeting that turns a university into a crime scene: this is the kind of opening that seems to promise one story, then keeps pulling back to reveal another. Beneath the violence lies a darker, stranger question about family, memory, and whether the truth of an old tragedy can ever be cleanly separated from the stories people tell to survive it.

• A wildfire winter in Venice becomes the backdrop for a roommate ordeal that spirals from awkward subletting into surveillance, restraining orders, and two arrests. Frankee Grove wants to believe in people, in tenants’ rights, and in the systems she has always defended — but what happens when all of them seem to turn on her?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

You know I like Werner Herzog, so maybe this doc will convince you to give him a chance as well.

Every consulting firm says brand matters.

Then the wrong slides end up in the next client deck.

SlideHub gives teams one place to work from, so approved content is easier to find, easier to trust, and easier to keep consistent across decks.

See how

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’ve heard someone say that Dennison is getting repetitive, but I just can’t stop loving their releases. I love how these two watches give you two different feels despite being basically the same thing.

Summer starts here (free gummies!)

The sun is here and we're back outside!

Longer days, lighter hangs, and THC gummies that fit the vibe. Grab a free pack of gummies from Cycling Frog! Just cover $4.99 shipping. Fruity, perfectly dosed, and made for campfires, park days, and whatever summer turns into.

Claim your free bag

Must be 21+ and only valid on 10ct bags of gummies.

NOT VALID IN OH, CA, CO, AL, LA AND NJ.

In this issue

• Farer's New GMT Bezel Nevada Watches Get Intricate Guilloché Dials In Pine Green And Mocha Brown

• Union Glashütte Brings Back The Fuchs Wheel Noramis Date In Black PVD For The Petro Surf 2026

• Dennison And Collectability Team Up Again To Add An Oblique Angle to the ALD Formula

• H. Moser & Cie. Brings The AgenGraphe Flyback Chronograph To The Endeavour With Dual Time And Date

• Jaeger-LeCoultre Brings the Duomètre Heliotourbillon Perpetual Back in Platinum

👂What’s new

1/

Farer's New GMT Bezel Nevada Watches Get Intricate Guilloché Dials In Pine Green And Mocha Brown

Farer has been doing things with color that most Swiss houses with ten times the budget can't (or won’t) match. And while I think they are at their best when they do unconventional colors and combinations, this new duo from the GMT Bezel collection uses more traditional colors. But it’s still a fantastic look, one helped by a new barleycorn pattern, formed from intersecting spiraling lines, on the dial. These are the new Farer GMT Bezel Nevada Pine and Nevada Mocha.

The case remains unchanged, but available in two sizes. The Nevada Pine comes in the 40mm wide and 13mm thick case, while the Nevada Mocha comes in the 38mm wide and 12.5mm thick. Both are made out of stainless steel, with a screw-down crown and sapphire crystals on top and bottom. Water resistance is 200 meters. The bidirectional 24-hour bezel is split dark green and light green/dark brown and light brown to distinguish day from night hours at a glance.

On the Nevada Pine, the guilloché dial has a fumé gradient from dark emerald at the edges through to a brighter pine green at the center, and the hands have that same green with a matte finish. The 24-hour GMT hand has an orange tip for contrast. The Nevada Mocha has the same dark-to-light gradient across the guilloché, but now in brown, and light brown accents on the hands and bezel. The GMT hand here is blue rather than orange.

Both watches have the Sellita calibre SW330-2 Top Grade inside. The "Top Grade" designation means it's been tested in five positions for better accuracy than the standard spec. Power reserve is 56 hours. The exhibition caseback shows the skeletonized custom Farer rotor with perlage finishing underneath. Straps available are leather, suede, and rubber, with an optional steel bracelet.

The Farer GMT Bezel Nevada Pine and Nevada Mocha are €1,595 on strap or €1,615 with the steel bracelet. See more on the Farer website.

2/

Union Glashütte Has A New Fuchs Wheel Noramis Date In Black PVD For The Petro Surf 2026

The Fuchs wheel is one of those designs that needs no introduction in certain circles. The five-spoke alloy that came on early 911s, Beetles, and beach buggies, becoming an absolute legend in the car world that’s emulated to this day. It’s also served as inspiration for Union Glashütte for a few years now, appearing on the Noramis Date platform as a recurring motif. We last saw a version of it on the dial of the Deutschland Klassik in 2023, I think. The new Petro Surf 2026 returns to the same design idea, this time in an all-black color scheme that leans harder into the outlaw end of the aircooled spectrum. Union Glashütte is the official partner of the Petro Surf Festival on Sylt — a June event that mashes air-cooled sports cars with Californian surf culture — and the watch is their calling card for the occasion.

The Noramis Date case is well-established. Steel, fully polished, 40mm wide and just over 10mm thick, with a raised bezel and a box-shaped sapphire crystal. It wears lighter on the wrist than the specs suggest. You get a decent 100 meters of water resistance. The case is paired with a black leather strap and a double-folding clasp.

The dial is the homage to the five-spoke Fuchs wheels, as the structure rises from the matte black background in three dimensions, the spokes themselves finished in black PVD. Screw-head details at the spoke ends recall wheel nuts. Two-tone hands sweep across the dial, and a date window at 6 o'clock sits on a black disc so it doesn't interrupt the mood.

Inside is the Calibre UNG-07.S1, a modified ETA 2892 base fitted with a silicon balance spring. The movement beats at 3.5Hz, and you get a 60-hour power reserve.

The Union Glashütte Noramis Date Limited Edition Petro Surf 2026 is limited to 200 pieces and priced at €2,780. See more on the Union Glashütte website.

3/

Dennison And Collectability Team Up Again To Add An Oblique Angle to the ALD Formula

Last year's Dennison x Collectability collaboration gave the British brand its most distinctive dial yet, one that elevated it to true dress watch status, before they went wild with the dual time stone dials. This year, Dennison is teaming up with the same vintage watch platform founded by Patek Philippe specialist John Reardon, bringing back the stepped dial, but also adding a second mode. This is the new Oblique Enigma and Oblique Vector.

The Oblique measures 35mm long and 33.65mm wide, which means it's almost as wide as it is long. At 6.05mm thick it wears super nice, and that fully polished cushion case will fit under any shirt cuff. Sapphire crystal up front, water resistance to 30 meters. These two get a new bezel, but thanks to the pebble-shape of the case, the bezel looks fully integrated and makes it look like part of the case. And that bezel has an asymmetric shape, almost a trapezoid, that frames the dial.

And that dial continues the slanted diamond shape of the bezel, at least on the Enigma. It features two nested trapezoid sectors, the outer green sunburst and an inner blue sunburst are divided by a diamond-cut bevel, with either silver or gold details. A more subdued version of the dial appears on the Vectors which takes the same asymmetric outline and strips it back to a single sunburst color matched to the case, with 12 printed lines running across the surface in a sunray pattern. All branding is relegated to the snap-on caseback, keeping the dial completely uncluttered.

Both run on the Ronda quartz calibre 1062, a movement that has a six-year battery life. Both come on an embossed leather strap with a cushion-shaped buckle that echoes the case.

The Dennison + Collectability Oblique Enigma and Oblique Vector are available for pre-order from May 27th through June 3rd only, directly through Dennison. Price is set at €675 for all four variants. See more on the Dennison website.

4/

H. Moser & Cie. Brings The AgenGraphe Flyback Chronograph To The Endeavour With Dual Time And Date

The Streamliner Flyback Chronograph from 2020 was the watch that put Jean-Marc Wiederrecht and his Geneva complications house Agenhor on the radar for a lot of collectors who hadn't previously been paying attention. The AgenGraphe — Agenhor's proprietary column-wheel chronograph architecture, built around a patented micro-tooth horizontal clutch — was interesting enough that Moser's parent company MELB took a minority stake in Agenhor in 2023. Now Moser is taking the architecture out of the Streamliner and dropping it into the Endeavour, their more traditionally proportioned dress collection, with a couple of very interesting and well integrated additions.

The Endeavour Flyback comes in a polished stainless steel case measuring 42mm wide and 13.2mm thick. Curved lugs, clean surfaces and the proportional language of the Endeavour collection is everything you would expect from an Endeavour watch. But since this is a chronograph, you get pushers at 10 and 2 o'clock, rectangular and rounded respectively. The screw-down crown sits at 4 o'clock, engraved with the Moser M. Sapphire crystals sit front and back, and water resistance is 30 meters.

The dial has two distinct sectors: a turquoise fumé outer ring and a Blackor fumé central disc, both with sunburst finishing. All chronograph hands are centralized. A red hand shows elapsed seconds, while a rhodium-plated hand tracks elapsed minutes against a white peripheral track, broken at 6 o'clock by the date window. The black flange holds a tachymeter scale. The second time zone is indicated on the central disc with a white Super-LumiNova arrow. Leaf-shaped hour and minute hands, also lumed, complete the package.

The new hand-wound calibre HMC 730, developed with Agenhor specifically for the Endeavour, starts from the same conceptual foundation as the Streamliner's automatic HMC 902 but removes the rotor to free up the space needed for the dual time and date modules. The AgenGraphe fundamentals remain: column wheel control, the micro-tooth horizontal clutch that minimizes hand jumping at start, and a retrograde snail cam for the minute counter that produces an instantaneous jump rather than a creep. Power reserve is 72 hours from twin barrels and the movement runs at 21,600vph. There’s also a power reserve indicator visible on the movement side. The finishing under the caseback is anthracite with perlage, Moser double stripes, and partially skeletonized bridges. The watch comes on a grey nubuck-finished alligator strap with a steel pin buckle.

The H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Flyback Chronograph Dual Time Date is priced at CHF 74,500, including taxes. See more on the Moser website.

5/

Jaeger-LeCoultre Brings the Duomètre Heliotourbillon Perpetual Back in Platinum

Jaeger-LeCoultre's Duomètre line has always been where JLC demonstrates what having a fully vertical manufacture can bring to a brand. The concept, patented in 2007, splits the movement into two independent gear trains sharing a single regulating organ — one powering timekeeping and calendar functions, the other feeding the escapement directly. It solved an actual problem, as complications that consume varying amounts of energy no longer interfere with the precision of the time display. The Heliotourbillon Perpetual, first released in 2024, pairs that architecture with a triple-axis tourbillon and a full perpetual calendar. Now, JLC is bringing that model back in a solid platinum case and bracelet, and a monochromatic look.

The case is 44mm wide and 14.7mm thick, fully made out of platinum, with 40 components forming its rounded profile. Jaeger describes the shape as a contemporary take on 19th-century savonette pocket watches. Finishing mixes polished, brushed, and micro-blasted surfaces, and the lugs have cutouts on the sides. On top is a sapphire crystal, but there’s also a sapphire window on the left side of the case that gives you a great look of the tourbillon. It’s a very complex construction, so the 30 meter water resistance makes sense.

The dial is divided into two distinct zones. On the open left side: a deep blue lacquered starry sky with a 20-second track, three red arrow pointers on the tourbillon cage marking its rotation, and a curved platinum bridge arcing across like a stage curtain separating the regulator from the calendar side. On the closed grey right: a rounded triangular arrangement of calendar functions, with the large date window at 3 o'clock sitting at the apex and the day/moon phase and month/year subdials forming the base. Two power reserve indicators sit above and below the central time display. Jaeger highlights the final digit in red during leap years.

Inside is the Calibre 388, a manually wound movement with the twin-barrel Duomètre architecture and 163-component titanium tourbillon that rotates on three axes. Two of the cages complete a rotation every 30 seconds; the third every minute. The tourbillon runs on ceramic ball bearings to reduce friction and weighs under 0.7 grams total. The caseback opens to show both barrels and Geneva-stripe finishing on the bridges. The watch comes on a new five-row platinum bracelet.

