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Oris Re-Launches Groundbreaking Dual-Timer

Oris revives its Full Steel Worldtimer with the new Hölstein Edition 2022, a dual-time watch with the original model’s quick-change pushers and instant date-change feature.

The new Oris Hölstein Edition 2022

Considered a ground-breaker when it debuted in 1998, the original Oris Full Steel Worldtimer featured Oris Caliber 690, an unusual dual-time movement that allowed the wearer to press one of two buttons to adjust the local time in one-hour jumps either forwards or backwards, with home time shown on a counter at 3 o’clock. The date display would also change as the time passed midnight in either direction.

The new Oris Hölstein Edition 2022 (limited to 250
 pieces) revives Caliber 690 and fits it within a steel case that echoes the original. The new watch also includes the same three-
link stainless steel bracelet, blue dial and red plus and minus symbols. Oris says the revival debut in 2022 is meant to celebrate Oris’s 118th anniversary.

“The Full Steel Worldtimer was always one of my favorite watches, long before I worked at Oris, and I think it’s a much underrated design,” says Oris Co-CEO Rolf Studer.

“ I also love the movement – a watchmaking landmark. Until Calibre 110 in 2014, Calibre 690 was our most complicated movement, which is a special legacy. In 
the true Oris sense, it’s functional, useful, beautiful and only mechanical. And there’s something about the Full Steel that captures the experimental spirit of 1990s designs,” he adds.

 

Oris will deliver the limited edition watch in a special wooden presentation box. Price: $4,300.

 

Specifications: Oris Holstein Edition 2022

Movement: A
utomatic Oris 690 (ETA-based) dual-time with 
bi-directional red rotor. Center hands for hours and minutes with forward or backward one-hour setting device, small seconds at 9 o’clock, date at 6 o’clock, home time hour and minute hands with day/night indicator at 3 o’clock, instantaneous date, date corrector, fine timing device and stop-second. Power reserve 38 hours.

Case: 36.50 mm multi-piece stainless steel, flat sapphire crystal, anti-reflective coating inside, 
caseback stainless steel, screwed with special engravings. Stainless steel screw-in security crown and pushers, water resistant to fifty meters.

Dial: Blue 
luminous material indices, numbers and hands with SuperLuminova.

Bracelet: Multi-piece stainless steel with folding clasp.

Price: $4,300.

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Bell & Ross Expands Cockpit-Inspired Collection

Bell & Ross adds a colorful new model to its Flight Instruments collection. The new BR 03-92 Radiocompass is the latest model in the series, which Bell & Ross debuted in 2010 to display time through the lens of cockpit tool designs and layouts.

The Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Radiocompass.

Named to echo the on-board radio receiver that defines the position and direction of an aircraft via beacons on the ground, the BR 03-92 Radiocompass offers the wearer a matte black dial with three primary indications. Its innermost dial circle features the hour numerals, which are surrounded by the minute indexes. On the flange you’ll find the seconds numerals.

All the numerals here are turned towards the center of the dial just as they are on a navigation instrument. Their ‘isonorm’ typography is a technical typeface used within the navigation instrument industry.

At the top of the dial you’ll see a white triangle, an aviation cockpit fixture.

Unusual hands

Bell & Ross has spent a considerable amount of effort to create unique hands for this new watch.

Influenced by Pop Art, the hands are brightly colored to heighten readability and each is shaped to clearly associate itself to a specific time indication. The largest hand indicates the hours and is painted orange with an H at its tip. The long baton minute hand is fit with an M just below its tip, and the thin seconds hand is painted green.

Bell & Ross also plays with the watch’s SuperLuminova accents. At night, the luminescent indexes take on blue tones as the minutes appear green. The hour hand first turns yellow and then ends its luminescence in green.

This 42mm by 10.4mm matte black ceramic watch is water resistant to 200 meters and is powered by an ETA-based automatic BR-CAL302 caliber.

Previous watches in the Bell & Ross Flight Instruments collection include:

–The BR 01 Radar (2010), which inaugurated Bell & Ross’s rotating disc display.

— BR 01 Red Radar (2011), and avant-garde dial that reproduces the sweeping light beam of an air traffic control radar.

