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 01Cyber Skull Bronze as a limited edition of 500 pieces. Price: $11,400.
Specifications: Bell & Ross BR 01 Cyber Skull Bronze
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.
TAG Heuer earlier this month revived the cushion-cased Monza, one of the watchmaker’s historic auto-inspired designs, with a contemporary tribute that features a lightweight carbon case and an unusually colorful dial.
The new TAG Heuer Monza Flyback Chronometer.
The new TAG Heuer Monza Flyback Chronometer is a special edition with a 42-mm case and a two-register black dial with a translucent fumé blue sapphire crystal chronograph counter at 3 and the permanent second at 6 o’clock. Even more unusual is the luminescent blue date window, the blue lacquered indexes and the black and white lacquered, luminous hours and minutes hands.
TAG Heuer revived the Monza (which debuted in 1976 as one of the first black-cased watches) in the early 2000s, but offered infrequent updates since that initial reboot.
In addition to its almost startling colors and intense luminosity, the new watch retains the dark case but opens up its dial with a skeletonized layout that exposes an in-house Calibre Heuer 02 Flyback, a chronograph movement with COSC certification.
A new movement for Monza, the caliber is the watchmaker’s much-lauded chronograph movement with COSC certification. Previously TAG Heuer has only utilized the flyback chronograph in its contemporary collections inside the TAG Heuer Autavia.
TAG Heuer also includes the expected tachymeter scale here, but adds a pulsometer, which helps determine heart rate per minute. The rate might quicken as the wearer eyes his or her dial, especially with its luminescent blue and bright red chrono counter hands and date window frame.
Grand Seiko debuts Spring Drive SLGA021, a new model in its fairly new (2020) nature-inspired Evolution 9 collection.
The 40mm steel watch features a blue dial created to echo the ‘gently lapping waters’ of Lake Suwa near the Shinshu Watch Studio, where the watchmaker builds Spring Drive watches.
The new Grand Seiko Spring Drive SLGA021.
Not only does the dial appear to mimic waves, its color changes depending on the angle and amount of nearby lights, also echoing the experience of gazing into a lake.
As on its Evolution 9 brethren, the dial here is eminently readable. Grand Seiko cuts the hour hand at the tip and extends the minute hand right to the minute track so that the hands are more clearly differentiated than is typical on many other watches. For the same reason, Grand Seiko makes the 12 o’clock index especially wide for instant identification regardless on viewing angle.
Grand Seiko fits the watch with its excellent Caliber 9RA2 Spring Drive movement, which boasts a long power reserve of five days, or about 120 hours.
All Caliber 9RA2 Spring Drive movements are protected from magnetic fields up to an enhanced 4,800 A/m.
Price: $9,100.
Specifications: Grand Seiko Spring Drive SLGA021
Dial: Blue, cut with gentle-wave-shaped surface. Time and date displays.
Case: 40mm by 11.8mm steel, screw-down crown, box-shaped sapphire crystal, sapphire caseback. Water Resistance to 100 meters and magnetic resistance to 4,800 A/m.
Movement: Spring Drive Caliber 9RA2, 5-day power reserve, automatic winding.Accuracy is ±0.5 second per day / ±10 seconds per month (average). power reserve Indicator on movement side.
Porsche Design launches a new flyback chronograph for buyers of the new Porsche 911 Dakar, a specially designed 911 named after the famed Dakar auto rally.
The new Porsche Design Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar.
For these owners, Porsche design offers its new Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar and a variation, the Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar Rallye Design Edition (with an additional dial graphic). Both watches are cased in a new titanium alloy called titanium carbide.
The Porsche Design Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar Rallye Design Edition, with added Dakar graphic.
The new material represents a continuation of Porsche Design’s long history as an innovator of titanium watch cases, which were introduced into watchmaking forty years ago by Porsche Design in tandem with IWC.
The newest titanium alloy is highly scratch resistant, according to the watchmaker, which says that the “smallest scratches caused by fine sand, for example, are now a thing of the past.” In addition, titanium carbide is not subject to any visible aging process, is hypoallergenic, and is lighter than traditional case-grade titanium.
Porsche Design is understandably quite proud of its new metal and even calls it out in red at the top of the new watch’s dial with a new abbreviation “TiC” (titanium carbide).
While Porsche Design still makes the crown and pushers on the Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar with standard titanium, the entire 42.7mm case for the watch is made using the new material, which the company spent years developing.