The Duomètre Heliotourbillon Perpetual is a limited edition of 20 pieces. Price is upon request. See more on the JLC website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• By now, plant-based meat and milk alternatives are so common as to be unremarkable, but the same can’t be said for the third pillar of vegan faux-food engineering: cheese. Much of that, as Sam Colbert explains, has to do with how casein works; it simply melts and stretches in a way that resists emulation. That doesn’t stop food scientists from trying, though, and Colbert tours the labs (and cautionary tales) of some of those companies trying to create the first viable mozza-really?

• Esperanto is the rare constructed language that has a sizable footprint and speaking population. But Katie Thornton’s trip to the 110th annual World Esperanto Congress is eye opening. This might just be the most wholesome, hopeful piece you read all week.

• In this New York Times investigation, Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz report on how autism therapy in the US has exploded into a multi-billion-dollar business, driven by rising diagnoses, private equity investment, and expanded Medicaid coverage—with little regulatory oversight. Kliff and Sanger-Katz focus on Compleat Kidz, a chain of ABA-therapy clinics in North Carolina, and spoke to 14 former employees who said its for-profit model harms children. Kliff and Sanger-Katz also uncover a dozen reports of child abuse at Compleat Kidz locations; their reporting makes clear that this company is just one example in a growing industry.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

This video is the story of the CIA's greatest hits: what they've actually done, who paid the price, and what it tells us about what America really is.

Preparing For Surgery? Read This.

Recovery increases your body’s demand for nutrients involved in healing, immune support, and tissue repair. HealFast was formulated specifically for pre- and post-surgery recovery support.

Support Recovery

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Is preppy style still a thing? Even if it’s not, I’m very much digging the trout on the dial.

Smart starts here.

You don't have to read everything — just the right thing. 1440's daily newsletter distills the day's biggest stories from 100+ sources into one quick, 5-minute read. It's the fastest way to stay sharp, sound informed, and actually understand what's happening in the world. Join 4.5 million readers who start their day the smart way.

Join for free today!

In this issue

• Timex and J.Crew Team Up to Put a Brook Trout on the Dial Of A New MK1

• Unimatic Releases Titanium Modello Quattro Ultratool in Time-Only And GMT Configurations

• Louis Erard Adds Mauve And Forest Dial Options To The 2340 Collection

• Bangalore Watch Company Adds a Carbon Dial Built From Industrial Waste to the Peninsula Collection

• Czapek Releases The Promenade Goutte de Rosée, A 25-Piece Grand Feu Enamel Edition In 18k Yellow Gold

👂What’s new

1/

Timex and J.Crew Team Up to Put a Brook Trout on the Dial Of A New MK1

Timex and J.Crew have been circling each other for years in the way that very American brands tend to — both nostalgic, both aspirational in a blue-collar-prep kind of way, both good at what they do. They’ve teamed up several times over the years, but this new MK1 that’s coming out is just sensational.

The case is 36mm wide, gold-plated stainless steel, with an 18mm lug width. On top is an acrylic crystal, which gives it a bit of a nostalgic feel. Water resistance is rated to 50 meters. That doesn’t exactly make it swim-proof, but I’m sure it would survive an accidental fall off the dock into the water, or whatever else happens in the preppy worlds.

The dial is white, and it has three things on it: the Timex logo, twelve Arabic numerals with a rail track, and a brook trout. The fish is rendered from an original watercolor by J.Crew's in-house artist, and it occupies a generous portion of the dial. It's a matter-of-fact detail that’s just fun. A trout is on the dial because this is a watch for summer and summer means fishing, or at least the idea of fishing. The J.Crew logo sits on the caseback.

The movement is quartz, calibre unspecified. But who cares when you have a brook trout on the dial? The strap is a braided dark brown leather, which will certainly match the one holding your khaki shorts up.

The Timex MK1 for J.Crew launches tomorrow, May 28th, priced at $198. From what I gather, the watch isn’t on either Timex’s or J.Crew’s website yet, but keep an eye out for it here when they go on sale.

2/

Unimatic Releases Titanium Modello Quattro Ultratool in Time-Only And GMT Configurations

I’ve been wanting to see more interesting quartz watches from microbrands and I think this has been happening over the past year or two. And I’m digging what the Italian brand Unimatic is doing with quartz watches. Their latest example of that comes in the form of the new Modello Quattro Ultratool.

The case measures 40mm wide and 12mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 49mm. Grade 2 titanium brings the complete package down to 65 grams. The wide fixed bezel is sandblasted, the crown screws down, and water resistance is rated to 300 meters. There's a sapphire crystal on top and a titanium caseback. Straightforward, uncluttered, exactly what you'd expect from Unimatic.

The dial is black and built for legibility. Large numerical markers are rendered in Unimatic's proprietary Custom Variable Font, developed specifically to be read easily. Hands and indices are coated in green-emission Super-LumiNova. The GMT adds a 24-hour disc read through an aperture just below 12 o'clock, with an orange triangular indicator pointing to the second time zone. A disc display rather than a traditional fourth hand is a great way to show it. The GMT also gets a frameless date display at six o'clock, with the date disc color-matched to the rest of the dial.

The time-only reference runs a Seiko VH31A quartz movement; the GMT uses a Ronda 515.24D. Both come with on black nylon, two-piece straps secured with a sandblasted pin buckle, with an orange inner layer that runs along the edges.

The Unimatic Modello Quattro Ultratool is available now, and both versions are limited to 99 pieces. The price is set at €610 for the time-only UT4-U-TI and €730 for the GMT UT4-U-TI-GMT. See more on the Unimatic website here and here.

3/

Louis Erard Adds Mauve And Forest Dial Options To The 2340 Collection

Louis Erard launched the 2340 last year as a real left turn for the brand — a cushion-case integrated sports watch named after the postal code of Le Noirmont, a long way from the regulator watches and artistic collabs that made them interesting. Sure, it was another integrated bracelet metal sports watch, but they did something interesting with the different patterns on the dials. Now the collection gets two new dial options: Mauve and Forest.

The case hasn't changed. At 40mm wide and just 8.95mm thick, with a satin-finished titanium middle and polished steel bezel, lugs, crown, and caseback, it remains one of the slimmer integrated sports watches around. Especially in this price point. The polished gadroon details running along the flanks flow into the first bracelet links, softening what can sometimes be an abrupt transition on watches like this. There’s a sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on top, a solid caseback, 50 meters of water resistance.

The Mauve gets a soft purple lacquered surface with a stamped oblong pill texture, which references the polished centre links of the bracelet. The Forest uses a deep green lacquered dial with horizontal stamped lines, giving it a crisper, more graphic character than the Mauve. Both keep the white transferred minute track with Louis Erard lettering, the applied satin-finished LE logo plaque at 3 o'clock, and rhodium-plated diamond-cut indices filled with blue-emitting Super-LumiNova. The rhodium-plated hands, satin-brushed with polished bevels, get the same SLN-C1 treatment.

Inside is the Sellita SW300-1 automatic in élaboré grade. It runs at 28,800vph with a 56-hour power reserve. The 92-piece integrated bracelet tapers from 28mm at the case to 20mm at the wrist, combining satin-finished titanium outer links with polished steel centres, closing with a concealed butterfly clasp.

The Louis Erard 2340 Mauve and 2340 Forest are permanent collection additions, both priced at CHF 3,250 before taxes. See more on the Louis Erard website.

4/

Bangalore Watch Company Adds a Carbon Dial Built From Industrial Waste to the Peninsula Collection

The Bangalore Watch Company is, surprisingly, one of the rare micro brands coming out of India and they’ve built their catalogue on aviation, space, cricket, and the Indian navy. I love what they are doing and last year the brand introduced the Peninsula Professional, a bezel-less pebble-shaped sports watch drawing on India's mountains and coastlines. The Peninsula Carbon keeps that case and pivots the concept toward the urban landscape, specifically toward what cities put into the air.

The case is the same smooth, lug-less 316L steel shell from the Peninsula Professional, 44mm wide and 13.75mm thick, but thanks to the fully round case and lack of lugs it wears much smaller than you would think. On top sits a double-domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on both sides. The crown screws down and has the BWC logo. Water resistance is rated to 200 meters.

The dial is the novelty. Bangalore Watch Company worked with Bangalore-based materials company Carbon Craft to develop what they call ReforgeCarbon, a composite that combines forged carbon fibre with recovered carbon black, a substance extracted through the pyrolysis of industrial waste that would otherwise be vented as pollution. Each dial carries a chaotic marbled pattern, so no two are identical. The hour markers and hands are filled with BGW9 Grade-A Super-LumiNova and rhodium coated. The minutes track doubles as a mock Air Quality Index scale, graduating from green to deep red around the perimeter. A tone-on-tone date window sits at six o'clock.

Inside is the Sellita SW200-1 automatic running at 28,800vph with roughly 41 hours of power reserve. It does the job. The watch comes on a black high-density fluoro-elastomer rubber strap with a pin buckle.

The Peninsula Carbon is limited to 100 pieces, priced at around €2,540 or INR 283,000. See more on the Bangalore Watch Company website.

5/

Czapek Releases The Promenade Goutte de Rosée, A 25-Piece Grand Feu Enamel Edition In 18k Yellow Gold

The original Goutte d'Eau, with its blue Grand Feu enamel dial produced by Donzé Cadrans, built around a ripple pattern that radiated outward from the small seconds at 4:30, has always been the perfect version of the Czapek Promenade. Not to say that the other models were not nice, but that one was very special. Now, we’re getting a new drop-themed version of the Promenade. The new Goutte de Rosée, meaning dewdrop, comes in a 18k yellow gold case with a beautiful rippled green dial.

The case is 38mm wide and 10.8mm thick, fully polished with sandblasted recessed flanks on the sides. The Promenade case always had a dressy formality to it, and moving from steel to 18k gold makes it look even more dress-like. On top is a double-domed sapphire crystal and water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is produced by Donzé Cadrans once again. A silver base plate is struck with a stamping die that has a 3D wave motif machined into it, pressing concentric ripples into the metal. Then comes the green enamel application, which varies from 0.5mm thick in the recesses to 0.2mm at the crests and this variation creates the shifting color and the impression of depthGetting it right requires eight firings at 800°C, and it's why the rejection rate on this dial rose from the already steep 25% typical for Grand Feu work to 50%.

Inside is calibre SXH5.1 with a platinum micro-rotor, running at 4Hz with a 60-hour power reserve. The seven skeletonized bridges reference the pocket watches of François Czapek, the Czech-born Polish watchmaker who co-founded Patek, Czapek & Cie in 1839. The Promenade Goutte de Rosée comes on a shiny green alligator strap.

The Promenade Goutte de Rosée is a limited edition of 25 pieces, available now, with deliveries beginning in June. Pricing is set at €34,600. See more on the Czapek website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Remember learning about figures of speech, like similes and metaphors, in your elementary-school English class? In this fun feature, The Pudding analyzed 200,000 similes from popular fiction. As cool as a cucumber. As hot as hell. “Once you start looking, you see them everywhere,” writes Russell Samora, “from the classics like Jane Eyre to last year’s darling Heart the Lover.” It’s impossible not to poke around this interactive piece, with design and illustration by Shelly Tan.

• I admit it, AI—and our complicity with it—continues to surprise me. For Wired, Reece Rogers recounts how he spent a week with an iPhone strapped to his forehead, recording himself doing mundane chores around the house, such as making a salad, pouring drinks, and tying his shoes, all in a bid to train the forthcoming generation of humanoid robots on how to do human tasks. Welcome to the latest iteration of the gig economy, where you sell your motor skills to what’s known as egocentric data collectors for pennies.

• Pine Island, Minnesota, is the setting for a famously confounding poem by James Wright. It’s also the future home of a Google-owned data center that will use more energy than the town’s 3,800 residents, along with the rest of the state’s households. In this beautifully idiosyncratic essay, Thomas John Weber brings copies of Wright’s poem to Pine Island’s front doors and sports bars, to ask locals for their thoughts on home, the looming data-center development, and what a “wasted life” really means.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Ben Palmer is one of the funnies people of our age.

