Hublot launches its fourth ode to the Swiss ski resort town of Zermatt and the nearby Matterhorn with the new Big Bang Zermatt. The debut is actually two watches, each with a stone-like dial that features an engraved depiction of the Matterhorn.
Both watches are cased in steel and each features a sunray finished dial that Hublot says will reflect light onto the depiction of the Alp “like the faces of the Matterhorn under the continuously shifting sun.”
For the larger (44mm) watch of the duo, Hublot places the Matterhorn at the 9 o’clock position. Hublot shifts the Alp to the 3 o’clock position on the smaller (41mm) model, which also boasts a diamond bezel that might be said to mimic ice on the mountain. The smaller model also includes diamond markers.
Hublot carefully polishes each watch’s steel case with alternating polished and satin-finished surfaces in order to echo the look of schist, the stone similar to slate that forms a large part of the Matterhorn.
Both Big Bang Zermatt watches are powered by a Hublot automatic chronograph movement. The larger model ($15,100) is fit with Caliber HUB 4100 while the smaller, diamond-set edition ($19,100) is powered by HUB4300.
Both watches are water resistant to 100 meters. Hublot provides two nubuck straps: the first in slate grey, the second in snow white, in a tribute to the winter colors of Zermatt.
Within its LVMH Watch Week 2023 debut collection, TAG Heuer celebrates the six-decade anniversary of its Carrera with the new Carrera Chronograph 60th Anniversary, a 600-piece edition with a retro black and silver ‘panda’ dial.
The new TAG Heuer Carrera Chronograph 60th Anniversary
In addition, the Le Locle watchmaker launchesa colorful Monza Flyback Chronometer ($13,850), reprises its light-powered TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph ($3,050) and expands its Connected smartwatch collection.
The new light-powered TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph.
The new TAG Heuer Monza Flyback Chronometer.
Below, we’ll look at the new Carrera celebratory debut. Look to upcoming posts for details about the new Monza Flyback, the Aquaracer Solargraph and the Connected debuts.
New Carrera
Since its debut in 1963, the Carrera has been a Heuer and TAG Heuer mainstay, representing the watchmaker’s deep connections to auto racing. By the late 1960s, Heuer offered the stylish Carrera reference 2447 SN with a either a silvered dial and black subdials, or the other way around, a design known respectively as ‘panda’ and ‘reverse panda’.
To celebrate Carrera’s sixty-year history, TAG Heuer’s new Carrera Chronograph 60th Anniversary reinterprets the original ‘panda’ version of the watch with a limited edition that mimics the original in faithful detail.
The colors on the new edition are the same as the original, as are the black stripes down the central hands and hour markers, the double stops at 12, and the black counters with high-contrast white markings. Retro-fans will enjoy the vintage Heuer logowith the Carrera monicker above it. Even the counter at 6 o’clock features the ‘Swiss’ rather than the modern ‘Swiss Made’.
Differences on the dial can be seen in the 60-minute and 12-hour counters, which here are reversed. In addition, you’ll not find the tritium indication (the letter T) on the dial for obvious reasons.
TAG Heuer has protected the dial with a 39mm polished steel case and a glass box sapphire crystal. This retro style is underscored by the watch’s vintage pushers, beige luminescence and thin tension ring around the dial’s outer edge.
Inside, TAG Heuer fits its excellent Heuer 02, an in-house automatic chronograph caliber with a column-wheel and an eighty-hour power reserve. The modern caliber is also displayed in a contemporary manner with a clear sapphire caseback that reveals a special Carrera 60th Anniversary rotor.
TAG Heuer notes that this Carrera Chronograph 60th Anniversary is the first watch in planned series of releases to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Carrera.
Focusing on its contemporary Defy collection for early 2023, Zenith this week adds new 36mm and skeleton models to its hot new Defy Skyline series while also introducing a new Defy Extreme design.
Two of the new Zenith Defy Skyline Skeleton models pictured alongside an existing Defy Skyline.
Defy Skyline Skeleton
Introduced last year, the 41mm Defy Skyline has become a strong-selling steel bracelet design for Zenith. The watch, with its constantly running 1/10th of a second counter at 9 o’clock (completing one revolution every ten seconds) introduced El Primero 3620, a new iteration of its El Primero 3600, which headlined the debut of the Zenith Chronomaster Sport in 2021.
The new Zenith Defy Skyline Skeleton, in blue.
As Zenith explains, this automatic manufacture movement drives the 1/10th of a second hand directly from the escapement, which beats at 36,000 VpH, thus making it a “natural fraction-of-a-second indication.”
With the new Defy Skyline Skeleton Zenith adds two versions of the steel watch with a skeletonized symmetric dial that looks much like four-pointed stars. Zenith notes that the open-work here is a direct reference to a Zenith “double Z” logo of the 1960s.
