Breitling Brings Back A Reverse Panda From The 50s; A Black DLC Fortis Marinemaster; Raketa Celebrates 65 Years Of Space Flight; Stowa Pays Homage To Blood Moon; TAOS Loves Their Métiers d’Art

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. That Raketa looks like a fun watch! Btw, the paid subscribers might have noticed an absence of post. They’re returning tomorrow, I had a technical snafu.

In this issue

• Breitling Pays Homage To A Very Important Watch From The 1950s With The New SuperOcean Heritage B01 42

• Fortis Gives Their Marinemaster M-44 A Black DLC Case With Two Different Dials

• The Raketa Baikonur Celebrates 65 Years Of The Brand And Human Space Flight

• Stowa Pays Homage To The Blood Moon With A Very Cool Chrono Black Forest

• A Pink Dial Joins The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Automatic 36mm Steel And Platinum Lineup

👂What’s new

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Breitling Brings Back A Very Important Watch From The 1950s With The New SuperOcean Heritage B01 42

The Breitling SuperOcean has two legitimate firsts to its name — it was not only the first diving chronograph ever made when it launched in 1957, but also the originator of the reverse panda dial, a design choice made for underwater legibility rather than aesthetics. That’s right, the popular black base with silver sub-dials on a chronograph first appeared in the Breitling SuperOcean in the 1950s. Nearly 70 years later, Breitling is bringing this setup back to the SuperOcean, with a reverse panda SuperOcean Heritage B01 Chronograph, a watch that already got a meaningful overhaul last year with new case geometry, new sizes, and a new movement.

The case remains almost completely unchanged, made out of stainless steel, measuring 42mm wide, 14.55mm thick, with a 49.56mm lug-to-lug. Sure, that’s large, but not overwhelming. Especially for a chronograph with 200 meters of water resistance. The unidirectional bezel has a ceramic insert, and both the front and caseback are sapphire, with the front crystal cambered and anti-reflective coated on both sides.

The new dial is black sunburst with silver sub-dials — the classic reverse panda arrangement. Indices are inspired by the original 1957 model: triangular dagger-shaped markers, applied rather than printed, and reduced slightly in size compared to the original for a more refined look. The large circular marker with the dagger at 12 o’clock is also carried over. Hands and indices are lumed with Super-LumiNova. The 6 o’clock circular index from the original has been replaced by a date window.

Inside is Breitling’s manufacture Calibre B01, an automatic chronograph with column wheel and vertical clutch, running at 4 Hz with a 70-hour power reserve and COSC certification. It’s a 30-minute chronograph rather than 60-minute, consistent with the original. Two strap options: a black mesh-look rubber strap with deployant clasp, or a stainless steel Ocean Classic mesh bracelet with butterfly folding clasp.

The SuperOcean Heritage B01 42 Chronograph is available now, priced at $9,300 on the rubber strap and $9,600 on the steel mesh bracelet. See more on the Breitling website.

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Fortis Gives Their Marinemaster M-44 A Black DLC Case With Two Different Dials

Fortis has been building the Marinemaster M-44 into its flagship diver since relaunching the range in 2021, and the watch has always had the bones for a stealth treatment — a serious 500 m diver with a Kenissi movement and a dual-crown locking system. This year they finally go there, with the DLC Gravity Black and DLC Black Resin, the first Marinemaster M-44 editions to get a full DLC coating, and the most focused versions of the watch since its introduction.

The case remains the same 44 mm stainless steel construction with a fairly chunky 14mm thickness and a (relatively) compact 48 mm lug-to-lug, now finished in Dianoir DLC coating that brings surface hardness to 4,500 Vickers — roughly 20 times harder than conventional steel. Water resistance stays at 500m, as is the dual-crown setup: screw-down crown at 3 o’clock for setting and winding, and a locking crown at 10 o’clock that secures the bidirectional Gear Bezel with Fortis Lock System in place. One small difference between the two editions: the DLC Gravity Black has uncoated crowns and lateral strap screws, while the DLC Black Resin goes fully blacked out on both.

