Orient Making Some Pretty Decent Moves And New Watches From Zenith, Depancel, Mr Jones And Roger Dubuis

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Somewhere deep inside Orient is a very good watch brand. Can't wait until they sculpt away the excess fat.

Oh, and a couple of you asked me if I could extend the paid subscription discount until the end of this week, so, sure!

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👂What’s new

1/ Orient Brings Back the Super King as the Integrated-Bracelet Flusso With Its Own Movement

Orient has spent decades making the best mechanical watches you can buy for the price of a slightly lavish dinner. But for a while, they seemed to stagnate, basing everything on a couple of models that worked for them. Well, it seems that there are some changes in the Orient leadership because they are fixing a lot of the stuff that could have been criticized, while also expanding their offering. Their latest release is a brand new collection, an answer to the post-PRX integrated-bracelet boom, based on the 1970s Super King, the new Orient Flusso.

The steel case is 39mm wide, 10.9mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 47mm. That's properly compact for this category, where 40mm and up has become the default. The lug-to-lug could use a bit of a shave, but we'll live. It's a tonneau shape, with a thin, round polished bezel, and the four small notches cut into its corners are the nod to the old Super King's exposed screws. It also has brushed surfaces, polished bevels, a squared-off shoulder by the crown for easier grip. On top is a sapphire crystal, you get 100 meters of water resistance, and out back is a screwed caseback with an engraved logo. Nothing fancy.

Three sunburst dials in silver, dark gray and blue make up the core range, plus white on a gold-colored case and bracelet. There's no date, but there is lume on the hour and minute hands, and very little else. There's also a ruby-red gradient limited edition, taken from a vintage SK colorway and cut with wide grooves and a fine crosshatch. It has twice the personality of the standard dials for negligible more money. Try to get that one if you can.

Inside is the new Orient calibre F6522, na automatic movement with hand-winding and hacking seconds, beating at 3Hz with 40 hours of power reserve. Orient quotes +25/-15 seconds a day, which is loose, but these movements usually work better than advertised. The bracelet is integrated, the lugs running straight into the first link, and it closes with a push-button folding clasp.

The Orient Flusso costs €299 in steel, €335 for the red limited edition of 4,000 pieces and €360 in gold tone, available from December 2026. See more photos here and the watches on the Orient website.

2/ Zenith Gives the Defy Chronograph USM a Mirror Dial for a One-Off Charity Auction

Last September, Zenith and USM Modular Furniture put the iconic Swiss furniture maker's colors on a 37mm Defy chronograph. It was a bit of a stretch of a collaboration, but I like Zenith, I like the Defy chronograph and I love USM furniture, so I liked that watch. Now, they're bringing that collaboration back, but as a one-off watch made for TimeForArt, the charity auction Swiss Institute runs with Phillips, now in its third year. Gone are most of the colors, replaced by a fully mirrored finish. Everywhere. It also ships with a mirrored USM Haller sideboard that holds 24 watches, which beats pretty much any presentation box.

Nothing changes on the case. It's stainless steel, 37mm wide, with the octagonal outline and 14-facet bezel of the 1969 original. The case gets a mirror finish with vertically brushed notches at the top and bottom of the case, with piston style pushers on the right side, surrounding the crown. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Mirror dials are a gamble. They photograph beautifully, after a lot of effort, and then show you your shirt cuff when you want the time. To make things a bit more visible by introducing three overlapping azuré counters, each printed in a different USM shade, so Golden Yellow, Pure Orange, Green and Gentian Blue. Rhodium-plated indices and faceted hands are filled with Super-LumiNova SLN C1, and the blue central chronograph hand has a counter weight shaped like a tiny Haller ball joint. Small seconds sit at nine, chronograph minutes at three, hours at six, plus a date at 4:30.

The movement is the El Primero 400, Zenith's self-winding column-wheel chronograph, running at 5Hz with 55 hours of reserve. The rotor gets Côtes de Genève and both brand logos on it. The watch comes on the steel ladder bracelet from the regular model.

The Defy Chronograph USM – TimeForArt Unique Piece (ref. 03.A780.400-T/01.M3642) will go on sale at Phillips in New York at 3pm Eastern on December 5, 2026. Every dollar, buyer's premium included, goes to Swiss Institute. See more photos here and the watch on the TimeForArt website.

3/ Depancel Sekeltonizes the Serie-R Chronograph At A Pretty Unbeatable Price

If you were to put together an extremely specific list of watches, one that listed skeletonized column-wheel chronographs with a vertical clutch, for under €1,600, that would be a very short list. In fact, there just might be one watch on that list, the brand new Depancel Serie-R Chronograph Skeleton. Long has the French brand used Peacock chronograph movements, namely the SL-4801. Now, it's switching it out for the openworked SL-4802, and I'm digging it.

The case remains the same 40mm by 36mm steel footprint as the earlier chronographs, with a lug-to-lug of 48.5mm, but it grows to 13.7mm thick, or 12.8mm without the crystal. These numbers don't mean much when you're dealing with a rectangular watch, as we're not that used to wearing one, so your best bet would be to try one on. You get polished bevels against brushed flats and the sapphire crystal is bevelled to follow the case outline and has anti-reflective coating on the inside. Water resistance is 50 meters.

