Sometimes you see a watch and you think, wow! Now that is really something special. That’s what I thought when I first saw the Perrelet Lab, a new watch that will reach boutiques in November 2016. What’s so special about Lab? Well, Perrelet have taken their hallmark motif, the dial-side rotor, and made it…
Perrelet’s hallmark is the dial-side rotor, connected to the oscillating weight on the movement side. It highlights part of the movement that is generally left on the sidelines, the rotor that powers the automatic winding system. This is not surprising, because Abraham-Louis Perrelet completed his first self-winding movement in 1777. The First Class Double Rotor…
MB&F developed their HMX watch for 2015, their tenth anniversary. It has an innovative system of displaying the time, with rotating discs on top of the movement whose image is reflected through 90° so that it can be seen on the front of the watch where it is magnified by crystal prisms. The result is…
Glashütte is a small German town with a large number of watch manufacturers working independently one from another, but bound together by the town’s turbulent history. Their shared DNA can often be seen in certain design characteristics that go beyond just the words “Glashütte” and “Made in Germany,” and lots of umlauts. The Robert Mühle…
Mühle-Glashütte specialize in nautical instruments, and even their everyday watches reveal this influence. The 29er Zeigerdatum is named after a class of racing dinghies, and its colours and textile strap give it a distinctly nautical appearance. Instead of a date window, this model has the banker’s date layout, with a crescent-shaped hand. Hour and minute…
The ProMare Lady is Mühle-Glashütte’s first watch made for women, but it’s for tough women. With respect to the ProMare Datum, the case is smaller and slimmer at 39 mm, 10.6 mm thickness, in stainless steel with polished and satin finish. The crown protector creates a distinctive motif, and colours are restricted to the delicate…
The Teutonia III Handaufzug Kleine Sekunde by Mühle-Glashütte is a very classical men’s watch, with the fluted bezel, chemin de fer minute track and small seconds subdial that give it an unmistakable historical look. The enamel dial is made with five successive layers of lacquer, each carefully polished. The blued Breguet hands coordinate with the…
This three-hand watch by Mühle-Glashütte is just that, a three-hand watch, but it has something extra: 300 metres water resistance, waterproof to the same degree as diving watches. This makes the ProMare Datum very tough and ready for any outdoor adventures. The hour and minute hands, and the hour indices, are coated in SuperLuminova for…
The ProMare range by Mühle-Glashütte is an interesting combination of non-specific sporty looks and a 300-metre water resistance that is one of the principal characteristics of a diver’s watch. This Mühle-Glashütte ProMare Chronograph has the trendy black and orange colour scheme that is strongly present on the market today (as in IWC’s Santoni straps) and…
A brief description of Fortis, founded in Grenchen in 1912, famous for its robust timepieces, some of which have gone into space.
What colour do you paint an aircraft cockpit? For many years, Boeing chose brown, presumably because according to their research this colour was the most relaxing for crews. More recently they have returned to grey cockpits, like most other Western-made aircraft, while Soviet-era Russian and Eastern European aircraft had blueish-green cockpits. In any case, “Boeing…
Company profile: Junghans was founded in 1861 in Schramberg, Germany, in the Black Forest region, by Erhard Junghans and his brother-in-law Jakob Zeller-Tobler. Initially they were manufacturing components for Black Forest clocks, such as cases, hands, hinges, pendulums and so forth. They began making their own clocks in 1866, using principally movements made in the…
Like the Fortis Flieger Professional reference 704.21.11, this piece is a new model in the extensive Fortis range of pilot’s watches, with a 43mm case and sapphire caseback. The dial is laid out with simplicity and logic, with chronograph seconds hand and the subdial hands for minutes and hours in orange. The case has a…
Fortis has a long history of professional flying watches. The Flieger Professional has a 41mm case with areas of polished and satin-finish steel, a crown with a new logo, anti-reflective watchglass and sapphire caseback. The dial has a degree of three-dimensionality, with a slightly depressed ring with the seconds scale. Numerals, hour markers and hands…
A watch with a genuine period flavour can look impressive and has the advantage that it can never go out of style… it’s already out of style by definition. This sort of operation can produce excellent results in terms of sales, as demonstrated by watches such as the IWC Portugieser Hand-Wound Eight Days edition, launched…
This pilot’s watch by German brand Junghans has a world of character. It’s totally pilot’s in its looks, but it’s different from any other pilot’s watch. It incorporates a lot of the brand’s history, with the movement named after its own in-house J88 chronograph movement designed in 1949, and the unusual twelve-sided bezel derived directly…
The ALT1-Z chronograph with GMT function has been part of the Bremont collection since 2007. This year, the design of the piece has been revised, with applied hour indices, and the 24-hour scale moved to the inner bezel. As the bezel has Bremont’s Roto-Click bi-directional inner bezel, operated using the crown at 8 o’clock, the…
The Bremont ALT1-C/PB is an extension of Bremont’s core range, and in particular its ALT1-C range of chronograph watches, which were the first that the company designed after its foundation in 2002. The dial layout is classic, with two subdials, one on the left for continuous seconds, one on the right for 30 chronograph minutes. On its…
The Solo family represents the entry-level for Bremont pilot’s watches. It has now been extended with these two classic pilot’s watches, with black or white dial. The difference with respect to the existing Solo pieces is the case and bezel, now available in polished steel. The Solo case is in steel that is specially hardened…
These watches were born from popular request. Bremont received feedback that women liked their classic pilots watches and so they have now introduced three 32mm models specifically for the female audience. As is customary for the British brand, no compromise: mechanical movements, COSC chronometer certification that guarantees precision, hardened steel case with excellent toughness and…