You may recall that the Defy Skyline’s faceted bezel is also meant to recall early 1960s eight-sided Defy models that have been now reimagined with twelve sides, each positioned as extensions to the hour markers.
Blue or black
Defying the typical hard-to-read skeleton dial design, Zenith purposefully applied a generous amount of SuperLuminova to the Skyline Skeleton’s applied baton hour markers and its central hour and minute hands.
Zenith offers the new skeleton design in a black or blue hue. The same color can be found on the main plate as well as the bridges and open star-shaped oscillating weight, visible from the back.
As usual, Zenith mixes its finishes, applying matte, satin-brushed and polished surfaces to the steel case and bezel. Its efficient automatic bi-directional winding mechanism with a star-shaped rotor delivers a power reserve of approximately sixty hours. The Defy’s steel bracelet can be swapped with the supplied rubber strap and steel folding clasp the boasts a starry sky pattern, matching the dial.
Price: $11,000
Defy Skyline 36mm
Also new in 2023 is a slightly smaller Skyline model, which debuts in three new pastel colors, each offered with or without a diamond bezel.
Unlike the 41mm debut edition Skyline and the new Skeleton version, this unisex example is a traditional time-and-date model fitted with a Zenith Elite movement that doesn’t include the one-tenth-of-a-second subdial at 6 o’clock.
Price: $8,500 (no diamonds) and $12,000 (with diamonds).
One of the new Zenith Defy Skyline 36 models. The series is available with and without a diamond bezel.
Zenith also adds a Boutique Edition to the lineup of the original 41mm model offerings. This model features a contrasting color scheme with rose gold highlights. Zenith has engraved the watch’s anthracite dial with a rose gold motif and added rose gold hands and hour markers.
The new Zenith Defy Skyline Boutique Edition.
The intent, according to Zenith, is to mimic the night sky and its twinkling stars. To do this, artisans have engraved the Skyline’s characteristicfour-pointed star dial pattern and then plated it with rose gold.
Zenith will deliver the watch on a steel bracelet with a satin-brushed surface and chamfered and polished edges. An easy-change black rubber strap with a starry sky pattern is also provided.
Price: $8,400.
Defy Extreme Glacier
Zenith also adds the Defy Extreme Glacier in 2023 as an extension of its rugged 45mm titanium-cased Defy Extreme collection, a series that boasts a 1/100-of-a-second El Primero chronograph.
The new Zenith Defy Extreme Glacier boasts a chalcedony dodecagonal outer bezel and pusher protectors.
More specifically, the new watch is meant to complement the Defy Extreme Desert from 2021. While that watch was designed to echo hot and arid conditions, the new model is inspired by frozen landscapes and built with a chalcedony dodecagonal outer bezel and pusher protectors.
Chalcedony is a crystalline semi-translucent stone with a pale blue color meant to look like a frozen glacier. Zenith says each stone is cut and polished by hand, and because each exhibits slightly different colors and fibers, every bezel from the fifty-piece limited edition will appear slightly different on each of the fifty examples of the Defy Extreme Glacier.
Zenith continues the ice-cold theme by making the chronograph counters using transparent sapphire crystal that’s also given a terrific frosted finish to look icy and to allow light to pass through.
Through the frosted finish the wearer will see an El Primero 9004 high-frequency chronograph movement, found in all the Defy Extreme models. The movement offers 1/100th-of-a -second time measurements with two independent escapements. One beats at 5Hz (36,000 VpH) for timekeeping while the second vibrates at 50Hz (360,000 VpH) to activate the chronograph function. Zenith makes the nicely finished movement, a certified chronometer, visible through the sapphire display back.
Zenith finishes the watch with a black Velcro strap and white rubber strap, which can be easily swapped with the titanium bracelet using Zenith’s quick strap-change mechanism.
As noted, Zenith will offer the Defy Extreme Glacier as a limited edition of fifty pieces, available exclusively at Zenith stores and online boutiques.
Bell & Ross’s Carlos Rosillo and Bruno Belamich have teamed with watch design legend Alain Silberstein to create a trio of watches that combine Silberstein’s colorful shapes with a black ceramic version of Belamich’s aviation-inspired square Bell & Ross BR 03 design.
All three watches use the now more common, smaller version of the BR 03 case. While the original BR 01 measured 46mm × 46mm, most recent BR 03 collections measure 42mm × 42mm, the size of each model in the new Grail Watch collection.
Notably, none of the watches features a brand logo.
“We decided to simply use the ampersand that already features prominently in our brand name, because what better symbol for a collaboration between equals could you imagine?” says Belamich.