100+ Claude Code hacks to ship code 10X faster

Top engineers at Anthropic say AI now writes 100% of their code.

Are you using AI to write yours?

These 100+ Claude Code hacks show you exactly how. Sign up for The Code and get:

• 100+ Claude Code hacks — free

• The Code newsletter — learn the latest AI tools and skills to code faster in 5 mins a day

Claim your free playbook

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I forget how much I like these solar Aquaracers and their heavily grained surfaces. One of my favorite sports watches you can buy now.

Most slide chaos starts innocently.

A few decks. A few folders. A few “final_v2_final” files.

Then suddenly brand teams lose control and consultants lose time.

SlideHub brings shared slides into one place, so presentation content stays usable, current, and much easier to manage.

Centralize your slides

In this issue

• TAG Heuer Refreshes The Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph Lineup In Steel And Two Grades Of Titanium

• Mido Adds A Blue Sunray Dial And Day-Date To The 65-Year-Old Commander Lineup

• BA111OD Skeletonizes The Chapter 7, Keeping The Great Proportions And Price

• Konstantin Chaykin Teams Up With Soyuzmultfilm For A Cat Themed Matroskin Wristmon

• Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon Yoon and Verbal

👂What’s new

1/

TAG Heuer Refreshes The Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph Lineup In Steel And Two Grades Of Titanium

TAG Heuer's solar-powered Aquaracer has had a good run since its debut in 2022. Most recently, the brand shrunk the interesting quartz watch to 34mm, completing the full package. And just as they’ve done that, TAG went ahead and refreshed the hero watches in the collection, they sharpen the case design and add material options that actually change the character of the watch depending on which one you pick.

The case is 40mm wide and 9.97mm thick. This is interesting to note: that 40mm is measured diagonally, so the horizontal footprint with the extended case sides runs closer to 45mm. But I didn’t find the watch to wear excessively large. The new dodecagonal bezel gets six rider tabs instead of the previous arrangement, graining on the base, and sunray-brushed raised numerals. There's also a fluted flange at 9 o'clock that mirrors the crown guards on the other side, creating symmetry that the earlier design lacked. A flat sapphire with double AR treatment sits over the dial on all four references. Water resistance is decent at 200 meters.

The steel models come with blue and green dials, both with horizontal teak-deck-groove texture over sunray brushing. White text and markers keep things clean. The Grade 2 titanium variant is the one I’m picking: a sandblasted finish on the case and a darker gray tone dial, polar-blue accents on the five-minute markers, seconds hand, dial text, and a lacquer ring on the crown. It’s a tool watch. The Grade 5 titanium goes in the opposite direction — brushed and polished finishes, rose-gold-plated hands and indexes, alternating bracelet links. Something that looks a bit more dressier, despite the sporty construction.

All four have the TH50-00 Solargraph calibre, a La Joux-Perret base movement with solar charging. Two minutes of direct sunlight covers a full day; 40 hours charges it completely for up to 10 months of autonomy. They all have material matching three-row bracelets with toolless quick-release and dual-button deployant clasps. The 19mm lug width is a mild irritant if you want to swap straps, but manageable.

The steel Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph in blue and green are each priced at €3,050, the Grade 2 titanium is €3,600, and the Grade 5 titanium is €3,800. See more on the TAG Heuer website.

2/

Mido Adds A Blue Sunray Dial And Day-Date To The 65-Year-Old Commander Lineup

The Commander has been one of Mido's best arguments for taking the brand seriously since 1959. It’s changed a lot but retains a lot of cool. The latest version is called the Datoday, Mido's portmanteau for the day-date complication, and it's a solidly executed entry-level dress watch that doesn't try to be anything it isn't. Now, it’s getting a new blue sunray dial.

The case is 40mm wide with a lug-to-lug of 43.83mm, all stainless steel with a mix of satin and polished surfaces. The crown sits almost flush within the case profile, a Commander signature, and the glassbox sapphire crystal adds visual depth. Water resistance is 50 meters. The bracelet is integrated into the case and features alternating brushed and polished links.

The sunray blue dial does its job well. Faceted black-varnished indexes with white Super-LumiNova sit against the stepped flange, which carries a quarter-second minute track. The day and date window sits at 3 o'clock with a polished metal surround — white text on black background. Diamond-cut baton hands get the same black varnish and lume treatment as the indexes, keeping everything visually coherent.

Inside is the Caliber 80, Mido's ETA C07.621-based movement, which has become the quiet workhorse of the mid-range Swiss watch market. Eighty hours of power reserve, Nivachron balance spring for antimagnetic and shock resistance, Côtes de Genève finishing on the rotor. The bracelet closes with a folding clasp with push-buttons engraved with the Commander logo.

The Mido Commander Datoday in blue is priced at CHF 890. See more on the Mido website.

3/

BA111OD Skeletonizes The Chapter 7, Keeping The Great Proportions And Price

With every new release, BA111OD is proving that they really are conquering the market on expertly-made, Swiss-produced, highly-advanced watches that are sold at prices that really puzzle the market as they shouldn’t be possible. They have made waves by producing the least expensive Swiss made tourbillon – the BA111OD Chapter 4.1, as well as the BA111OD Chapter 4.5 GMT Tourbillon. Their CHPTR_Δ has one of the most interesting ways of moving hands and displaying time, for a crazy low price. But even with the low price they can offer their watches at, they are still several thousand euros. A great deal, but not cheap. They also have the Chapter 7, their sporty and definitely more affordable collection that has a whole life of its own now. Now, they’re introducing a skeletonized version of the Chapter 7.

The case is 40mm wide in stainless steel with an anthracite grey PVD finish. The integrated bracelet is the only option here, matching the PVD treatment, and it includes tool-free micro-adjustment. The facetted 10-sided bezel and 4 o'clock crown carry over from the existing Chapter 7 family. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Where the standard Chapter 7 offered guilloché patterns and four dial colors to choose from, this one opens everything up. You can see through the movement near 12 o'clock and through the balance spring, and the mainspring barrel at 6 o'clock has had its cover removed so you can watch the spring compress as you wind.

The movement is the Soprod calibre P024, the same automatic used in every other Chapter 7, beating at 28,800 vph with a 38-hour power reserve. Worth noting: the skeleton version hasn't been submitted for chronometer certification, which the standard Chapter 7 does have in its second gen.

The Chapter 7 Skeleton is priced at €1,510, with taxes included, which is €400 more than the full-dial version. See more on the Ba111od website.

4/

Konstantin Chaykin Teams Up With Soyuzmultfilm For A Cat Themed Matroskin Wristmon

Konstantin Chaykin has been making his Wristmon watches long enough now that the concept has proven itself — the Joker, the Kolobok, the Smilodon, the Time-Eaters that Louis Erard helped bring to a wider audience. Each one takes the same signature module, with rotating disc eyes and a moonphase mouth, and finds a new character to inhabit the face. This new one is slightly different from most of them. It came out of a partnership with Soyuzmultfilm, the Soviet animation studio that turns 90 this year, and the character is Matroskin, the sardonic striped cat from the Three from Prostokvashino cartoons, one of the most beloved animated characters in Russian-speaking culture. Chaykin had been sketching this concept since 2020.

The case is 40mm wide and 12.15mm thick in stainless steel, assembled from 33 components. The upper lugs are shaped as Matroskin's ears. A single crown controls all functions, which is great, and the crown is well integrated at the 6 o’clock position.

The dial base is graphite-colored through ruthenium galvanic coating, with the fur texture achieved by abrasive blasting. The guilloché whiskers are the headline addition to the Wristmon format: for the first time in the collection, the guilloché decoration extends beyond the dial surface and continues onto the bezel, rhodium-plated on top. The eyes — hour and minute disc indicators with vivid green irises — work exactly as you'd expect from the Joker module lineage. The moonphase forms the mouth. Matroskin's forelock hides the manufacture logo. Each eye takes around 20 hours of pad-printing work, with up to 25 lacquer layers applied and oven-dried before the component is finished.

Inside is the K.18-27 calibre, built around the La Joux-Perret G200 base — a 33.4mm automatic running at 28,800vph with 32 jewels and a 68-hour power reserve. The movement finishing includes perlage, circular and radial graining, hand-bevelled and polished chamfers, spherical burnishing on wheel pivot tips, rhodium and gold-plate galvanic coatings throughout. The strap is exclusive to this edition — striped leather, color-matched to Matroskin's coat, with a stainless steel buckle from the manufacture.

The Konstantin Chaykin Matroskin Wristmon is a limited edition of 90 pieces and price is set at $25,000. See more on the Konstantin Chaykin website.

5/

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon Yoon and Verbal

AP's Concept series has always operated at the outermost edge of what the Royal Oak octagon can contain — forged carbon, skeleton architecture, movements that look more like circuit boards. The new Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon, made in collaboration with Yoon and Verbal of the Japanese fashion label AMBUSH, fits that tradition while doing something none of its predecessors managed: it fits a human wrists. At 38.5mm wide and 11.4mm thick in titanium, it's meaningfully smaller than the rest of the Concept lineup, which clusters around 42mm and 15mm.

The case is made out of titanium, with the folded octagonal forms and polished/brushed contrast that define the Royal Oak family. At 38.5mm it could as a dress watch by Concept standards, but the look is still very futuristic. I wouldn’t call it a sporty watch, as it only has 20 meters of water resistance.

The dial is black aventurine, but a large crack-like opening fractures it and exposes the movement architecture beneath, including the power barrel sitting at 11 o'clock. The flying tourbillon is visible too, its rotating cage finished in anodised red: the first time AP has applied a coloured finish to a tourbillon cage. The central hands are black over a white gold base.

Inside is the calibre 2982, a manual-wind movement running at 3 Hz with a 72-hour power reserve. Two rubber straps are included — black and red, both in a micro-mosaic pattern.

The Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon Yoon and Verbal is price on request, limited to 150 pieces. See more on the Audemars Piguet website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her. This is the rise and fall of the only female yakuza.

• As with any editor, reading is part of my job. But never have I been asked to do what’s expected of Clarke Speicher: read a novel in two days (or sometimes one), and prepare a lengthy memo detailing how it might be adapted into film. Sounds like a plush gig, right? Not so fast. Although Speicher enjoys his work, it exists on the margins of the lucrative entertainment industry, making it a true labor of love. For Lit Hub, Julien Levy profiles the man who reads everything.

• Decades ago, Yoko Ono invited an audience to use a pair of scissors to cut the clothing she wore, later telling a curator, “I wanted to see what they would take.” Ana Mendieta tested the boundaries of her own body against the world she inhabited, once creating a shallow grave for herself where her silhouette could still be seen, rising and falling with her breaths. Amanda Fortini considers the resurgent interest in female performance artists—Ono, Mendieta, Marina Abramović, Carolee Schneemann, and more—whose work “was not salable, collectible or tied to the market in any way.”

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

This was a super fun video, trust me.

What 200K+ Engineers Read to Stay Ahead

Your GitHub stars won't save you if you're behind on tech trends.

That's why over 200K engineers read The Code to spot what's coming next.

• Get curated tech news, tools, and insights twice a week

• Learn about emerging trends you can leverage at work in just 5 mins a day

• Become the engineer who always knows what's next

Join 200k+ engineers

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Hope everyone had a good weekend.

The Tech newsletter for Engineers who want to stay ahead

Tech moves fast, but you're still playing catch-up?

That's exactly why 200K+ engineers working at Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here's what you get:

• Curated tech news that shapes your career - Filtered from thousands of sources so you know what's coming 6 months early.

• Practical resources you can use immediately - Real tutorials and tools that solve actual engineering problems.

• Research papers and insights decoded - We break down complex tech so you understand what matters.

All delivered twice a week in just 2 short emails.