Porsche Design explains that the material is created by first compressing titanium carbide granules under several tons of pressure, and then sintering them at over 2,000 degrees Celsius. “This condenses the granules and irreversibly turns them into a homogeneous compound.”
The watchmaker explains that the case blank is then milled and honed into shape.
The dial
Porsche Design ensures a quick reading the dial of the new chronographs with a highly visible red 60 in the minute scale. This perfectly matches with the red color of the chronograph stop hands as well as the word ‘flyback.’ In addition, the watchmaker’s designers have widened the markings of the small hour display for whole hours as compared to the half-hour markings.
The Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar Rallye Design differs from the Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar only with the colorful graphic within the running seconds aperture at 9 o’clock. Its white, blue, gold, and red lines represent the colors on the modified Porsche 953 that won the Rallye in 1984.
Porsche Design designed the watch’s rotor to match the Porsche 911 Dakar rims, and makes them available for the watch in either black satin or solid white. For the Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar, the winding rotor is also available in Vesuvius gray.
Porsche Design fits its COSC-certified Porsche Design WERK 01.240 movement into the watch. This excellent in-house caliber features a flyback function that combines starting, stopping, and resetting in a single operation. The movement is visible through a titanium caseback and clear sapphire crystal. Each watch will bear an engraved limitation number on the caseback to match the number on the owner’s automobile.
As on all Porsche Design watches, th new chronograph allows straps to be changed without the use of tools. Porsche Design makes the watch’s handsome strap of black leather with contrast stitching in Shadegreen, the same hue found on the seat middle of the Porsche 911 Dakar. For the Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar Rallye Design Edition the stitching ismade of Race-Tex in Shark Blue.
The Porsche Design Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar and Chronograph 1 – 911 Dakar Rallye Design Edition can be ordered only by buyers of the new Porsche 911 Dakar and 911 Dakar Rallye Design automobiles at authorized local Porsche dealers.The watches in both liveries are limited to a total of 2,500 pieces, each priced at $14,500.
Movement: Caliber Porsche Design Caliber WERK 01.240, chronograph with flyback function, day and date display in German and English, COSC certified Rotor 360° rotor in wheel design in White, Black or Vesuvius Grey with Porsche Crest. Decorative features include matte black color with chrome-plated bridges, plates and polished screws, engraved Porsche Design icon. Power reserve is 48 hours and its frequency is 28,800 semi-oscillations per hour [4Hz].
Case: 42.7mm by 15.5mm titanium carbide with glass bead blasted finish.Crown and pushers in titanium, Sapphire crystal with hard coating, scratch-resistant and with sevenfold anti-glare properties on both sides. Caseback in black titanium with sapphire crystal. Water resistant to 100 meters.
Dial: Black/white minute and hour hands with SuperLumiNova, seconds hand in white; chronograph hand in neon orange; day and date display in German and English at 3 o’clock; red TiC graphic between 1 and 2 o’clock; chronograph second; 30-minute display at 12 o’clock, 12-hour display at 6 o’clock; small seconds at 9 o’clock.
Strap: Perforated leather strap made of genuine Porsche vehicle leather in black with backing in Race-Tex in Shade Green and decorative stitching in genuine Porsche vehicle thread in Shade Green or Shark Blue. Black titanium folding clasp with pushers.
Ralph Lauren expands its square-cased Art Deco 867 collection with four slightly smaller models and also adds precious metal cases and top-notch manual-wind movements to the collection’s offerings.
One of four new watches in the Ralph Lauren 867 collection. This 28mm model is cased in sterling silver.
The new models add two new case sizes to the collection with two 32mm models and two 28mm models. Both are offered in sterling silver or rose gold cases. The collection had previously only offered 35mm square-cased steel models.
These elegant, time-only designs echo Art Deco era glamour with nicely proportioned lacquered white dials made with concentric squares with Arabic and Roman numerals and sleek Breguet-style hands.
All the new models are powered by an extra-flat mechanical manual winding Swiss movement made for Ralph Lauren by Piaget and based on the watchmaker’s legendary Caliber 430. The movements are hand finished with vertical Côtes de Genève stripes and circular graining (perlage).
Ralph Lauren fits each watch with an interchangeable shiny black alligator strap with a sterling silver or 18-karat rose gold pin buckle.
Prices: $8,250 (28mm silver case), $15,500 (28mm rose gold case), $8,350 (32mm silver case) and $17,000 (32mm rose gold case).
All Caliber 9RA2 Spring Drive movements are protected from magnetic fields up to an enhanced 4,800 A/m.