— The HUD (Head Up Display) from 2020, which combined rotating discs and analog hands.

Bell & Ross will make the BR 03-92 Radiocompass as a limited edition of 999 pieces. Price: $4,100.

 

 

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Norqain Blues its Retro Freedom 60 GMT

Norqain adds a blue dial limited edition model to its 40mm Freedom 60 GMT collection, one of the independent Swiss watchmaker’s most popular designs.

The Norqain Freedom 60 GMT 40mm Limited Edition

With its 1960s-style domed dial and an easy-to-read GMT scale in the center of the dial, the watch has serious vintage appeal. Norqain seals the appeal when it applies Old Radium SuperLuminova to the bronze hands, and frames it all with a bronze case.

Norqain underscores all this retro eye-candy with appropriately modern technology, most critically the use of its chronometer-precise, in-house-designed Caliber NN20/2, an automatic movement (below) produced together with movement-maker Kenissi.

The movement boasts a jumping hour to easily set the time and date forward or backward. Its long power reserve of seventy hours is among the most impressive we’ve seen at this price point.

Also very up-to-date is Norqain’s decision to offer only non-leather straps or metal bracelets for all its watches. For this new model Norqain offers three different bracelet options, including a vegan-certified Perlon blue rubber strap with a pin clasp that matches the case. The watch is also available with Norqain’s own Nortide strap and an Alcantara strap, both of which include stitches that resemble mountaintops near the lugs.

The Norqain Freedom 60 GMT 40mm Limited Edition (of 300 pieces) is priced at $3,990 to $4,150.

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Franck Muller Crazy Hours Commemorates 30th Anniversary

Franck Muller is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary with a diamond-flecked nod on the dial of a new Crazy Hours 30th Anniversary, a series of glittery Crazy Hours watches.

As one of the Geneva-based watchmaker’s best-known designs, Crazy Hours features dials with numeral markers set in a clearly untraditional order around the dial.

Muller’s genius was to create a jump-hour movement that has the hour hand jump from one hour to the next in the correct numerical order while the minute hand moves around the dial in its traditional manner. Reading the minute hand, and ignoring the hour hand’s placement on the dial, the wearer sees the correct time.

For this thirtieth anniversary set, Franck Muller combines its own collection of Art Deco-styled dial numerals, set off-center amid another set of decorative ‘hologram’ numerals stamped into a guilloché sun pattern dial. The dial seems effervescent thanks to the twenty layers of translucent lacquer.

Franck Muller specifically celebrates its three decades with a diamond-set ‘30th’ at the top left side of the dial, impishly combining the 3 o’clock marker and the zero from 10 o’clock marker.

All this is set within Franck Muller’s best-known case, its Cintrée Curvex, an extended tonneau design. Franck Muller’s own finely finished MVD FM 2800-CHR
automatic movement with a bi-directional rotor powers the collection.

Franck Muller offers the Crazy Hours 30th in three size options in rose gold, white gold or steel cases with a royal blue dial or the deep burgundy dial. Also look for a white-dialed Crazy Color Dreams version with colorful numerals and a white or red leather strap. All are available with or without a diamond-set bezel.

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Louis Moinet’s Custom Racing Chronograph

By Gary Girdvainis

Louis Moinet’s Time to Race mono-pusher chronograph is not actually a limited edition, but rather a series of 299 unique pieces. Collectors will pick from the three racing liveries (Rosso Corsa, Racing Green or French blue) then pick a single- or double-digit numeral; their “lucky number.”

The three color options of
Louis Moinet’s Time to Race mono-pusher chronograph.

Once assembled into the 40.7mm titanium cases, each example will be the one and only combination of that color and numeral.

That number is painted in black on a white background with a glossy polished finish, and surrounded by a metal ring reminiscent of the bores used in racing cars.

Each dial reveals a beautifully finished chronograph mechanism with a highly domed crystal emphasizing the components.

This new style direction from Louis Moinet is a chronograph showing a modern flair with design roots inspired by the world’s first chronograph, which was produced by Louis Moinet in 1816.

The Louis Moinet Time To Race features an automatic winding, column-wheel chronograph movement in a display that clearly emphasizes the chronograph as the prominent feature for this watch. Price: $36,000.

 

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