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Alpina

Alpina Goes on Tour 

Alpina’s new Alpiner Extreme Automatic Freeride World Tour 2023 is the official tour watch of the Freeride World Tour (FWT), a five-stage skiing and snowboarding competition.

Alpina’s new Alpiner Extreme Automatic Freeride World Tour 2023.

Available this year within Alpina’s full collection, the 41mm by 42.5mm cushion-case watch (with a round bezel) proudly displays the Tour’s logo on the existing Alpiner Extreme patterned dial.

 

The pattern itself mimics Alpina’s own triangle logo, a natural tie-in to the Freeride World Tour and one that echoes the Alpine summits for which the brand is named. Alpina’s long-standing red triangle seconds-hand counterweight just underscores the Alpina-FWT partnership.

Alpina sun-brushes the steel case and attaches it to the wrist with a black rubber strap. The crown is located at 3 o’clock and has been fit with a rubber grip for ease of use even if the owner is wearing ski gloves. Inside, Alpina places its automatic caliber AL-525, a Sellita-based movement  beating at 4Hz (28,800 vph), which is visible through the sapphire caseback. 

Price: $1,895

Specifications: Alpina Alpiner Extreme Automatic Freeride World Tour 2023

Movement: Automatic Sellita-based AL-525 caliber, 38-hour power-reserve, 28,800 alt/h.

Case: 41mm by 42.5mm by 11.5mm brushed and polished stainless steel 3-part, anti-reflective sapphire crystal, water-resistant to 200m, engraved and see-through screwed case-back, screw-in crown. 

Dial: Black with triangle pattern, Freeride World Tour logo, black outer ring with white markers, applied silver color indexes filled with white luminous treatment, date window, hand-polished silver color hour and minute hands filled with white luminous treatment, polished silver-color second hand with red triangle. 

Bracelet: Black rubber strap, folding buckle with push button.

Price: $1,895

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American Brands

Accutron and Bulova Revive Space Age Designs 

Accutron and Bulova celebrate their shared history with NASA and the U.S. Space Program by launching the Accutron Astronaut and Bulova Lunar Pilot, each inspired by vintage Space Age designs.

The new Accutron Astronaut

NASA worked closely with Accutron to devise timekeepers for watches, instrumental panel clocks and internal mechanisms integral to the numerous missions into space starting in the mid-1950s through the 1970s.

Similarly, Bulova watches were worn by astronauts and pilots in the same era. On August 2, 1971, Apollo 15’s mission commander made lunar history while wearing a Bulova chronograph.

An Accutron and NASA 60-minute timer from the 1960s space program.

Accutron Astronaut

Referencing the 1968 “T” version of its Astronaut model, Accutron now relaunches the model with an update that specifically highlights the watch’s distinctive day/night bezel. The new 41mm steel-cased Accutron Astronaut is the first re-edition in what Accutron says will be “an exciting new series of Accutron Astronaut timepieces.”

The new model offers a vintage-perfect double box sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating, but updates the movement with a Sellita SW330 GMT automatic caliber that, in another update, is partially exposed via an exhibition case back.

Accutron fits the watch with a ‘bullet’ steel bracelet. The Accutron Astronaut is a limited edition of 300 pieces. Price: $3,500.

Bulova Lunar Pilot 

With two new Lunar Pilot watches, Bulova expands its popular Archive Series with genuine vintage-sized replicas of the Bulova watch worn on the Moon. You might recall the first (and very successful) watch in the series, the 50th Anniversary Lunar Pilot Limited Edition, a 45mm model which Bulova in 2021 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 15 mission.

The new Bulova Lunar Pilot, with black dial.

For the latest model, the case size remains surprisingly contemporary, measuring a full 43.5mm in diameter. 

Bulova is offering the new watch with either a black dial (like the original) or a with a sporty two-tone blue and white chronograph dial.

The new Bulova Lunar Pilot, with blue and white dial.

Bulova fits both models the brand’s proprietary NP20 High Precision Quartz (HPQ) chronograph movement accurate to 1/20th second.

Both watches are available on steel bracelets and each also arrives with a matching leather strap.

Bulova connects the black-dialed edition with a black leather strap and offers a blue leather strap with the two-tone chronograph. Both straps are attached to the wrist with latched spring bars for interchangeability with the bracelet as desired. Price: $895.

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The Watches

Piaget Launches Polo Perpetual 

Piaget launches the Polo Perpetual Calendar Ultra-thin, the watchmaker’s first perpetual calendar placed within its 42mm Polo case.

The new Piaget Polo Perpetual Calendar Ultra-thin.

While we’ve seen chronographs and skeletonized models within the watchmaker’s Polo collection, and watches with tourbillons and minute repeaters within the larger Polo Emperador cases, the new watch marks a first for the modern Polo case, and a premiere for what we’re hoping will be a series of perpetual calendar offerings within the pure Polo collection.