Both dials share the same classic layout — black with an embossed Fortis “O” pattern, a luminous ring framing the dial, and an angled inner flange. The distinction is in the accents: DLC Gravity Black uses silver-toned hands and markers, while DLC Black Resin gets for gold-coloured hands and markers with beige Super-LumiNova, a warmer combination that’s been seen before on steel variants but feels particularly well-suited to the all-black case.

Inside is the Calibre WERK 11 by Kenissi — the same movement base shared with Tudor and TAG Heuer — COSC-certified, running at 4 Hz with a 70-hour power reserve. Both watches come on an FKM rubber strap with the Fortis “O” pattern.

Both the DLC Gravity Black and DLC Black Resin are part of the permanent collection, each priced at €4,950. See more on the Fortis website.

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The Raketa Baikonur Celebrates 65 Years Of The Brand And Human Space Flight

Raketa is one of those watch brands with a genuinely interesting origin story that I’ll have to dig into one day. It was founded in 1961 in honour of Yuri Gagarin’s first spaceflight, which also makes this year the brand’s 65th anniversary. To mark both milestones, they’ve released the Baikonur, an astronaut’s watch with a surprisingly coherent set of complications for actual space use. Good to know when you find yourself in orbit.

The case is made out of stainless steel and measures 42mm wide, with a thin smooth bezel, and sharply angled lugs that give it a broad, architectural look. On top is a very tall sapphire box-style crystal that gives it a very unique look. It’s a dual-crown design — one crown for setting and winding, the other for rotating the internal bezel. That internal bezel carries two scales: a compass scale with degrees and cardinal points on the outer edge, and a dual time zone 24-hour scale on the inner ring, both with practical applications for astronauts re-entering and reorienting after a mission. If their instruments should fail, that is. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The black and white dial runs on a 24-hour scale rather than the usual 12-hour, using a white/black indicator to distinguish day from night, which actually useful in space where there’s no natural day/night cycle to rely on. The result is a retro-futuristic, utilitarian layout that packs a lot of information without becoming unreadable. There’s no additional 24-hour hand as on a typical GMT watch; the primary scale does the heavy lifting.

In house the Baikonur is the in-house Raketa calibre 2624CA automatic, beating at 2.5 Hz with a 40-hour power reserve and a daily accuracy of -10/+20 seconds. Notably, the movement decouples the self-winding system during manual winding, as automatic winding is less efficient in space and this decoupler protects the movement from damage. The rotor is decorated with starry constellations and visible through an exhibition caseback. It comes on a white fabric Velcro strap with a leather strap also included.

The Raketa Baikonur is available for pre-order now, priced at €2,400. See more on the Raketa website.

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Stowa Pays Homage To The Blood Moon With A Very Cool Chrono Black Forest

Stowa is one of those German watch brands that has been quietly doing its thing for decades without much fanfare: reliable, honest, and rooted in a no-nonsense approach to watchmaking. The Black Forest chronograph line is a good example of that, with solid cases, dependable movements. Nothing flashy. The Chrono Black Forest Moon changes that last part. It takes the familiar platform and adds a moon phase complication built around the blood moon phenomenon, a reddish full moon during a total lunar eclipse, and the result is the most visually striking watch Stowa has put out in this line.

Based on the existing Chrono Black Forest, this is a familiar case that measures 41 mm wide, 14.7 mm thick, and 50.2 mm lug-to-lug in stainless steel with a bead-blasted and DLC-blackened finish. The coating adds scratch resistance and a clean matte-black look throughout. You get a sapphire crystal up top, an oversized onion crown on the side and you get 50 meters of water resistance.

The black dial is so cool. It has a 3D embossed moon surface structure as its base texture. The moon phase disc is printed orange with Superluminova OL lume — the main visual event of the watch and the thing that sells the blood moon concept once the lights go out. Numerals, hour/minute/small seconds hands, and rotating date use Superluminova C1 white. Chrono hands are brass with orange lacquer, non-lume, matching the moon disc. Around the perimeter is a white minute track with C1 lume.

Inside is the ETA 7751 automatic in top finish, beating at 3 Hz with a 42-hour power reserve and includes hours, minutes, seconds, calendar, moon phase, and second-stop functions. It comes on a hand-stitched black leather strap at 22 mm lug width.