Join 200K+ engineers

In this issue

• Seiko Celebrates 145 Years With Two New Presage Classic Series Limited Editions

• Favre Leuba Adds A Power Reserve Display And Small Seconds To The Deep Raider

• Micromilspec And Black Badger Get All Exposive With The Dualtimer Broken Hour

• Isotope And Straw Marquetry Artist Bernardo d'Orey Create A One-Off Mercury

• MB&F Brings Coloured Gemstones To The LM Perpetual For The First Time

👂What’s new

1/

Seiko Celebrates 145 Years With Two New Presage Classic Series Limited Editions

Seiko has now released Arita porcelain dials often enough that the technique no longer needs introduction — I’ve covered the glazed version, the unglazed version, and a bunch of previous colorways — but the HCC007 is doing something a bit different . It's the first porcelain Presage to use a deep cobalt blue glaze tied to "Seiko Blue," a specific tone the brand developed in the 1960s. The dial was produced under master craftsman Hiroyuki Hashiguchi's supervision, with execution by Toshiaki Kawaguchi's team in Arita, and the main challenge wasn't the material itself but getting the glaze right: transparent enough that the relief pattern underneath remains visible, yet dense enough to hold that saturated blue. Its companion, the HCC004, takes the opposite approach entirely — no saturated color, no glazed surface, just a textured white dial referencing shironeri, the particular tone produced during silk refining.

The HCC007 gets a new case, 39.6mm wide and 12.8mm thick — slightly trimmer than the 40.6mm shell on most recent Presage Craftsmanship releases. The HCC004 goes smaller still at 36mm wide and 12.5mm thick, with softly curved surfaces and a coin-finished bezel that suit its classical positioning. Both get double domed sapphire crystals, sapphire casebacks, and super-hard coating on the steel. Water resistance differs: 30 meters on the HCC004, which is the usual trade-off with these dials, and a more reassuring 100 meters on the HCC007.

The blue glaze on the HCC007 is deep and layered, with the radiating relief pattern beneath the surface reads differently straight-on versus at an angle, and the applied markers and hands provide clean legibility. The HCC004’s woven-like texture is the more subtle option, and the blue hands and markers pulled from the same "Seiko Blue" identity give the pair a coherent thread without making them feel like a matched set.

Both watches have the calibre 6R51 inside, Seiko's in-house automatic beating at 21,600vph with a 72-hour power reserve. The watches come on leather straps from an LWG-certified tannery with folding clasps.

The Seiko Presage Classic Series Limited Edition HCC004 is priced at €1,050, limited to 2,500 pieces, and goes on sale in June 2026. You can see it here. The Seiko Presage Classic Series Craftsmanship Arita Porcelain Dial Limited Edition HCC007 is priced at €1,800, limited to 1,500 pieces, and goes on sale in July 2026. See that one here.

2/

Favre Leuba Adds A Power Reserve Display And Small Seconds To The Deep Raider

Favre Leuba has been around since 1737 but has had a complicated relationship with staying in business. They relaunched with 22 new watches at Geneva Watch Days in 2024, and since then have been cranking out a steady stream of new releases. Now, they’re expading the Deep Raider line with the Power Reserve variant keeps the same bones but adds a a couple of complications: small seconds, a power reserve indicator, and a triple-figure date.

The case is unchanged from the existing Deep Raider Renaissance — 40mm wide, 12.59mm thick, stainless steel with tapered lugs and alternating brushed and polished surfaces. On top is a ceramic unidirectional bezel with a luminous pip, on the side is a screw-in crown, and you get 300 meters of water resistance.

Five dial colours are offered at launch: white, black, green, blue, and ice blue, all with a sunray finish. The small seconds sits at 9 o'clock, the power reserve indicator at 6, and the triple-figure date runs vertically at 3. Each sub-dial gets a snailed texture and a metallic frame.

Inside is the FLP01 calibre, which is Favre Leuba's designation for the Sellita SW279-1. It runs at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 41-hour power reserve. The watch comes on an integrated steel bracelet with brushed and polished links and a butterfly clasp; and all rubber straps from the existing Deep Raider Renaissance are compatible with this model as well.

The Favre Leuba Deep Raider Power Reserve is priced at CHF 2,500. See more on the Favre Leuba website.

3/

Micromilspec And Black Badger Get All Exposive With The Dualtimer Broken Hour

When Micromilspec and James Thompson — the designer known as Black Badger — released the Project Sabotage Milgraph last year, I loved the watch even before I read the story around it. And then I loved it even more. A space pirate named Black Badger, a tyrannical Chrono Sovereign, a universe where time is currency… I love it when a watch is accompanied by a great story. For the second team-up, the two have leaned into that universe further. The result is the Broken Hour, a GMT riff on the Dualtimer that looks like it survived something it probably shouldn't have.

The Broken Hour uses a 42mm wide, 12.5mm thick microblasted stainless steel case, with the same integrated construction that should help it fit more wrists. Water resistance is 200 meters, and the case has a screw-down crown and the same QuadGrip dive bezel from the Milgraph, here calibrated for 60 minutes rather than elapsed time. The 24-hour GMT scale gets relocated off the bezel and onto an orange chapter ring surrounding the dial.

That orange chapter ring frames a white dial with black minute track and applied hour markers in white Super-LumiNova. The storytelling details are everywhere once you look: the date window at 3 o'clock appears "blasted open," with surrounding markers distorted as if caught in the explosion, and both the hour hand and GMT hand have fractured profiles.

Inside is the Sellita SW330-2, a caller-style GMT that lets you independently adjust the 24-hour hand without moving the local hour hand. It beats at 28,800 vph with a 56-hour power reserve. The caseback continues the story — it reportedly previews the next chapter of Black Badger's adventures. The watch comes on either an orange rubber strap with a microblasted steel buckle or a matching microblasted stainless steel bracelet.

The Micromilspec × Black Badger Broken Hour is available through a single 24-hour sales window, opening May 29th at 18:00 CEST and closing May 30th at the same time. All orders placed during the window will be fulfilled. Price is set at $1,950 on rubber and $2,200 on the bracelet, and every watch comes with a 12 page comic book. See more on the Micromilspec website.

4/

Isotope And Straw Marquetry Artist Bernardo d'Orey Create A One-Off Mercury

UK-based Isotope has made a habit of putting unusual dials into the Mercury case, but this one is unlike anything they've done before. And it uses one of my absolute all time favorite techniques. The dial here is the work of Bernardo d'Orey, a micro-marquetry artist who works in straw, cutting, shaping, and placing each fragment entirely by hand. This is the new Mercury Fire Horse Marquetry.

The Mercury case is 38mm wide and 10mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 44.50mm — a compact, comfortable to wear watch. It's all 316L stainless steel with a mirror finish. The mirror-polished crown at 3 o'clock carries Isotope's Lacrima logo. A domed anti-reflection-treated sapphire crystal sits up top, and the screw-in caseback is also sapphire, giving you a clear view of the movement. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is composed of 100 individual straw sections — each one selected, cut, shaped, and placed by hand — arranged to reflect the Year of the Horse and the Chinese element of Fire. Straw marquetry reacts to light differently at every angle, so the dial shifts as the watch moves, catching and releasing color in ways that are hard to photograph. The hands are mirror-finished steel, custom to the Mercury.

Inside is Isotope's Calibre I-7, essentially a hand-wound, modified and regulated ETA Peseux 7001 running at 21,600vph with a 42-hour power reserve. The bespoke bridge is hand-finished. It comes on a quick-release suede strap — grey or beige — with a mirror-finish signed buckle.

The Isotope Mercury Fire Horse Marquetry is a piece unique, priced at £6,000 including taxes. See more on the Isotope website.

5/

MB&F Brings Coloured Gemstones To The LM Perpetual For The First Time

Stephen McDonnell's perpetual calendar has always been one the most intellectually serious thing in MB&F's lineup — a 581-component movement that inverted every convention of the complication, built around a "mechanical processor" that eliminates the fragility of traditional perpetual calendar mechanisms and exposes everything dial-side: balance wheel floating at centre, suspended calendar rings, lacquered sub-dial at noon. It has appeared in gold and titanium across a dozen references. Now, they’re adding three more variants with the LM Perpetual Chromatic Editions that have colored stoned bezels.

The case is unchanged from earlier LM Perpetuals — 44mm wide, 17.5mm thick, with a heavily domed sapphire crystal that follows the arc of the flying V bridge holding the balance. Two of the cases are done in 18k white gold, one in 18k red gold. The three models are differentiated by their bezels, all of which have 48 baguette-cut gemstones set by hand at STG Creation in Geneva. The white gold models get blue or purple sapphires sourced from Madagascar and Sri Lanka respectively; the red gold gets Mozambican rubies.

The black sub-dials float above the movement as before, with time at noon and calendar functions distributed across the lower half. The chromatic logic runs through to the hands: blue PVD on the sapphire model, purple PVD on the other, 5N PVD on the ruby version.

The manually wound movement provides a 72-hour power reserve from twin barrels visible through the caseback, alongside the hand finishing — anglage, perlage, côtes de Genève — that has always made this calibre worth turning over. The strap is white rubber on all three.

The LM Perpetual Chromatic Editions are limited to eight pieces each, priced at CHF 228,000, without taxes. See more on the MB&F website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• San Antonio Spurs player Victor Wembanyama is a generational talent, combining a 7-foot-4 frame with an unprecedented skill set. After Wembanyama’s second season was cut short by a blood clot, his agent, Bouna Ndiaye, sought unconventional ways to help him grow—physically, mentally, and spiritually. Ndiaye sent Wembanyama to the Shaolin Temple in China’s Henan province, where Master Yan’an, a 34th-generation Shaolin Warrior monk, put him through a customized training program: 4:30 a.m. wake-ups, hours of meditation, and kung fu forms focused on controlling his center of gravity. ESPN‘s Ramona Shelburne takes us inside the retreat—and shows how the intense training has transformed Wembanyama’s game.

• Shawn Stewart was arrested for a dangerous infatuation with his drug counselor. She had proof, in the form of emails and texts, and said she feared for her life. But nothing was as it seemed.

• Under stage lights and casino fluorescents, Scott Ian has lived two lives: thrash-metal lifer and improbably serious poker grinder. What began as a celebrity lark turned into late-night study, coaching, and high-stakes obsession, with Anthrax tours and online tables colliding in one double life. But what really pulled him deeper—the cards, or the chaos?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Czapek is celebrating a lot these days and to do so, they released a pretty decent documentary documenting the last 10 years.

Every consulting firm says brand matters.

Then the wrong slides end up in the next client deck.

SlideHub gives teams one place to work from, so approved content is easier to find, easier to trust, and easier to keep consistent across decks.

See how

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’m not that crazy over sub 37mm watches, so you can imagine my surprise when I fell hard for the new 35mm Serica. I think I actually might have to buy this one.

Moda creates AI Decks that don't look AI-Generated

Every AI tool can create "AI slop". You know it the second you see it.

Moda is different: it learns your brand identity and applies it to every slide, document, and marketing asset your team makes. It learns your preferences so the designs get better over time.

The best part? Every layer is fully editable on a real canvas, and exports to powerpoint, PDF and more.

Moda has raised $7.5M from General Catalyst, Pear VC, and the founder of Dropbox.

Try Moda Free Today

In this issue

• Serica Shrinks Down Their Field Watch To 35mm And It’s An Incredibly Cool Change

• Ressence Gives Us Two New Colors Of The Type 7: Cactus And Black

• Kurono Tokyo Goes Green With Malachite-Dialed 2026 Special Projects

• The Arcange Selenograph Crams A Triple Calendar Into A Compact Case At A Great Price

• Armin Strom's Dual Time GMT Resonance Gets An Aventurine Dial

👂What’s new

1/

Serica Shrinks Down Their Field Watch To 35mm And It’s An Incredibly Cool Change

The conventional wisdom that a field watch needs bulk to have presence has always been a bit lazy, the easy way to do it. Good for us, then, that Serica isn’t lazy and doesn’t do things the easy way. The French brand, founded by Jérôme Burgert and Gabriel Vachette, has always had a knack for creating vintage-inspired, but thoroughly modern watches. Almost as if they were developed in a parallel dimension. Case in point, this new 7505 collection. Remember when I told you that my favorite watch I saw at Watches and Wonders was under embargo? Well, it was this watch, which came as a complete surprise to me. I have huge wrists and I generally prefer larger watches. I don’t think that smaller watches look bad on me — they look good on everyone — I’m just more comfortable seeing a chunk of a watch on my wrist. So you have to believe me when I say: the Serica 7505 is so good that it makes me want to buy a 35mm wide watch.