“With the chronograph, Carlos explained that the seconds hand was by far the largest one ever fitted to one of their watches, and we had to ensure the reset function worked perfectly each and every time so it would align exactly at zero,” Silberstein adds.
“With the diving watch, we had to make sure these huge oversized hands were as light as possible, so they wouldn’t affect the overall precision of the movement. And then to make a two-color ceramic bezel was a major challenge.”
The Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03-92 Marine 22, showing large hands.
Time & Date
The first watch in the trio, the Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03-92 Klub 22, is a time-only model on a matte black ceramic case and jet-black dial.
The Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03-92 Klub 22.
Silberstein’s massive hand design creates a playful dial while as a large blue arrow indicates minutes and an S-shaped yellow form indicates the seconds.
The dial is interrupted only by the subtle date indicator. The watch features an automatic movement caliber BR.CAL-302 with date function. Priced at $4,400, it will be made in 200 examples.
The Dive Watch
The Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03-92 Marine 22, the second model in the trio, is a re-imagined dive model.
The Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03-92 Marine 22.
Here Silberstein applies his “Maxi’ hands, which include a blue circular hours hand and a large red arrow. While both hands are liberally coated with luminescent material, the minute hand is particularly visible due to its critical elapsed dive time function.
To that end, the designer created a specialized two-tone ceramic bezel with the final twenty minutes of the insert colored red and a full set of 20-minute markers with luminous indexes.
The Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03-92 Marine 22 diver model is depth rated to 300 meters, features a screw-down crown and is powered by caliber BR.CAL-302, the same automatic movement with date function used in the time only model. It will be made in a series of 100 examples. Price: $5,600.
The Chronograph
The third model in the series is the Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03 Krono 22, a chronograph with five of Silberstein’s famous Bauhaus-inspired hands.
The Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03 Krono 22.
The hours are indicated by red circle with a blue arrow showing the minutes. Here, a yellow S-shaped hand serves as the chronograph seconds indicator while a blue triangle serves as the indicator for the chronograph 30-minute counter and a yellow arrow displays continuous seconds.
Unlike the other two debuts, this model offers a crown that features Silberstein’s signature red triangle.
The Bell & Ross x Alain Silberstein BR 03 Krono 22 is powered by the caliber BR.CAL-301 automatic chronograph movement with date. Made in 100 examples, the watch is priced at $6,700.
Grail Watch is offering watches numbered 1 to 50 as a box set of all three timepieces, which will arrive in a Silberstein-designed collector’s box. Price for the set: $16,700.
Porsche Design launches a special edition of its Chronograph 1 to commemorate the brand’s fourth year as timing partner of the GP Ice Race in Austria.
The 250-piece limited-edition echoes the original Chronograph 1 from 1972, which is often considered the first all-black chronograph.
The new Porsche Design Chronograph 1 – GP Ice Race 2023 Edition.
The new Chronograph 1 – GP Ice Race 2023 Edition, like the original watch, delivers the appearance of a Porsche 911 dashboard to the wrist, complete with luminescent hour markers and a matte-black dial.
But on the new watch Porsche Design updates certain details, such as using a pointed minute hand and red chronograph hands. The minute hand on the original model was rectangular while the chronograph hands on that 1972 edition were white.
Also reflecting moderntechnology, Porsche Design builds the new watch with antireflective, scratch-resistant sapphire crystal and an uncoated, 40.8mm lightweight silver titanium case.
Inside the watchmaker fits its excellent COSC-certified WERK 01.240 caliber with flyback function that powers a quick-switch date display and a bilingual day display. Porsche Design has engraved the edition number and the unusual GP logo on the caseback. The logo, which depicts Yeti sitting on a tractor, is unique to this limited edition.
Porsche Design also provides two bracelet options: a textile variant and a classic black version made of vehicle leather and with a matte-black titanium folding clasp.
The Porsche Design Chronograph 1 – GP Ice Race 2023 Edition can be ordered at the Porsche Design website and in Porsche Design Stores. Price: $9,650.
Both watches are water resistant to 100 meters. Hublot provides two nubuck straps: the first in slate grey, the second in snow white, in a tribute to the winter colors of Zermatt. 
Zenith also adds a Boutique Edition to the lineup of the original 41mm model offerings. This model features a contrasting color scheme with rose gold highlights. Zenith has engraved the watch’s anthracite dial with a rose gold motif and added rose gold hands and hour markers.
The dial is interrupted only by the subtle date indicator. The watch features an automatic movement caliber BR.CAL-302 with date function. Priced at $4,400, it will be made in 200 examples.
To that end, the designer created a specialized two-tone ceramic bezel with the final twenty minutes of the insert colored red and a full set of 20-minute markers with luminous indexes.
