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- Zenith Launches Defy Skyline With New High Beat Tourbillon Movement; The Maurice de Mauriac Pillow Watch Is Wild; Carl Suchy & Söhne Has A New Waltz And MB&F Has A New Perpetual Calendar
Zenith Launches Defy Skyline With New High Beat Tourbillon Movement; The Maurice de Mauriac Pillow Watch Is Wild; Carl Suchy & Söhne Has A New Waltz And MB&F Has A New Perpetual Calendar
I'm finally beginning to understand what all the hubub about Maurice de Mauriac is
It's About Time
February 22, 2024
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. This edition of the newsletter is unexpectedly late and short. But that’s what you get when you have small children that have to stay home from kindergarten with a fever. Still, enjoy the watches!
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In this issue:
Zenith Launches Defy Skyline Tourbillon With New High Beat El Primero Tourbillon Movement
Maurice de Mauriac Goes A Whole New Direction With The Pillow Watch
Carl Suchy & Söhne Continues Being Supremely Elegant With An Update To The Waltz N°1, The Moll
MB&F Brings Back Their Perpetual Calendar In Titanium And With An Icy Blue Dial
Today’s reading time: 6 minutes and 33 seconds
👂What’s new
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Following several years of not being in the focus of watch enthusiasts, Zenith is making a very solid rise up the popularity ladder. That’s not to say that this legendary watchmaker has been shunned, far from it. It’s just that over the past several years they have had an incredible run. And in that run was the re-introduction of the Defy Skyline collection which combines the coolness of Genta-like integrated bracelet sports watch with avant-garde dials and patterns. Now they’re introducing two new pieces to this collection, the Defy Skyline Tourbillon in two colors and a new high-frequency tourbillon movement.
Zenith doesn’t give much info on the size of their new tourbilon movement powered Defy Skylines, other than the width of the case which sits at 41mm. You can get it in two versions, a stainless steel or a black ceramic, both with matching integrated bracelets. The case has an octagonal with a crushed 14-sided bezel with polished facets. Being a sports watch, water resistance is rated to 100 meters.
The dial is a bit of a departure from the previous Defy Skyline models which have a grid pattern to them. These ones have a radial pattern, made up of the Zenith four-pointed stars and they all emerge from the tourbillon opening at 6 o’clock. Just like the case, the dial comes in two colors - blue for the stainless steel and black for the ceramic. Both have faceted baton-style indexes, but while the hands and hour markers on the stainless steel Defy Skyline Tourbillon are rhodium-plated, the black ceramic model receives a rose gold-plated set. The tourbillon makes a revolution every 60 seconds and is set in a cage that is shaped like a four-pointed star, with a mirror-polished bridge.
Adding a turbillon to a high-frequency movement doesn’t happen often, but makes perfect sense for Zenith, which has made a name for themselves with fast beating movements. Inside these two watches is the new El Primero 3630 automatic high-frequency manufacture calibre, based on the 5Hz El Primero 3620. It has a 60 hour power reserve and out back you get a openworked star-shaped rotor and a movement decorated with Côtes de Genève stripes arranged in a sunray pattern. You get the watches with color and material matched bracelets, but also an additional strap in blue or black rubber with a folding clasp that match the dial.
The Zenith Defy Skyline Tourbillon is available now and priced at €59,600 for the stainless steel and €70,400 for the ceramic. See more on the Zenith website.
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I have gone on record before to be a bit critical of the Zurich based watchmaker Maurice de Mauriac. While it was cool to see a brand out of Zurich, which is traditionally not associated with watchmaking, I couldn’t really make sense of their lineup. While they had a few interesting pieces, digging through their website just brought up watches that look like homages to models from Rolex and IWC in wild colors and at prices that were close to the originals. I formally withdraw any criticism I had of MDM, because their latest release, the Pillow Watch, is just spectacular.
While many of their other watches might come off as generic, the Pillow is the complete opposite with its very bold, pillow-like case. The case comes in three variants - two made out of titanium with one left bare and one with a black DLC coat, and one made out of bronze - that measure 45mm wide with a 50.5mm lug-to-lug. It’s a large watch, but it’s clear that this was intended to be a statement piece.
The case takes inspiration from brutalist architecture, with clean lines with very little detail. I don’t like quoting from brand marketing material, but this sums up the look of the watch perfectly: “The watch carries the wildness of the 70s, to which they added the clarity of Bauhaus.” Despite it looking like a work of art, it’s still a functional watch which gets 100 meters of water resistance.
Things get even more attractive on the dial, which has been designed by Fabian Schwaerzler. The bold circle and pill-shaped indexes are formed with thick applications of Superluminova, while the hands are as simple as can be with also generous lume applied in them. All three cases get the same black dial with blue-glowing lume.
Inside is the La Joux-Perret calibre G100 an alternative to the basic time-only offerings from Sellita and ETA, making it easily servicable. It beats at 28,800vph and has a 68 hour power reserve. The watches come on a khaki, grey or sand colored textile strap, depending on the color of the case you chose.
The Pillow Watch by Maurice de Mauriac is available now on the brand’s website. Price is set at 3,900 CHF for the untreated titanium version and 4,900 CHF for the DLC coated and bronze versions. See more on the MDM website.
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Just like the above-mentioned MDM is uniquely positioned as one of the rare watchmakers in Zurich, Carl Suchy & Söhne comes from a city not known for it’s watchmaking - Vienna. While a beautiful city, neither it, nor Austria are particularly known as birthplaces of fantastic watches. And yet, Carl Suchy & Söhne has been doing exactly that for well over a hundred years. While they are particularly known for their dress watches, last year they introduced their first sports model. But perhaps most interesting is their Waltz N°1 model which combines the elegant and polished characteristics of a dress watch with brushed and sandblasted elements to create a more wearable watch. Now they’re introducing an update to this model, the Waltz N°1 Moll, inspired by the waltz.