Powered by the new 1255P caliber, the thin watch (8.65mm) is the latest in an impressive collection of Piaget watches powered by variations within the 1200P caliber family, a series that itself stems from the famed micro-rotor caliber 12P, which in 1960 was the thinnest automatic caliber on the market.

In its new guise as a perpetual calendar, the caliber advances the day, date, and year (until the year 2100), months, moon phases and leap-year cycle.

Piaget launches the Polo Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin with an eye-catching dark emerald-green patterned dial with and three displays for the date, month (along with leap-year indication) and weekday at 9, 12 and 3 o’clock, along with the moonphase indication at 6 o’clock.

The dial’s horizontal line pattern continues a Polo dial tradition that also finds varying finishes within the four subdials. Note that the lines on the dial also appear as links on the steel bracelet.

New here is a Piaget interchangeable SingleTouch system for the bracelet that allows the wearer to easily change it and attach the included rubber strap.

Price: $58,500.

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The Watches

Maurice Lacroix Launches Aikon #tide Mahindra

Maurice Lacroix merges its ongoing role as the official timer of Mahindra Racing with its eco-friendly Aikon #tide collection to launch the Aikon #tide Mahindra. 

The new Maurice Lacroix Aikon #tide Mahindra.

Like all Aikon #tide models, the new 40mm quartz watch is made from ocean-bound upcycled plastic, but here it is also dressed in the race team’s red colors while also displaying the Mahindra Racing logo and the date on the textured black dial.

Maurice Lacroix colors the bezel in Mahindra red, a bright racing hue that nicely contrasts with the black rubber strap with the Maurice Lacroix ‘M’ logo on it in red.

The watchmaker supplies a second strap in red rubber with black accents. And as always for this brand, wearers can quickly change straps using Maurice Lacroix’s Easy Strap Exchange system, which requires no tools.

Mahindra Racing is a founding team in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship. The race team actively promotes EV technology, which meshes nicely with Aikon #tide message of eco-friendly watchmaking.

As Maurice Lacroix notes, one Aikon #tide watch and its packaging requires seventeen upcycled plastic bottles, which means seventeen fewer bottles polluting the ocean. 

Price: $850

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The Watches

Bell & Ross Bronzes its Cyber Skull 

Bell & Ross adds a new watch to its Skull collection with the BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze, an updated edition of the contemporary design made with sharper edges and more light-reflecting facets.

The new Bell & Ross BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze.

The new watch echoes the now sold-out 2020 Cyber Skull, but with an avant-garde twist that combines ceramic, sapphire crystal and bronze. Its gold-colored skull tops a Bell & Ross BR-CAL.210 manual-wind automaton caliber. When the wearer turns the crown, the jawbone moves as if the skull is speaking.

The skull itself is inserted between two sapphire crystal plates as if floating in the center of the 45mm x 46.7mm case.

Held with four femur-shaped supports, the skull covers much of the skeletonized movement. However, as with the earlier Cyber Skull model, the watch’s balance wheel becomes the visible ‘brains’ of the skull while a few winding gears remain in sight on the dial side. Most of the finely-cut movement is fully visible via the watch’s clear sapphire back.

Bell & Ross notes that as a bronze-cased watch, its appearance will change slightly as it is worn and develops a patina. This means each piece of the 500-piece limited edition will take on a unique bronze tone, depending on the wearer’s own body chemistry.

The new watch continues a long-running Bell & Ross concept that started in 2009 with the BR 01 Skull. The watchmaker has introduced several BR 01 Skull and BR 01 Laughing Skull models in the years since, including a bronze BR 01 Skull in 2015. A year later, Bell & Ross added a tourbillon to the BR 01 Skull Bronze in a unique-piece that sold during the Only Watch charity watch auction that year. In 2017, Bell & Ross introduced its first 3D skull with the BR 01 Burning Skull Bronze. 

Bell & Ross is making the BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze as a limited edition of 500 pieces. Price: $11,400.

 

Specifications: Bell & Ross BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze 

Movement: Manufacture BR-CAL.210 hand-wound mechanical. 

Functions: hours and minutes. Moving skull jawbone when wound by hand. 

Case: 45 mm x 46.7 mm. 13.70 mm thick. Satin-finished and polished CuSn8 bronze. Sapphire and CuAI7Si2 bronze caseback. 

Dial: Skeletonized. Rose gold-plated brass skull (or bronze-colored skull). Gilt metal skeletonized SuperLumiNova- filled hour and minute hands. Balance at 12 o’clock. Sapphire crystal; water resistant to 50 meters. 

Strap: Black rubber with satin-finished and polished CuAI7Si2 bronze pin.  

Price: $11,400. 

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