Breitling Honors The Aston Martin DB5; Doxa's Great White Chrono; Yema With A Weird Quartz; Gerald Charles’ Gem Set, Stone Dial Masterlink Trio; HYT Really Knows How To Make A Statement

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. That Doxa Great White collaboration is absolutely incredible.

In this issue

• Breitling Honors The Aston Martin DB5 With A Top Time B01 In Steel, Platinum, And Gold

• Doxa And Topper Jewelers Come Together On Another Great White Collaboration, Now A Chronograph

• Yema’s Official French Air Force Watch Gets A Slightly Unexpected Quartz Movement

• Gerald Charles’ New Trio Of Masterlink Watches Get Gem Set Bezels And Stone Dials

• HYT Dresses Its Most Technical Watch in Rose Gold and Black DLC, With Blue Fluid Time Telling

👂What’s new

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Breitling Honors The Aston Martin DB5 With A Top Time B01 In Steel, Platinum, And Gold

Way back in the gaudy 2000s and 2010s, Breitling had the most perfect partnership imaginable. They were very closely tied with Bentley. It was exactly what both brands needed because the Venn diagram of their respective audiences was a circle. I was a kid when those watches were coming out and I still remember how insanely flashy they were. This year, however, they teamed up with another British brand, but this time one known a bit more for its refinement — Aston Martin. This was all part of Breitling stepping up to sponsor the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team. Surpirsingly, we didn’t get to see a lot of watches come from the partnership. The one we did was incredibly cool, though — a Navitimer done in titanium. I hope that the lack of watches is not due to the abysmal season has been having. Well, the two brands are releasing new watches now, but less so F1 inspired, and more as an homage to one of the most beautiful cars of all time — the DB5, with three Top Time B01 chronographs. There’s a connection here that’s potentially even more interesting than the watches themselves. James Bond drove an Aston DB5 in Thunderball, in which he wore a modified Top Time, one of my favorite Bond watches, that had a Geiger counter.

The trio of DB5 Top Times all share the same case, cushion shape, measuring 41mm wide, 13.8mm thick, with a 47.9mm lug-to-lug. It really is a beautiful case that mixes historical era inspirations. For example, the pump pushers are pure 1960s, but then the slight corners of the case have grooves cut into them that are pure Art Deco. There are three case versions available: an all-steel one, a steel with platinum bezel and a full 18k red gold case. Sapphire crystals sit front and back, the crown screws down and 100 meters of water resistance.

The dials all have the same geometry, with chronograph counters at 6 and 9 o'clock, no date window breaking the symmetry, and the sub-dials take a squircle shape that echoes the case. The steel model gets a silver sunray dial with black concentric-grooved counters, the platinum-bezel version goes black with more shine, and the gold edition uses a black onyx dial. The hands and indexes are baton shaped and there’s a wooden rehaut around the perimeter of the dial, a reference to the DB5's steering wheel.

All three watches have the same COSC-certified B01 automatic, Breitling's in-house column-wheel chronograph beating at 4 Hz with a 70-hour power reserve. The sapphire caseback shows a specially engraved rotor: rhodium-plated on the silver-dial steel model, and 18K red gold with Aston Martin's winged logo on the platinum-bezel and gold versions. Each comes on a gradient calfskin strap with beige lining that nods to classic car upholstery, with steel folding clasps on the two steel models and a gold buckle on the red gold version.

Them new Breitling Top Time B01 Chronograph 41 Tribute to Aston Martin DB5 is available now, at a variety of prices and limited availability. The all-steel model is limited to 1,022 pieces at €10,500; the platinum-bezel version to 315 pieces at €16,500; and the gold version will be made in just 250 pieces, priced at €40,500. See more on the Breitling website.

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Doxa And Topper Jewelers Come Together On Another Great White Collaboration, Now A Chronograph

Doxa and Topper Jewelers have been running with their Great White collaboration for a few years now, and this is reportedly the last one. To close it out they've taken the recently revived SUB 200 T.Graph II. The Great White name comes from the fact that the colors of the dial have been inspired by Great White Shark, often found along Northern California’s Pacific coastline where Topper is located. And to make things even more interesting, the dial is fully lumed.