It’s not a brand new watch, but rather an evolution. This means it comes in the same 41.5mm stainless steel case that measures 9.3mm thick. The 41.5mm diameter will induce instant groans and calls that this cannot be a dress watch at such a large size, but Carl Suchy & Söhne keeps the lugs very short and curved, to make the watch much more wearable than the size might suggest. The steel is polished, but you get a contrasting DLC-coated steel bezel and caseback. On top is a sapphire crystal and water resistance is not great, as expected - 30 meters.
The dial is instantly recognisable as a Carl Suchy & Söhne. It’s concave and just like the other Waltz N°1 models it has feature horizontal and vertical guilloché finishing arranged in an almost geometric fashion. There’s a rotating disc at 6 o’clock that features the same pattern but in black and grey and it serves as the running seconds indicator. Alongside this you get simple hands, indices, and drilled minute markers.
Inside is the super-thin Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier 5401 micro-rotor automatic movement. Carl Suchy & Söhne acquires this movement and then decorates it in-house with Côtes du Soleil finishing. Power reserve is 42 hours and it beats at 21,600vph. The watch comes on either a standard black leather or alligator strap.
There’s a good reason why you likely haven’t heard of Carl Suchy & Söhne. They make very few watches. And this Waltz N°1 Moll is no different - only 10 pieces will be made. I would love to handle one for a couple of hours to see if it lives up to its price of €12,400. See more on the Carl Suchy & Söhne website.
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Yesterday, I wrote about a new H. Moser & Cie. which took one of the most complex watch complications - the perpetual calendar - and boiled it down to just one tiny, almost invisible hand, and a date aperture. It was the ultimate flex of hiding a hyper-complex movement behind a relatively mundane dial. MB&F decided to go a different route. Their take on the perpetual calendar is on full display, so you can admire the beautiful finishing and nifty shock absorbers that brought a lot of praise to the movement back in 2015 when they introduced it. Now MB&F is releasing a fifth version of the LM Perpetual EVO, rendered in titanium and a beautiful blue dial.
Starting with the case, you could probably guess that this is the most regular part of the watch. It measures 44mm wide, a whopping 17.5mm thick and it’s made out of titanium. Most of the thickness is because of the heavily domed sapphire crystal that follows the curvature of the flying V bridge suspending the balance above the entire movement. The lugs are short and the white rubber strap integrates into the case and outside of a polished surface you don’t even notice the case because all the attention is on the dial/movement. But of note is the fact that this crazy watch has 80 meters of water resistance, which nobody would expect.
The dial is where things get really weird. There’s a dial plate that sits at the back and is rendered in a light blue, on top of which everything else is mounted. At the center of the dial is the 14mm balance wheel beating at 18,000vph, held on by the mentioned flying V and all the information is displayed through four black galvanic discs and rings. At 12 o’clock are the hours and minutes, the days of the week are at 3 o’clock, the months at 6 o’clock and the date at 9 o’clock. At 5 and 7 o’clock, there are two small, rounded tracks: the one on the left indicates the retrograde leap year, and the one on the right is the power reserve indicator.
While it might seem that the entirety of the movement is on top of the plate, there’s more going on at the back. You can see the escapement and the double barrels that give you a significant 72 hour power reserve. The back of the movement is decorated with internal bevel angles, polished bevels, large gold chatons, Geneva waves on the darkened bridges and handmade inscriptions.
The MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual EVO is priced aggressively at €176,000, but what else would you expect. See more on the MB&F website.
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually likewatches
Flat sides, crown guards, and a matte finish give the watch a businesslike appearance befitting a 200m diver. As much as I love the appearance and utility of titanium, I know that it is inherently softer than stainless steel, so I appreciate that MWW gave it a 1200Hv hardening treatment. The sloped and coin-edged titanium bezel feels firm through its 120-click rotation, although this prototype did exhibit a touch of play. Its markers are engraved and painted save for the lume pip in the top position.
⏲️Wait a minute
A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting
This is an absolutely incredibly written, perfectly illustrated and unbelievably compelling story, now several years old. My Aryan Princess is a seat-of-the-pants crime drama, a gritty and voyeuristic journey into drug dens, inner sanctums of power, the ritualistic savagery of avowed racists and a woman’s drug fueld descent into the world of a violent Brotherhood.
I studied in The Netherlands and I clearly remember a weekend trip we took to a beach resort. A couple of Dutch people had us sit on the beach and do nothing. After a couple of minutes, the rest of us got bored and wandered off. But this was the first time I saw the concept of niksen, the art of doing nothing. It wasn’t for me but the recent international popularity of the act of niksen does have some lessons to teach us in these stressful times.
A 35-year-old Brooklyn woman is a bridesmaid-for-hire. For a fee of $2500 (and up), she’ll help organize a wedding and bachelorette party, press fellow bridesmaids to pick up their dresses, deliver maid of honor speeches for couples she doesn’t know, get the reception’s dance floor going, and more.
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
The new season of Drive to Survive starts tomorrow and this is the trailer. It’s absolutely incredible how much of an impact one show has had on a sport that already one of the most popular in the world. F1 is posting viewership records season after season, and the effect DtS has had on these numbers is obvious when you see that there’s a Drive to Survive for tennis, Drive to Survive for golf, Drive to Survive for NASCAR, Drive to Survive for cycling… with all of these sports respectively attempting to capture the brilliant tension and drama the early seasons of DtS managed to convey.
💵Pre-loved precision
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