The new Stowa Chrono Black Forest Moon is available now and doesn’t seem to be a limited edition. Price is set at €2,990, without taxes. See more on the Stow website.

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TAOS Is Really All About Unique Métiers d’Art, And They Are Among The Best At Them

TAOS returns for 2026 with two new Métiers d’Art fever dreams, and they are about as far from “just another limited edition” as you can get: Genèse and Odonata, each a unique piece, each the result of more than 1,000 hours of handwork by the 40 artisans at Atelier Olivier Vaucher in Geneva. With these new watches, TAOS leans into what it does best, turning dials into miniature frescoes and movements into sculptural backdrops , this time under a broad theme of nature and its forms.

The case, shared by the two watches, measures 38mm wide and 10mm thick. It’s made out of white gold and you get a token 30 meters of water resistance, but that feels almost beside the point when the sharp lugs, inclined bezel, and domed caseback are really there to showcase the dial and movement inside. Additionally, if you go for the Odonata, it comes with diamonds on the bezel and lugs.

On Genèse, TAOS goes fully mineral. The dial is conceived as a geological cross-section, layering black jade and blue agate in traditional stone marquetry, with each stone piece cut to the micron and dropped into large pockets to maintain a coherent, architectural pattern. Engraving under transparent Grand Feu enamel creates a multi-faceted rockscape of shadows and highlights, while zones of under-fired enamel keep a deliberately raw, grainy texture, like stone. The Odonata takes the opposite route. Named after the dragonfly family, it doesn’t attempt naturalistic reproduction so much as a surreal hybrid world where what looks like flowers are actually wings, and flora and fauna blur into a kind of Edenic pond scene. The dial is an extreme stacking of Métiers d’Art: a white gold base engraved in high relief, translucent paillonné enamel appliques, set diamonds, mother-of-pearl elements, and, on the uppermost level, plique-à-jour Grand Feu enamel that behaves like tiny stained-glass windows.

Inside, you’ll find the VOP318 developed by Télôs for TAOS, beating at 4 Hz with a 72-hour power reserve, and its bridges were designed from the start as a canvas for heavy engraving, bevels, and satin finishes, all executed by hand at Atelier Olivier Vaucher. Each calibre requires more than 150 hours of engraving by a single artisan, the patterns echoing the themes of Genèse’s mineral strata or Odonata’s softer, more organic shapes. The watches are come on hand-sewn, alligator-style leather straps with visible saddle stitching and an 18K white gold pin buckle.

As ever with TAOS, availability is essentially theoretical: both Genèse and Odonata are unique pieces, each representing roughly a year of development and over 1,000 hours of combined artisanal work. Official pricing for Genèse is CHF 150,000 before taxes, and Odonata’s price isn’t quoted. See more on the TAOS website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• “Don’t believe them,” reads one Google review for HAARP—the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, where researchers study the relationship between radio waves and Earth’s ionosphere. “This facility is used to control the weather.” Kaitlyn Tiffany travels to Gakona, Alaska, to tour the HAARP facility and speak with research scientists about how dealing with conspiratorial beliefs is now a part of their work life. Asked to speculate about the persistence of HAARP conspiracy theories, an engineer tells Tiffany, “Well, one thing is it’s in the middle of nowhere and it’s got a fence around it.”

• A Sephardic market kid turns Mango mogul and Spanish king’s honoree—then plunges off a “goat path” on Montserrat with only his troubled heir for company. Was it a freak misstep, or the fatal climax of a dynastic rift over a $4.5 billion empire, a sidelined son, and a spurned partner demanding millions?

• For The Dial, in this excerpt from his chapbook, Jig, Jan Steyn, who is a translator by trade, writes of his experiences living with gout, a painful and frustrating medical condition. Sufferers are unable to flush uric acid out of the body effectively, leaving behind crystals that plague the skin and joints, causing inflammation, swelling, and pain.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

Malcolm in the Middle is one of the all-time greatest shows. I don’t want to jump the gun, but the reboot looks decent as well.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk