In its 60th anniversary year, Corum caused quite a surprise at Baselworld 2015 by introducing a series of quartz watches, vastly extending the price range of its watches. Another significant move was the return to the nautical pennant hour markers that have become one of the brand’s distinctive characteristics. This tourbillon watch, made to celebrate…
We were used to seeing this watch in the green and yellow scheme designed especially for brand ambassador Yohan Blake, second fastest man in the world after fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt. The Richard Mille RM 61-01 Yohan Blake Monochrome has been given a black and white colour scheme, and it is a limited edition of…
Company profile: A racing machine on the wrist. Richard Mille’s advertising slogan summarizes his approach to watchmaking: miniaturized, high-technology watches made using materials borrowed from sports and aerospace, in small numbers, at very high prices. He caters for that small – but growing – percentage of people for whom a purchase of a couple of…
Apple’s ambitions to enter the luxury sector with its Apple watch, one of the versions of which has a gold case like a traditional high-end watch, seems to have got the classic watch brands thinking. The quartz crisis is still a painful memory, and its destruction of about two-thirds of Switzerland’s watchmaking companies was due…
The Pilot Type 20 GMT by Zenith was originally presented in the black-dial version in 2013, and the brand is currently promoting a boutique edition of this model, along with another two watches (El Primero Chronomaster Power Reserve, and Elite Power Reserve). They all have a distinctive blue dial design, and a 150th anniversary transparent…
At Baselworld 2015, Richard Mille presented just two watches, both for women, the Tourbillon Fleur and the RM 51-02 Tourbillon Diamond Twister, saying that more new pieces would be presented later in the year, in order to keep the right sort of attention on the watches. The RM 055 Bubba Watson Boutique Edition is one…
This watch, released last year for the anniversary of the start of the Great War, celebrates World War I French air ace Georges Guynemer, and it shares a lot with the earliest aviation watches. The Bell & Ross Vintage WW1 Guynemer is the wrist-watch version of their 2011 Pocket Watch 1, which has a 49…
Some fashion brands make interesting watches. Some make watches that are totally uninteresting. Some make fashion watches that don’t have much to say in themselves but that could indicate a future trend, because that’s what fashion brands do – like a radio telescope, they pick up the faint signals arriving from a distant civilization, namely…
In their WW1 (Wrist Watch 1) collection, Bell & Ross produce their tributes to the earliest aviation watches, and this piece has some characteristics of the early pilot’s watches and the 1909 Zenith that probably initiated the style. With those precedents, it shares the numeral design, and the welded wire lugs. This piece is one of…
For a brand like Bell & Ross, carbon is certainly the way to go, with its tough and sporty appeal, and its links to motor racing and aeronautics – it is a material used in the fuselage of modern fighter aircraft. You could describe this piece as a souped-up, body-built version of the BR-01, with…
True to their tried and trusted formula, Bell & Ross have designed a military version of the BR 03 Ceramic, giving it a khaki dial with a matt black ceramic strap, and a khaki canvas strap. Add a Sellita movement, and voilà, you have the BR 03 Military Type. Case and dial The dial has…
Three years ago, the Bell & Ross Vintage Sport Heritage paid tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Dassault Falcon business jet. This year, Bell & Ross feature another Dassault aircraft, the multi-role fighter jet Rafale, with its chronograph BR 03-94 Rafale. Like all Bell & Ross watches, the concept that the designers want to…
Company profile: Bell & Rossi is a company with head office in Paris, and manufacturing facility in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. It was founded in 1992 by French-Swiss designer Bruno Belamich, who had studied at the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, in Paris, and entrepreneur Carlos A. Rosillo, who had studied at the HEC (École…
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the BR 01, an iconic piece for Bell & Ross, and one that has spawned 150 different models and 50 limited editions. Ten years ago, the BR 01 was inspired by aeronautical instruments and their simplicity and legibility, and Bell & Ross have reaped their rewards. The BR…
This limited-edition watch by De Bethune has a very theatrical presence, with the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl at the centre of the dial, indicating hours with its head, and minutes with its tail. The remarkable thing is that whatever the time, the coiled snake looks perfectly realistic, with no awkward joints. The hour markers are also…
A watch with a moon phase indicator is a very familiar pattern, but Moongarden by Montblanc does something different. It also displays the name of each month’s full moon name, from Ice moon and Snow moon through to Harvest, Hunter and Oak moon (scroll down to read all the lunar month names and meanings). So…
The Montblanc Bohème Day & Night is a 34 mm watch (the first watch of this size in the Bohème collection) in steel, 9.53 mm in thickness, with a bezel set with 72 top Wesselton diamonds. The caseback has a transparent sapphire window revealing the movement; the crown is in stainless steel, with the Montblanc…
Speedometer Official is a brand based in Turin, making a variety of products inspired by Rolex watches. Apparently, while Rolex have many patents on their watches, they don’t have one for the two-colour rotating ceramic bezel that has become an immediately-recognisable feature. And so Speedometer Official was able to transfer the design into fashion accessories,…
This watch by De Bethune, presented at Baselworld 2015, has a lot of the classic De Bethune features, in part because it is an anniversary piece, marking ten years from their first DBS made for the 2005 Only Watch charity auction. The new DBS Tourbillon retains some of the features of the original, such as…
Company profile: De Bethune was founded in 2002 by Denis Flageollet, a fourth-generation watchmaker, and David Zanetta, a specialist in antique watches and clocks and an adviser for collectors. Like Michel Parmigiani, Flageollet gained a vast heritage of skill from his work restoring antique timepieces, in this case at the Le Locle watch museum. The…