The case is the 42mm stainless steel elliptical cushion shape used across the T.Graph II line, 14.6mm thick with a lug-to-lug of 44mm. The patented unidirectional decompression bezel has Doxa's iconic sawtooth edge for grip, and the pump pushers are partially shrouded by the case, which keeps the vintage look. Water resistance is 200 meters.

The dial has a milky white luminous surface, blue details, and orange accents on the segmented 30-minute counter at 3 o'clock, with the running seconds at 9 o'clock and an orange tip on the central chronograph hand. There's no date, and almost every white element is coated in blue-emission Super-LumiNova, so in the dark the whole dial glows.

Inside is the Sellita SW 510, an automatic chronograph running at 4Hz with a 50-hour power reserve. The caseback swaps the Farallon Islands engraving of earlier editions for an engraved great white shark. The watch ships on Doxa's beads-of-rice steel bracelet with a folding clasp and dive extension, and an additional blue FKM rubber strap with steel end links comes in the box.

The new Doxa x Topper SUB 200 T.Graph II 'Great White' is limited to 100 pieces, priced at $4,690, available exclusively through Topper Jewelers, with part of the proceeds going to the Greater Farallones Association for marine conservation. See more on the Topper website.

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Yema’s Official French Air Force Watch Gets A Slightly Unexpected Quartz Movement

Yema, naturally, has a long and storied connection with the French armed forces, having made official watches for pretty much every single branch of their military. And the best thing about it is the fact that they make a huge number of these models to the public. The same applies to this latest edition, a watch made for the Armée de l'Air et de l'Espace, or the French Air and Space Force. It’s a fine looking military style watch, but it’s even more interesting when you see what’s inside.

The case is 38mm wide and a slim 9mm thick, excluding the double-domed sapphire crystal. Yema sandblasted the stainless steel with three different densities to create a camo shading effect across the case, which appears to be a bit more subtle than when we saw them use it on the Wristmaster, only making it even cooler. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The slate-gray dial has a coarse texture that kills glare and puts the smooth raised hour track into contrast. Hour markers are raised numerals, with a horizontal line from 9 to 3 to orient the dial at a glance, ringed by a printed railroad minute track on a sunken smooth band and a grainy outer ring carrying the 60-minute scale. The Yema logo sits below 12, the tricolour Air Force insignia above 6. The dark hour and minute hands have white lume inlays; the seconds hand gets a lollipop counterbalance and a red tip.

Inside is the Seiko caliber VH31, a not that often used quartz movement with a "quad-pulse" system that beats the seconds hand at the equivalent of 2Hz. Look closely and it moves with the slight sluggishness of an automatic running down, still far smoother than standard quartz. Seiko rates accuracy to 15 seconds a month with a two-year battery lifetime. It ships on a black woven nylon two-piece strap printed with the Air Force target emblem and closed by a signed steel pin buckle.

The Yema Flygraf Pilot French Air Force is available now for €459, which seems like quite the deal. See more on the Yema website.

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Gerald Charles’ New Trio Of Masterlink Watches Get Gem Set Bezels And Stone Dials

Gerald Charles keeps finding new ways to iterate on the Masterlink, and this one is about as intricate as they can get. These new versions of the Masterlink come with stone dials — aventurine, spectrolite or iron eye — paired with gem set bezels. It’s certainly a choice.

The case measures 38mm by 38mm and 7.9mm thick, made out of stainless steel. The white gold bezel holds 60 baguette-cut stones: blue sapphires, red sapphires or green tsavorites, each cut to follow the bezel's uneven edge so the surface. Each stone group is matched to a dial color. This is still a sporty watch, so the crown screws down and you get 100 meters of water resistance.

On the dial side, aventurine gives you that dense field of glittering inclusions, spectrolite is a Finnish labradorite that moves between blue, green and gold as the light moves, and iron eye is banded tiger's eye, jasper and hematite for an earthier look. Hour markers are matching gemstone, and the baton hands have Super-LumiNova inserts.