Serica watches are also extremely well thought through. As is evident by this case. It looks like their existing field-watch connection, but only at a casual glance. The case measures 35mm wide and 9.6mm thick with the double-domed sapphire crystal included. The lugs are super-short and wonderfully curved, and on top is a flat chunky stepped bezel with a vertically brushed flat surface and polished sides, with four half-spheres denoting the four cardinal positions. Out back is a solid steel caseback, the crown screws down and you can get 200 meters of water resistance.

Then we have the dials, and Serica, as good as they are making cases, is really good at making dials. They are all unsigned and all have an enamel-like glossy finish. Two are new: a "minute critical" military layout in black or olive green, with painted luminous markers built for immediate readability. The third is carried over from the 6190 Tuxedo — a two-tone beige and black arrangement with hand-applied lume. Broad-arrow hands in brushed steel run across all three, loaded with SLN. I particularly like that none of them carry a brand logo; it suits the instrument-first attitude.

Inside is the Soprod M100, a COSC-certified automatic, running at 4Hz with around 42 hours of power reserve. Not to be ignored, the bracelet is completely redesigned. It might look like a regular Bonklip-style bracelet, but this one gets curved end-pieces, it’s heavily tapered and features a new Safe-Lock clasp which finally fixes pretty much any complaint you could have had about previous versions that did open occasionally.

The Serica 7505 Field Chronometer is available now as a permanent collection piece, priced at €1,090 for the minute critical dials and €1,190 for the tuxedo. I swear, this could easily fit on a wrist of an advisor getting off a helicopter somewhere northeast of Hanoi just before all hell is going to break loose in Vietnam. I want one. See more on the Serica website.

2/

Ressence Gives Us Two New Colors Of The Type 7: Cactus And Black

Ressence turned 15 last year, and the Type 7 was their gift to themselves — the first watch they've made with an integrated bracelet, the first with a GMT function, and arguably the most wearable thing to come out of Benoît Mintiens' atelier in Brussels. Two new colorways now join the original Night Blue and the limited XV Aquamarine: Black and Cactus.

The case is 41mm wide and 14mm thick, machined from Grade 5 titanium with a glass-pearled finish that gives the surface a matte, almost chalky texture. Ressence splits the case into two sealed chambers, one for the oil-filled display module, one for the movement, connected by a magnetic transmission. There's no crown; winding and setting happen through the caseback via the Ressence Compression Lock System. Both new editions come with the integrated titanium bracelet and a matching rubber strap. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The Black version looks very familiar, as we’ve seen this depth from the Type 5. Oil filling deepens the dial to a degree that approaches absolute black, and the white indications pop against it with near-digital clarity. The Cactus is an interesting color — a green tone selected specifically to work with the warm undertone of Grade 5 titanium. A fixed ceramic bezel in matching black or green finishes each case.

Under the oil is Ressence's ROCS 7 module, driven by a modified ETA automatic base. The entire dial rotates, carrying orbital sub-displays for the hours, the GMT (on a 24-hour sub-dial), and a runner that completes one revolution every 120 seconds and doubles as a shock absorber indicator. There's also an oil temperature display integrated into the hour subdial via a colour-coded scale — the kind of detail that only makes sense once you understand the watch and makes perfect sense after that. The movement beats at 28,800vph with a 36-hour power reserve, and a compensating bellows system handles pressure changes as the oil expands and contracts.

The Type 7 Black and Cactus are both available now, priced at CHF 36,000 before taxes. See more on the Ressence website.

3/

Kurono Tokyo Goes Green With Malachite-Dialed 2026 Special Projects

Kurono Tokyo's Special Projects line has always operated almost as a separate division from the rest of the catalog. While the main collection gives you classic Japanese dress sensibility at prices that still feel slightly surprising, the Special Projects watches are where Hajime Asaoka gets to play with materials and ideas that wouldn't survive the brand's usual restraint. Earlier this year that meant meteorite — the Inseki, with its cosmic-patterned dial. Now it's malachite. OK, sure, it’s not revolutionary, but it is a departure from what they usually do.

The case is polished steel, 37mm wide, with the familiar box-shaped sapphire crystal sitting proud above the dial. Those who know the brand will recognize the silhouette immediately — this is the same compact, slightly retro-formal shape that from many collections before it. A solid caseback completes the package. Water resistance is 30 meters, which could and should be bumped up to at least 50 meters.

The central portion of the new dial is a slab of genuine malachite. Its characteristic banding shifts from deep forest green to near-emerald depending on where the light catches it. Supposedly, Asaoka personally inspects every stone for consistency, and each approved dial receives his vermillion seal. Around that center sits a convex brass chapter ring, coloured with a hand-mixed rokushō pigment (a copper-derived verdigris green, chosen specifically for its material reference to malachite), and indexed with Kanji Zodiac characters used historically in East Asia to mark time and direction.

Inside, the Miyota calibre 90S5, a time-only automatic beating at 28,800vph with approximately 40 hours of power reserve. The watch ships on a black calfskin leather strap with a steel pin buckle.

The Kurono Tokyo 2026 Special Projects Malachite is priced at $1,850, excluding taxes and import duties, and goes on sale May 28, 2026, with two order windows at 11 AM and 11 PM JST. Purchases are limited to one per customer, and Kurono states that all orders placed within either window will be fulfilled. See more on the Kurono Tokyo website.

4/

The Arcange Selenograph Crams A Triple Calendar Into A Compact Case At A Great Price

I am extremely wary of writing about watches that are raising money on Kickstarter. The horror stories I’ve heard about unfulfilled campaigns are just too wild to lend what little respect I might have behind me. If you were to get a watch from Kickstarter after learning about it from this newsletter and it turned out to be a scam, I would feel very guilty. I know because it happened to me once. However, there are exceptions to this wariness, and that mostly happens where an already established brand uses Kickstarter to launch a new model. I won’t say that the French brand Arcange is a household brand, but they successfully sold a couple of collections funded through Kickstarter already, so I assume it’s safe to say this new Selenograph will work out as well. And I hope it does — a 38.5mm with a triple calendar and a true moon phase priced this well is a watch I would like to own.

The case is 38.5mm wide, 11.5mm thick, and 45.5mm lug-to-lug, which is actually compact given everything going on inside. The profile is rounded and the lugs flare outward with a kind of elegance you rarely see at this tier. Finishing includes a brushed mid-case with a mirror-polished bezel and polished chamfers along the case flanks. Four recessed pushers are worked into the case at the cardinal corners for setting the various calendar displays, and they're polished. The double-domed box sapphire crystal comes with five layers of AR coating. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The five dial variants are available at launch: CM01 Classic in cream, CM02 Ice Blue, CM03 Eclipse in black, CM04 Syros Blue in two-tone blue, and CM05 Salmon. All of them share the same vertical CNC-machined wave texture and the same layout. A railroad minute track at the perimeter, 31 date numerals on a double-ringed chapter ring just inside, applied polished hour markers with Arabic numerals at the cardinal points and tooth-shaped ones between them. Two apertures above the pinion show day left, month right, with a classically styled moon phase at six. The pointer date hand is leaf-shaped with a crescent-tipped end.

The movement is a Miyota 9015 modified with a module on top for the triple calendar and moon phase functions. The 9015 beats at 4Hz with 42 hours of power reserve. The watches come on a full-grain calf leather straps in four colors with quick-release functionality.

The Arcange Selenograph CM02 Ice Blue launches on Kickstarter on May 29, 2026, at €571, with the campaign running through June 6. Full retail afterward is €845€. See more on the Arcange website.

5/

Armin Strom's Dual Time GMT Resonance Gets An Aventurine Dial

The Dual Time GMT Resonance from Armin Strom is a very cool watch. And like a lot of these high-horology watches that include a ton of creative watchmaking and design onto a wrist, it came in a pretty substantial case. That’s was the case until two years ago, when they redesigned the case to a very, very wearable option. Now, we’re getting an Aventurine version of this beautiful watch.

The stainless steel case case is 39mm wide, just over 9mm thick, with the characteristic asymmetric crown placement — two crowns at 4 and 8 o'clock for independent time zone setting — and the signature lip at 6. Lug-to-lug sits at 44.5mm. Sapphire crystals sit front and back. The thin profile is wildly impressive for a movement this architecturally complex, and i love it when haute horology comes in a steel case. This is a winner for me. Heck, you even get 50 meters of water resistance.

The new dials — there are two of them, one for each time zone — come in aventurine, the deep blue glass-mineral full of suspended metallic inclusions that shift and scatter light as the watch moves. Black azurage chapter rings frame each display, rose gold-toned hands and applied indices sit over the aventurine surface, and day/night indicators are integrated into both sub-dials. The rest of the display is dedicated to a rose gold-coloured mainplate, which is a nice contrast, and the resonance mechanism.

Calibre ARF22 is in-house, beats at 3.5Hz, and delivers 42 hours of power reserve. The resonance mechanism uses a clutch spring rather than the more traditional direct coupling between balance wheels, which Armin Strom argues makes it less sensitive to disruption. Finishing is detailed: hand-bevelled bridges, black polishing, perlage and circular graining on the dial side, Côtes de Genève on the reverse. The watch ships on a matte grey alligator strap with a steel pin buckle.

The Armin Strom Dual Time GMT Resonance Aventurine is limited to 10 pieces, priced at CHF 105,000. See more on the Armin Strom website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• On a surface swept by sanctions and propaganda, a forgotten 1989 defense of apartheid reveals how white South Africa tried to sell itself as civilization under siege. From there, the argument widens into a darker pattern: the stories nations tell to justify ethnic power, and the unnerving echoes that still linger. But how far can that comparison really go?

• In a world where masculinity can be measured in nanomoles, one man’s tiredness becomes a doorway into a booming industry built on fear, hope, and a vial of testosterone. As private clinics and online ads blur the line between medicine and marketing, the question keeps tightening: who really needs treatment, and who is being sold a story?

• At a mansion on San Francisco’s Billionaires Row, a fundraiser quietly sealed Silicon Valley’s turn toward MAGA, and David Sacks became the face of a new alliance built on money, power, and self-interest. The story tracks how a libertarian investor who once dismissed Trump ended up shaping his technology agenda — but can that bargain hold without breaking something bigger?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Jean-Marie Schaller, the owner and creative force behind Louis Moinet, died a couple of days ago. This is a great video tribute to one of the more colorful and important figures in the industry.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I’ve been avoiding the vast majority of the 007 First Light content because I loved the Nintendo64 version of GoldenEye so much. In fact, I remember it being a bit of an issue — I would rather not sleep than not play the game. So I was hoping to skip the First Light hysteria, but here goes Omega, and pushes me closer to the game.

The GTM bets that shouldn't have worked, and did

One grew revenue 50x after half his team quit over the strategy. One brought in 50K signups in a single day with no paid budget. One generated 100M+ views from a stunt that took 50 hours to conceive. One asked every prospect to demo the product themselves instead of demoing it for them.

None of them followed the safe playbook. They treated GTM like an experiment, moved before they had proof, and made bets most founders would never get approved.

HubSpot for Startups documented all 6 stories in the free Bold Bets Playbook. The risks they took, why it was risky, and what it returned.

Read the free Bold Bets Playbook

In this issue

• Omega Releases The Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light, Their First Bond Chrono

• Alpina Teams Up With Watch Angels For First Pilot Chrono That Can Calculate Holding Patterns

• The New Son Mài Guilloché Main Just Proves That Awake Is Getting Better And Better

• Trafford Watch Co. Perfects The Crossroads, Now Much Thinner And With Great Colors

• Ferdinand Berthoud Launches the Chronomètre FB 2TV Flying Tourbillon, Kicking Off The New Mesure du Temps 1787 Collection

👂What’s new

1/

Omega Releases The Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light, Their First Bond Chrono

The Omega x Bond relationship started with GoldenEye in 1995, which means it started with Pierce Brosnan and, for anyone who grew up in the late '90s, it started with a Nintendo 64 controller in hand. I spent an embarrassing number of hours in the GoldenEye game, and the Seamaster on Brosnan's wrist was the coolest watch in the world before I knew anything about watches. So yes, I have feelings about this. The new Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light is launching alongside 007 First Light, a standalone origin-story game from IO Interactive (the Hitman people) and Amazon MGM Studios, due out May 27th, and lauded as a possible N64 GoldenEye successor. It is also, notably, the first chronograph ever worn by James Bond in any medium.

The case is the existing Diver 300M Chronograph introduced in 2019, so no surprises on the architecture: lyre lugs, curved crown guards, a conical helium escape valve at 10 o'clock, ceramic pushers. It measures 44mm wide and 17mm thick, which is a big watch — lug-to-lug comes in just under 53mm. Even bigger. Polished and brushed finishes, sapphire crystals on both sides, and a unidirectional bezel with a black ceramic insert and white enamel 60-minute diving scale complete the package. The only external differentiator from the standard black reference is the caseback, which carries the 007 First Light logo in black metallisation on the underside of the glass. Water resistance is 300 meters.

The dial is all new. The base is the standard polished ceramic with laser-engraved waves, but the sub-dial ring at 3 o'clock gets a PVD bronze-gold treatment, and the same finish carries over to the central chronograph seconds hand. Everything else — indexes, remaining hands — is rhodium-plated with white Super-LumiNova. The Seamaster name is done in red. It's a restrained edition considering the IP it's tied to.

Inside is Omega's calibre 9900. It's an integrated automatic with column wheel and vertical clutch, co-axial escapement, antimagnetic components rated to 15,000 gauss, Master Chronometer certified, and running on two barrels for a 60-hour power reserve. The watch ships on a NATO strap in black, grey, and beige, and Omega is offering six additional game-inspired NATO options separately.

The Seamaster Diver 300M Chronograph 007 First Light is a special but not limited edition, priced at CHF 7,300 without taxes. See more on the Omega website.

2/

Alpina Teams Up With Watch Angels For First Pilot Chrono That Can Calculate Holding Patterns

Most pilot's watches borrow aviation aesthetics, and we love them for it. Whether it’s a recreation of a vintage pilot’s watch like Laco has been known to make, or a full-on homage to flight instruments like you can buy from Bell&Ross. This new watch from Alpina, made in collaboration with the Watch angels, the Startimer Pilot IFR Chronograph, looks like a traditional pilot’s chronograph, but actually has a novel mechanical complication. This watch will help you calculate how to enter and fly a holding pattern. A holding pattern, for the non-aviators among you (me included), is the oval loop aircraft fly while waiting for landing clearance — one of the more demanding phases of IFR flight, where pilots must determine the correct entry type (direct, teardrop, or parallel) based on their current heading and the inbound course. That procedure has now been translated into watchmaking hardware, which is either the most niche complication in recent memory or the most practically useful one, depending on whether you hold a pilot's license.

The case is 44.5mm wide and 15.8mm thick, built from stainless steel with a bidirectional black ceramic bezel and an anti-reflective convex sapphire crystal. The finishing combines vertically satin-brushed lugs with mirror-polished chamfers, and the lug-to-lug comes to 51mm. The IFR calculation system lives within the case components themselves — a push-release coupling bezel and an inner multi-level turning component that serves dual duty as dial ring and entry pattern calculator. Setting the watch involves two steps: align the inbound course on the bezel, then release and align the heading. The watch then displays the required entry type via color-coded apertures at 12 o'clock: orange for direct, red for teardrop, blue for parallel, along with all the courses and headings needed to fly the hold correctly. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The sunburst blue dial is busy, as any legitimate pilot's watch tends to be, but here’s there’s even more justification for it: polished metallic applied Arabic numerals filled with white lume, black hour and minute hands also in white lume, a 12-hour counter at 6 o'clock, a 15-minute counter at 12 o'clock, a running indicator disk at 9 o'clock, and a central orange hand for UTC. The two apertures that display the holding pattern entry type sit just below the 12 o'clock position.

Inside is the Sellita SW531b column wheel chronograph calibre, beating at 28,800vph with a 62-hour power reserve and 25 jewels. Each watch comes with two leather pilot straps — one light grey, one camel brown — both with stainless steel pin buckles and a quick-release system.

Orders open today, May 21st exclusively through the Watch Angels website at CHF 4,295 with shipping, local VAT, and import duties included. Limited to 300 pieces. See more on the Watch Angels website.

3/

The New Son Mài Guilloché Main Just Proves That Awake Is Getting Better And Better

The French independent brand Awake has been building something interesting since pivoting away from its limited-edition space-themed releases toward the Son Mai permanent collection built around Vietnamese lacquered dials. I’ve loved pretty much every one of their releases in the collection, but the new Son Mai Guilloché Main is a bit special and a bit fantastic, bringing in a second ancestral technique to the mix: hand guilloché, executed in Italy by the Renzetti family on 19th-century rose engine and straight-line lathes.

The case is familiar, 38mm wide and 11.5mm thick (10mm without crystal), down from the earlier 39mm by 11.8mm. The concave bezel is pleasantly rounded, the lugs are short, and the case alternates polished surfaces with brushed flanks. The screw-down crown ensures the water resistance of 100 meters.

Each of the three dials is completely distinct. The Sunset features a drape-moiré guilloché pattern from the 1930s — vertical waves engraved by straight-line lathe, then covered in natural lacquer with pink, violet and blue pigments in a gradient. The Alba dial has a helical guilloché radiating from the centre, then sent to Hanoi for sunrise-orange lacquering. The Borealis uses a complex, fluid guilloché with acid green, light green and yellow lacquer layers meant to evoke the Northern Lights. Awake's signature lume treatment carries over from the Frosted Leaf: indices and hands are blocks of SLN BGW9 capped with polished faceted steel overlays, so the luminous material glows from beneath.

The movement is the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic, which we've seen in earlier Son Mai editions. It beats at 4Hz with a 68-hour power reserve, which beats both the ETA 2824 and the Sellita SW200 on that front. This one also gets a customised tungsten rotor. Each version comes on a colour-coordinated Alcantara strap by Jean Rousseau with Awake's new micro-adjustable pin buckle allowing 3mm on-the-fly adjustments.

Each of the three versions — Sunset, Alba and Borealis — is limited to 200 pieces and priced at €2,650 excluding tax. See more on the Awake website.

4/

Trafford Watch Co. Perfects The Crossroads, Now Much Thinner And With Great Colors

The Crossroads is an important model for Trafford Watch Co. The Austin, Texas brand has built a following on the back of its Americana-inflected design language and Nathan Trafford's obvious eye for color. The newly announced Crossroads S makes the collection even more important in their lineup. Not only does it perfect the retro rectangular case, now significantly slimmer, but it’s also the brand's first Swiss Made watch.

The case comes in two sizes — the Crossroads S 40 (35x36mm) and the Crossroads S 36 (31x32mm) — both 9mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 46mm and 40mm respectively. You might ask why Trafford calls these models 40 and 36, insinuating they measure 40mm and 36mm, but are actually much smaller… That’s because the watches wear like 40mm and 36mm round watches. I like that communication. Both are made out of 316L stainless steel with a hardened coating. Up top is a double-domed sapphire crystal with an internal anti-reflective coating. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dials come in six colorways across three paired sets: Surf and Seafoam in oceanic teal and blue with yellow accents, Fern and Flora in forest green and pink, and Vine and Vellum in white and burgundy with light blue details. Each has a ribbed, sloped central section that casts a shifting shadow as the light changes across the dial, with polished applied Arabic numerals at the hours and syringe hands, both filled with color-matched lume. The result is clean and legible but avoids the trap of being boring. The color-matched lume is a nice touch. These dials clearly weren't assembled from a generic parts catalog.

The movement inside is the Sellita SW210, a hand-wound no-date movement that beats at 4Hz with 42 hours of power reserve. It’s also regulated to ±5 seconds per day. Each watch ships on a color-matched or contrasting Crazy Horse leather strap with contrasting stitching and quick-release spring bars. A full stainless steel bracelet with solid end links, a butterfly clasp, and an on-the-fly micro-adjuster is available for an additional $249.

The Trafford Watch Co. Crossroads S is priced at $899 and available for pre order right now. Go get it, quickly. The Flora, if you ask me. See more on the Trafford website.

5/

Ferdinand Berthoud Launches the Chronomètre FB 2TV Flying Tourbillon, Kicking Off The New Mesure du Temps 1787 Collection

Ferdinand Berthoud has been doing things the hard way since Karl-Friedrich Scheufele revived the brand in 2015, and the watches have been worth it. The inaugural FB 1 won the Aiguille d'Or at the GPHG. The FB 3SPC became the first wristwatch with a COSC-certified cylindrical balance spring. Last year's Naissance d'une Montre 3 pushed the movement architecture somewhere few would dare. Now comes the Chronomètre FB 2TV Flying Tourbillon, the first watch in a brand new collection called Mesure du Temps 1787, named after a treatise on timekeeping published by the historical Ferdinand Berthoud in that year.

The case is 44mm wide and 15.46mm thick, made out of ethical 18k white gold, and takes its shape from the 2020 FB 2RE Remontoir d'Egalité. It's a round watch with two box sapphire crystals front and back, and the portholes that characterized the FB 2RE are gone.

The hand-wound calibre FB-TV.FC measures 35.60mm in diameter and has 1,240 components, 777 of which belong to the fusée-and-chain alone. The flying tourbillon runs at 21,600vph, measures 15mm in diameter, and has three arms alternating between flat and sloping sections. Its variable-inertia balance uses four 18-carat gold fine-adjustment screws and a Phillips terminal curve spring. The fusée-and-chain has been entirely redeveloped with new geometry and a double superimposed Maltese cross stopwork system, while a differential mechanism keeps the movement running during winding. Power reserve has been extended from 53 to 60 hours and can be wound in roughly 6.25 turns of the crown.

Two details stand out as genuinely unusual even at this level. First: a stop-balance function that halts the movement when the crown is pulled, allowing to-the-second time setting. Second: a coaxial pusher on the crown that resets the seconds hand, either when the movement is stopped or in a flyback mode while the movement is running, enabling short interval measurements up to 60 seconds. These are rare features in a tourbillon. The time display is off-centered with a white varnished dial base, an engraved black varnished minutes track, and a 25.80mm central seconds hand that reads against a white lacquered inner bezel ring. The finish of the visible dial plate is hand-sanded natural nickel silver. The watch comes on a hand-stitched alligator strap with a white gold double-blade safety folding clasp.

Nearly 300 hours of manual finishing per watch, combined with the workshop's capacity, means Ferdinand Berthoud expects to produce 10 to 12 Chronomètre FB 2TV pieces per year, but it shouldn’t be a limited edition. Price is €383,000 including taxes. See more on the Ferdinand Berthoud website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• For The Dial, Francesco Pacifico relates the dissonance he experienced in a vacation swap. In hiding his personal effects so that guests could stay at his place in Rome, he mulls the pending invasion of his private space and the commodification of his home. Pacifico was unnerved by the transactional nature of some guests and surprised at spills he discovered afterward. He struggled to reconcile his thinking with his wife’s perspective. She believed it to be unlike Airbnb, calling it a purer form of exchange, because no money was exchanged on the platform. The absence of cash transactions doesn’t mean that the arrangement didn’t come without a cost.

• Books, toys, blankets, and various other detritus are strewn across James Wade’s Toyota Sequoia as he and his family crisscross Texas on long road trips, at his wife’s insistence that “exploration and adventure are key to a happy childhood.” Sometimes it is chaos—and Wade is honest about that, with a wry humor. But sometimes, it is just lovely. You’ll want to jump in for this ride.

• You’ve likely experienced “sludge,” even if you didn’t know it. It’s the little bureaucratic annoyances involved in attempting to cancel a service or acquire a service, the small points of customer friction that companies and governments put in your way to make accomplishing something a minor, if vivid, nightmare. Think: being on hold for two hours to cancel a television service you no longer need, only to be upselled three times before they finally grant your wish. For Wired, Chris Colin, a non-coder, decided he’d try to vibe code an app to highlight sludgy experiences.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

It’s shocking how fantastic this man is at making television.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. We have lots of depth today, literally and figuratively.

Moda is the AI design agent with taste

Moda's viral launch hit 4.4 million views in two days. Tens of thousands of professionals signed up. Startups, agencies, forward-thinking brands and top firms are now using Moda to create brand-aligned slides, ad creative, reports, social carousels and more.

Most AI tools tend to create what we call "AI slop": repetitions of the same colors, layouts and fonts. And when you try to fix it, you get stuck in a loop of re-prompting.

Moda is different. Drop in your website URL, and Moda learns your brand from the ground up: your colors, your fonts, your visual language. Then it helps you generate pro-quality slides, docs, and marketing assets. 

The best part? Every layer is fully editable on a real canvas, and exports to powerpoint, PDF and more.

Try Moda Free Today

In this issue

• Longines Legend Diver 59 Embraces A Vintage Look With Matte Dial And Improved Bracelet

• Synchron Ti300M Poseidon I Loses A Lot Of Weight Without Losing Any Character

• Eska Adds A Classic Blue To The Amphibian 250 Collection With The Blue Dolphin

• Perrelet Turbine Casino Roulette Brings A Fun And Colorful Game To Your Wrist

• Hublot Goes Muted With The Spirit Of Big Bang Essential Taupe Chronograph

👂What’s new

1/

Longines Legend Diver 59 Embraces A Vintage Look With Matte Dial And Improved Bracelet

The Legend Diver is one of those watches where the revival almost eclipsed the original in the public imagination. Since Longines brought it back in 2007, the collection has been through size variations, date additions, colour rotations and bronze experiments, all building on the appeal of that 1959 EPSA compressor case with its twin crowns and internal rotating bezel. Of course, this isn’t a true EPSA compressor case, but it looks the part. The 39mm no-date version introduced in 2023 sharpened the formula considerably, but the 42mm no-date remained the one gap that real fans kept pointing to. The Legend Diver 59 closes it.

The case is 42mm wide and 12.85mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 50.1mm. It follows the familiar compressor-style profile, which means the dual-crown arrangement is intact: the crown at 2 o'clock works the internal bidirectional bezel, and the lower crown does the winding and time-setting. Both of them screw-down. A domed box-type sapphire crystal sits on top, and the caseback is slightly angled for wrist ergonomics. Water resistance is 300 meters, and the watch has ISO 6425 certification.

Previous 42mm versions had glossy lacquered dials that looked good in photos but flared in direct light. The 59, which takes a lot of vintage inspiration, takes a different approach: a lightly grained matte black surface. Arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9 anchor the layout alongside elongated markers and a peripheral minute track, with the hands and numerals sandblasted to match the matte texture. Lume is old radium-tinted Super-LumiNova, which gives the whole dial a pleasant warmth.

Inside is the Longines calibre L888.6, the same COSC-certified automatic used in the Heritage Legend Diver 39. It’s built on an ETA A31.L11 base, beating at a slightly unusla 25,200 vph (3.5Hz), delivers a 72-hour power reserve and uses a silicon balance spring for anti-magnetic performance. The watch ships on a steel Milanese mesh bracelet with double-folding clasp and a micro-adjustment system that improves on earlier bracelet hardware, and a black rubber strap with diver's pin buckle is included.

The Longines Legend Diver 59 is available now at EUR 4,000. See more on the Longines website.

2/

Synchron Ti300M Poseidon I Loses A Lot Of Weight Without Losing Any Character

Rick Marei is best known for building up Doxa to the powerhouse it is today. He has left Doxa and has been focusing on rebuilding Synchron, the legendary dive watch manufacturer. These look very familiar, thanks to their Doxa 300T connection, but carry a lot of their own character. I’ve written about the Poseidon when it launched in 2023 and it was a chunky diver, made even more massive by its all-steel construction. And you could feel it. The new Ti300M Poseidon I fixes the one real problem with those earlier versions: it weighs almost nothing. 50 grams total, in fact, thanks to a Grade 5 titanium case, caseback, rotating bezel, and crown.

The case measures 41mm wide with a lug-to-lug of a fairly compact 45mm and, more critically, drops to 11.9mm thick. That's more than 2mm slimmer than the stainless predecessors. Those are some pretty great proportions. The bezel has depth markers in feet, and a 60 minute scale. Three layers of anti-reflective coating are applied on the flat sapphire crystal make this a pleasingly easy watch to photograph. A screw-down crown and screw-in solid titanium caseback back up the 300 meter water resistance rating.

The bright yellow dial will be instantly familiar to people who are fans of dive watches. Applied, polished metal indices carry greenish white Super-LumiNova X1 stripes. The handset follows the signature formula: a comically small hour hand, a large minute hand, and a sweep seconds hand with a rectangular pip. A black-on-white date wheel sits at three o'clock. The fish and trident Poseidon logo appears on the dial, a callback to the 1970s.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G100 in Soigné grade, the top tier of LJP's calibre lineup, adjusted to four positions. It runs at 28,800 vph, offers a 60-hour power reserve, and is rated to ±7 seconds per day. The watch ships on a 20mm yellow Tropic strap with a stainless steel pin buckle; a black version is also available. Either choice looks the part.

The Ti300M Poseidon I is limited to 500 numbered pieces. The first 100 ship in the second half of May. Early-order price is $1,290, rising to $1,490 afterward. See more on the Synchron website.

3/

Eska Adds A Classic Blue To The Amphibian 250 Collection With The Blue Dolphin

The Eska Amphibian 250 has been one of the better stories in the French microbrand revival space. Two enthusiasts brought back a defunct diver brand, sorted out the movement situation along the way by swapping the NH38 for a Sellita SW200 in the White Shark, and have been rolling out new colorways at a steady pace ever since — red, green, white, black, and a warm-hued destro version we covered back in March. The Blue Dolphin is the latest in line.

The case is unchanged from the rest of the Amphibian 250 family: 40mm wide, 46mm lug-to-lug, stainless steel with 250 meters of water resistance, with a screw-down crown. The double-domed sapphire crystal and coin-edge unidirectional bezel with large, beige-tinted numerals are both unchanged. This version gets the updated bezel design introduced on the Green Turtle and Red Viper, with square pip markers replacing the earlier baton style.

The sandwich dial goes from a lighter blue that deepens toward the periphery, the kind of gradient. Applied indices and oversized Arabic numerals at 3, 6, 9, and 12 are cut through to a lume layer underneath. Eska went with blue-glow Super-LumiNova here, matching the watch's general personality.

Inside is the Sellita SW200, running at 28,800 vph with a 38-hour power reserve. Both standard and destro configurations are offered from the start, which is a choice I love to be offered. Strap choice is either a white rubber or a navy rubber with white stitching made by Rub Strap, which looks the more serious of the two in press photos. Unlike several previous Amphibian editions, the Blue Dolphin isn't a numbered limited edition.

The Eska Amphibian 250 Blue Dolphin is priced at €908 without VAT, with deliveries beginning July 15, 2026. See more on the Eska website.

4/

Perrelet Turbine Casino Roulette Brings A Fun And Colorful Game To Your Wrist

Perrelet has been in a playful mood lately, and that’s what they do best. The Turbine range went stone dial with the Weekend Malachite earlier this year, and now, presented at Geneva Watch Week 2026, the brand is pushing its signature spinning dial in an entirely different direction. The Turbine Casino Roulette replaces the usual propeller-style blades with a miniature French roulette wheel, and the result is one of the more committed pieces of wrist theater I've seen in a while.

The case is grade 2 titanium, 41mm wide, with brushed and polished surfaces and an integrated five-link titanium bracelet. Despite the width, it actually wears quite well because of the integrated short lugs. Water resistance comes in at 100 meters. Perrelet also throws in a black rubber strap, which is a nice touch.

The Turbine collection has been most recognizable for the turbine-style fan on the dial side of the watch, connected to the winding rotor, spinning as the rotor spins and creating a very interesting visual. The Turbine Casino Roulette uses the same concept, but turns the turbine into a roulette wheel, which is a very fun concept. The wheel is sandblasted stainless steel, shaped like a French roulette table with alternating red and black numbers from zero to 36, a green zero at 12 o'clock, and a small arrow that acts as the pointer. Move your wrist and the wheel spins; stop and you've got a result. Hours, minutes, and seconds are displayed centrally over the wheel, with Super-LumiNova on the hands.

Inside is the calibre P-331-MH developed by Soprod, the same movement that powers the Turbine Splash. It beats at 4Hz, delivers 42 hours of power reserve, and comes with both COSC and Chronofiable certifications.

The Turbine Casino Roulette is a limited edition of 100 pieces, priced at €5,250. See more on the Perrelet website.

5/

Hublot Goes Muted With The Spirit Of Big Bang Essential Taupe Chronograph

The Essential series is one of the more interesting things Hublot does. Once a year, online-only, they take one of their core case shapes and strip it down to a single color. Last year's Essential Taupe was applied to the Classic Fusion; this year the same treatment goes to the Spirit of Big Bang, in two sizes.

The 42mm comes in a titanium case, bumpers included, measuring 14.1mm thick. The smaller is 32mm wide and 10.8mm thick, but the case is made out of stainless steel.. Both share the same mixed finishing across satin, polish, and sandblast, a flat sapphire crystal on top, and 100 meters of water resistance.

The taupe dials diverge more than the cases do. The 42mm gets the chequerboard treatment Hublot introduced on the Coal Blue collection earlier this year, alternating satin and polished squares in a weave pattern that creates a real three-dimensional texture. The sub-dials at three, six, and nine have snailed interiors. The 32mm takes a softer approach, with a sloping taupe flange and applied hour markers that extend out over the dial surface to suggest depth. Both versions have lumed hands and indices, and both have date windows.

The 42mm has the HUB4700, Hublot's El Primero-derived high-frequency automatic beating at 5Hz with a 50-hour power reserve and 1/10th second chronograph accuracy. The 32mm gets the HUB1120, a Sellita SW1000 base beating at 4Hz with a 40-hour reserve. Each watch ships with two interchangeable taupe straps via the One Click system, in high-tech fabric and rubber.

Both references are limited to 200 pieces each. The 42mm is priced at €24,300; the 32mm at €14,600. See more on the Hublot website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Mahjong, the Chinese tile game, is having a mainstream moment in the US. Online, you may have already seen ads for luxury designer sets; pricey instructor-training courses; and the new Hallmark movie, All’s Fair in Love & Mahjong, featuring a mostly non-Asian cast. Nicole Wong, author of Mahjong: House Rules from Across the Asian Diaspora and creator of The Mahjong Project, examines the growing divide between Asian diasporic communities—for whom mahjong is a cultural inheritance—and those who have newly embraced the game as a lifestyle trend, a demographic that skews largely white and female.

• What brings us to the desert, and what keeps us there? In this Offing essay, Zoe Kurland writes about the Marfa Lights Viewing Center, an unassuming roadside stop in West Texas where travelers hope to glimpse the mysterious Marfa lights over Mitchell Flat. More like an open-air church than a tourist attraction, the center has become something else for Kurland: a place of both “emptiness and promise,” of romantic encounters and quiet reckoning, where visitors become lovers and then disappear, and where she continues to wonder what exactly she’s looking for.