There isn't really a dial anymore. The movement is held in mid air with very dramatic silver metal bridges and it completely changes the look of the Serie-R. You keep the fantastic dashboard-style hands and indices, filled with white Super-LumiNova C1 and sitting over the bridges. And there's orange details everywhere – on top of the hands, the minute counter at three, the hour counter at nine and the big central seconds hand. I don't think this dial looks too cluttered, despite the chrono display and skeletonized dial.

The Peacock calibre SL-4802 is the openworked version of the SL-4801. It is an integrated, self-winding chronograph with a column wheel, vertical clutch and transversal balance bridge, beating at 4Hz with 55 hours of reserve. Peacock is a Chinese maker, which allows for the low price (for what it is), but it has a reputation for making decent movements. The watch comes on a 22mm bull leather strap with a steel pin buckle.

The Depancel Serie-R Chronograph Skeleton is a numbered edition of 100, priced at €1,595. Pre-orders open tomorrow, October 8 at 4PM Paris time and the first watches ship in mid-December. See more photos here and the watch on the Depancel website.

4/ Mr Jones Lets Their Print Technicians Revive The Chaos Window and Moonhead Watches

You know Mr Jones Watches. They're the very cool London workshop that makes extremely fun and quirky watches that have innovative time telling mechanics and work with a fantastic roster of illustrators. The back catalogue now runs to hundreds of designs, and this is exactly where this new Printers Editions finds inspiration. Senior gilding technician Giulia Cacciuttolo chose Chaos Window from 2017, and illustrator and printmaker Emma Prince chose Moonhead from 2014 to recreate as new limited editions. A nice approach to their already fun watches.

Mr Jones is not generous on case (and movement) information, so bear with me a bit. They note their case is unisex sized, but I believe Moonhead uses the familiar Mr Jones case: stainless steel, 37mm wide with a lug-to-lug of 46mm, sapphire on top and 50 meters of water resistance. Chaos Window should get the same treatment, though the brand's Swiss-powered models have moved to a 40mm case. Mr Jones cases have always been simple round frames whose job is to keep out of the artwork's way.

Chaos Window tells the hours with a procession of ships along the horizon, the minutes with fire pouring from the nostrils of a sea serpent, and the seconds with a small square drifting through the centre of the window. Cacciuttolo's addition is metallic gilding, which should give the flames and hulls shine against the flat print. Moonhead is the lighter of the two: a space scene with a sun inspired by Bowie's Ziggy Stardust years, a gilded moon for the hours and Russell's teapot orbiting for the minutes. Putting a philosopher's argument about unfalsifiable claims to work telling you it's twenty past ten is a pretty good joke.

Chaos Window runs on a mechanical movement, though the release names no calibre. I believe it's the Swiss STP1-11 automatic the brand used on its other upgrades, which beats at 4Hz with a power reserve of around 44 hours, rather than the cheaper Seagull TY2709. Moonhead uses an also unnamed quartz movement. Chaos window comes on a distressed brown leather strap and the Moonhead uses a milanese bracelet.

Chaos Window (Printers Edition) is limited to 50 pieces, priced at £495 while the Moonhead (Printers Edition) is priced at £225. Both are available from today. See more photos here and the watches on the Mr Jones website.

5/ Roger Dubuis Carves Merlin Into the Case Flank of the Knights of the Round Table Metamorph

You might maybe know Roger Dubuis for other things, but the only thing I keep track of is how many Knights of the Round Table watches they can put out. And, it's a lot. Dozens. Love to see that there are enough filthy rich people out there to buy things like this. This latest one, the Metamorph, is part of a three-watch run devoted to Merlin, after the Omniscient and the Enchanter. This is all a bit silly, but in a good way. The theme of this watch is shapeshifting: in the legend Merlin turns himself into a white stag, and it moves the themes from the dial to the engraved case as well.

The case is 18k pink gold, 45mm wide and 16.87mm thick, and much of that height comes from a sapphire ring set under the notched bezel so you can see the knights from the side. The right flank has a recessed panel engraved by hand in low relief, showing Merlin as a man and as the stag. The left flank gets more knights, the middle one killing a dragon. The crown is shaped like a sword hilt. Water resistance is 30 meters, but come on.

The dial is a green forest built from 57 hexagonal columns of different heights, mixing polished pink gold, clear glass and glass tinted by CVD, with green Crystalium inlays as the floor. It's busy. And very green. But it's all about the knights. Each is sculpted by hand in pink gold, 6mm tall, carrying its own weapon, with Arthur at 12 o'clock holding Excalibur. The pink gold hands are skeletonized and filled with green Super-LumiNova, paired with gold markers on the outer ring.

Inside is the in-house calibre RD821, an automatic running at 4Hz with 48 hours of power reserve and the Poinçon de Genève hallmark. Through the caseback you get a skeletonized gold rotor patterned after stained glass, which suits the theme. It comes on a green calfskin strap with a pink gold triple-folding clasp and quick-release bars.

The Roger Dubuis Knights of the Round Table Metamorph is limited to 28 pieces. Price is on request, but previous non-engraved versions went for something close to $400,000. Don't expect this one to be cheaper. See a lot more photos here and the watch on the Roger Dubuis website.

⚙️Watch Worthy

• A review of the DUG Purist Typ 1 And Typ 2
• Hands on with the Chopard Happy Sport in 36mm Lucent Steel

⏲️End links

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