• Alessandra Ram is currently wrangling two babies in her household: a 10-month-old daughter and an LLM. For Wired, Ram writes a dispiriting yet sharp and funny piece about being to be married to someone who is the head of AI at a company. Spoiler: not so fun. Ram speaks with other “sad wives” like herself—women in relationships with “AI-pilled spouses” who are desperately trying to capitalize on this moment in tech.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

My new thing is to have YouTube documentaries playing in the background while I work. But be careful, some of these are so good you’ll just watch them through instead of writing this newsletter.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I haven’t heard from Isotope in a while, but I love it when I see their watches. So unique, so fun.

Smart starts here.

You don't have to read everything — just the right thing. 1440's daily newsletter distills the day's biggest stories from 100+ sources into one quick, 5-minute read. It's the fastest way to stay sharp, sound informed, and actually understand what's happening in the world. Join 4.5 million readers who start their day the smart way.

Join for free today!

In this issue

• Atelier Wen Releases The Third Generation Perception With A Huge Change To The Movement

• Bell & Ross Teams Up With The Patrouille de France Acrobatic Squadron On The New BR-X3

• Isotope Chronograph Compax Moonshot Horizon Gets A Cyan And Orange Combination

• Panerai Pays Tribute To Sailing Yacht Eilean With A 47mm Bronze Radiomir PAM00760

• Parmigiani Fleurier Launches The Tonda PF Chronograph in 18k Rose Gold and Mineral Blue

👂What’s new

1/

Atelier Wen Releases The Third Generation Perception With A Huge Change To The Movement

The Perception has always been a showcase for what Atelier Wen does best: Chinese traditional craft applied to a convincingly modern sports watch. The integrated design launched in 2022, the V2 sorted out the proportions, and now the V3 takes care of what was, according to some, the watch's weakest point. The Perception, and Atelier Wen as a whole, is all about identity. It was stared by two French men to showcase the best of Chinese manufacturing and artisanship. And yet, the movement they used in the first two generations was a stumbling stone for some. It was the Dandong Peacock, a decent movement in itself, but many expected something more special in a watch at that price. That’s fixed in this third version of the Perception, but with it comes a higher price tag.

The 904L stainless steel case hasn't changed, which is the right call given how good the V2 proportions are. It's 40mm wide, just over 10mm thick, and has a 47mm lug-to-lug. It wears incredibly nice on wrist The design language is also unchanged: curved flanks that reference pagoda rooflines, a polished concave bezel, large bevels down the sides. Water resistance stays at 100 meters. Three versions are available on the new version — the Ice-Blue Piao and Salmon Xia return from the previous generation with brushed and polished surfaces, while the new Bamboo Green Yun replaces those finishes with a micro-frosted effect that looks more matte. This is my absolute favorite, by far. The bracelet tapers from 22mm at the lugs to 18mm at the clasp, with a clever proprietary clasp system that includes a patent-pending micro-adjustment button and a telescopic deployant blade.

The rose-engine guilloché fish-scale dial is one of the better decorative dials in this price category — it's produced in China by hand, using genuine rose engines. Applied faceted hour markers sit in cutouts on the dial, and the chapter ring carries Super-LumiNova with a huiwen geometric pattern printed into it.

The calibre EPM03 is the biggest thing with the V3. Pequignet, based in Morteau near the Swiss border, is one of the last independent movement manufacturers in France, which makes sense for Atelier Wen to use — a further marrying of French and Chinese watchmaking. It beats at 4Hz and has a 65 hours of power reserve. Accuracy is certified to Besançon Observatory chronometer standards, targeting within ±2 seconds per day on average. It also gives the Perception its first hacking seconds, which was sorely missing from the Chinese movement. But even better than the stats of the movement is the incredible decoration. It has fan-shaped bridges filled with mirror-polished blue aventurine lacquer, which looks incredible, black-polished screws, laser-etched inscriptions, perlage, snailing on both the barrel and rotor. There's a full sapphire caseback now so you can actually see it, which the previous Perception didn't have.

The price jump from $3,320 to $4,850 will give some people pause, and it should. That's a significant increase. The thing is, I think it’s worth it. I had one on wrist in Geneva and I’ll write a full review this week. See more on the Atelier Wen website.

2/

Bell & Ross Teams Up With The Patrouille de France Acrobatic Squadron On The New BR-X3

The Patrouille de France collaboration has been a reliable Bell & Ross thread: the French aerobatic team's blue livery has prevously appeared on the BR-03 and BR-05 Chrono, and now it appears on the BR-X3, the brand's more recent and technical watch. Exactly something that pairs well with an acrobatic team.

The 41mm case keeps the familiar circle-within-a-square layout but pushes it further with a blue anodised aluminium bezel ring and matching side pillars, set against satin-finished and polished steel. Out back you’ll find a sapphire caseback featuring the Patrouille de France logo. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial has a three-part construction: a matte black base, blue and white skeletonised appliques, and a black upper insert. The multiple shades of blue track across the watch to match the team's Alpha Jets, helmets, and flight suits. A French tricolour power reserve display at 9 o'clock, the squadron insignia at 6, and a central seconds counterweight shaped like an Alpha Jet are all details that tie it specifically to the Patrouille de France. Super-LumiNova covers the hands, numerals, and indices.

Inside is the BR-CAL.323, developed by Kenissi for Bell & Ross. COSC-certified, with a 70-hour power reserve, it’s supposed to be a really nice movement. The watch ships with two straps: an openworked black rubber strap and a sky-blue synthetic fabric strap matching the team's flight suits.

The Bell & Ross BR-X3 Patrouille de France is limited to 250 pieces, priced at €7,900. See more on the Bell & Ross website.

3/

Isotope Chronograph Compax Moonshot Horizon Gets A Cyan And Orange Combination

The Moonshot platform has been one of the more interesting chronograph propositions to come out of the independent/microbrand space in recent years, and Isotope is now adding a limited new variant: the Chronograph Compax Moonshot Horizon. The core concept of the Moonshot — silver aluminium discs that partially obscure the chronograph sub-dials, revealing only what you need to read them — remains intact, and I still love them.

The case is 41mm wide and 15mm thick, machined from sandblasted Grade 5 titanium with an anti-fingerprint coating. The lug-to-lug measures 49.5mm. A double-domed sapphire crystal sits on top, and water resistance is 100 meters. Sitting below the crystal, but much above the dial, is a chapter ring with a telemeter and pulsometer case. The case comes paired with a new titanium bracelet fitted with a quick-release button system for strap changes; the bracelet tapers from 20mm to 18mm.

The dial is the major update we’re getting. A painted cyan-blue sunburst runs from bright cyan to deeper tones towards the edges, with orange rings framing the chronograph registers. The chapter ring has a turbine-style design with Super-LumiNova Grade X1. Isotope cites Moebius as visual reference for the aesthetic language, and once you know that, you can't unsee it: it's graphic, angular, and very deliberately not vintage. The Lacrima hands are also X1-treated.

Inside is either the ETA Valjoux 7753 or Swiss Landeron 73, both automatics beating at 28,800 vph with a 44-hour power reserve. This is a compax layout: small seconds at nine, 30-minute counter at three, 12-hour counter at six. The watch also comes with an orange FKM deployant strap as standard alongside the titanium bracelet.

The Isotope Chronograph Compax Moonshot Horizon is priced at £3,340 including taxes, limited to 30 pieces, and available as a pre-order now with delivery expected by end of June. See more on the Isotope website.

4/

Panerai Pays Tribute To Sailing Yacht Eilean With A 47mm Bronze Radiomir PAM00760

There's an old Panerai argument that goes: the Radiomir is the more serious watch, the Luminor is the showier one. The PAM00760 confirms that argument as it’s quite a serious watch. Built to mark both the 90th anniversary of the sailing yacht Eilean and its return to classic regatta racing, this watch connects two things Panerai has been associated with since the 1930s — the sea, and bronze. Marine equipment has used bronze for centuries because of how it behaves in saltwater, so it makes sense to use it here. The patina it will develop is a bonus.

The cushion case measures 47mm wide, which puts it firmly in the "commitment" category. This is a watch you decide to wear, and wear it proud. Because there’s not a cuff in the world that will hide it. It has a bronze middle case, polished wire lugs and the large onion crown that defines the Radiomir silhouette. Out back is a sapphire display caseback with a titanium surround. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The fumé green dial darkens toward the edges in a way that makes it look super mysterious, and the textured surface gives it a vintage look. Like so many Panerai, it uses a sandwich style dial, with cutouts for the hour markers and a lumed layer underneath. The hour and minute hands are done in blue and they are the only hands you have indicating time.

Inside is the calibre P.3000, Panerai's hand-wound in-house movement, with twin barrels giving it 72 hours of power reserve and running at 21,600vph. It's a big, purposeful movement, and I wouldn’t call it exactly beautiful. The watch comes on a brown calf leather strap with beige stitching and a matching bronze pin buckle.

The Panerai Radiomir Bronzo PAM00760 is priced at €19,500 and is available now. See more on the Panerai website.

5/

Parmigiani Fleurier Launches The Tonda PF Chronograph in 18k Rose Gold and Mineral Blue

The Tonda PF collection launched in 2021 with two chronographs that made a strong argument for Parmigiani Fleurier as a serious player in the integrated sports watch segment. The case design was clean, the movement was serious, and the collection has been building momentum ever since, most recently with the Chronograph Mystérieux unveiled at Watches & Wonders 2026. Perhaps the best watch of the show. Now the 40mm no-date version of their regular chronograph, which debuted in steel last year, gets a 18k rose gold case with a Mineral Blue dial.

The case is 40mm wide and 12.72mm thick, made out of rose gold, with the knurled bezel and teardrop-shaped pushers and lugs that define the Tonda PF family. A screw-down crown provides 100 meters of water resistance. Finishing is just fantastic Parmigiani: satin-brushed on the case flanks and bracelet inner links, polished on the crown, pushers, and bracelet outer links. The result is a watch that doesn't shout but has a lot going on up close.

The Mineral Blue dial is now already a cult dial for the brand, and I love it. While I prefer the color in a matte finish, this one has a hand-guilloché barleycorn pattern that must look fantastic in real life. Like I said, there’s no date aperture, and the chronograph counters sit at 9 and 3 o'clock, with a small seconds at 6, all with smooth sandblasted rings and white inscriptions against the grain d'orge background. Like other Parmigiani watches, there’s not a lot of lume here. The delta-shaped openworked hands and applied indices are rose gold, while the chronograph hands are rose gold-plated steel.

Inside is the PF070 calibre, shared with the 42mm version. It beats at 5Hz, measures 6.95mm thick, is COSC chronometer-certified, and offers 65 hours of power reserve via a column wheel and vertical clutch. The caseback opens to a 22k rose gold rotor with hand-bevelled edges. The watch comes on an integrated rose gold bracelet.

The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Chronograph in rose gold is priced at CHF 70,000, which is more than double the steel version. But have you seen the price of gold lately? See more on the Parmigiani website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• A white cat, a fortune, a vanished will, and a legend’s afterlife in speculation: Karl Lagerfeld’s Choupette sits at the center of a story that is part fashion fable, part legal mystery, and part media mirage. As rumors swirl over who inherits what, the real question is whether anyone can ever fully own the myth.

• A company that once taught the internet how to go viral is now trying to outgrow the very platforms that made it famous. With BuzzFeed teetering on the edge, the outgoing CEO Jonah Peretti is betting that AI, direct audiences, and a new media bargain can still rewrite the rules — but can a brand built for the feed survive after the feed stops paying?

• A birding cruise became a floating quarantine when a death at sea turned into a hantavirus outbreak, forcing passengers from remote islands into isolation and confusion. As the Hondius sailed from wildlife wonder to medical crisis, the question sharpened: how did a trip built around remote beauty become a lesson in how quickly dread travels?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Please, share this newsletter with your friends so that we can turn it into a global media empire and I can buy this Kimera? Please?

Thanks for reading,
Vuk