Inside is the calibre GCA5401, built for Gerald Charles by Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier and visible through the sapphire back. It has an off-centred micro-rotor, beats at 3Hz, and has 50 hours of power reserve. The integrated steel bracelet starts with curved links echoing the case "smile" before straightening out, with alternating brushed and polished surfaces, hidden screws and a concealed butterfly clasp.

Each configuration is limited to 10 pieces, priced at CHF 95,000 without taxes. See more on the Gerald Charles website.

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HYT Dresses Its Most Technical Watch in Rose Gold and Black DLC, With Blue Fluid Time Telling

A couple of months ago I saw my first HYT and it got me thinking: why hasn’t anyone else tried the whole time-telling-with-liquid-filled-baffles thing? I mean, the answer is quite obvious. It’s kind of a unique feature that’s so difficult to pull off, only HYT is crazy enough to do it. One could call it a gimmick, if that was the only thing that HYT did. Because they don’t, they do other technical things as well. Just know that those are even more insane than using liquid levels to tell the time. Stuff like the conical tourbillon, an absolute unit of a tourbillon that stands so far off the dial it makes the whole thing incredibly absurd. We’re now getting the Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue, a new color and case for a watch that’s not easy to forget. Whether you like it or not.

The case pairs 5N rose gold with black DLC titanium, and it is enormous: 48mm wide, 52.30mm long, and 25.15mm thick. That last number is not a typo. I did not mean to type 15.15mm, which would already be quite thick. Nope, this watch is 25.15mm thick, but the vast majority of that is the extremely domed sapphire crystal that has to stand out so far to make room for the tourbillon. Gold is used on the frame, the crown and the side grilles, while the dark DLC coated titanium is seen through the cracks making up the supports. Water resistance is 30 meters, which is beside the point with this watch.

The dial is black-coated brass with a black grid, 3D appliques, and white Lumicast numerals. Blue tinted liquid rises and retrogrades through the borosilicate capillary around the perimeter to mark the hour, a blue central hand indicates the minutes, and three blue-filled spheres orbit the tourbillon at four, five, and six turns a minute. Because those speeds never sync, the animation never repeats the same way twice inside an hour. It looks fantastic.

Inside is the hand-wound calibre 701-TC, made out of 533 components, beating at 3 Hz with a 40-hour power reserve. Those seem like fairly regular stats, but consider the fact that you can’t wind it with the crown, but instead you need a special tool to do so. Then, there’s the conical tourbillon that sits at the center with its balance inclined 30 degrees off horizontal, a geometry HYT traces back to Walter Prendel's inclined tourbillon and Eric Coudray's work reviving it. It’s an incredible thing to behold. The watch comes on a black rubber strap with a black DLC titanium pin buckle.

The HYT Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue (ref. H03000-A) is a limited edition of eight, priced at CHF 355,000, excluding taxes. See more on the HYT 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

• Diana Davidson’s acting career peaked in 1971, when her character was shot and killed in the opening scene of Dirty Harry — a scene Annakeara Stinson, her daughter, knew from a young age. Stinson explores the off-screen violence that pushed her mother out of the spotlight. Her essay reveals a woman more complicated than family stories allowed for.

• Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, thousands of foreign volunteers have traveled to the country to fight alongside Ukrainian armed forces. Erik Giggleman—”Giggles,” a decorated US Army staff sergeant who survived two tours in Afghanistan—was one of them. Laura Beil’s moving profile of Giggleman is a miniature family epic, rooted in early exposure to the senselessness of loss.

• Virginia Giuffre made global headlines for her fight against her sexual abusers among the wealthy elite, all detailed in a bestselling memoir. Now new questions have emerged about the private anguish the most famous accuser of Jeffrey Epstein faced at home. Her husband, whom she once credited with helping her escape Epstein, had assaulted and tormented her for years.

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One video you have to watch today

I’ve been enough of a Marvel fan to get a job at the company at one time. And I think there are some seriously good movies in the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But the output has deteriorated so severely since, I completely lost interest. I was sure that Avengers Doomsday would fix all that, with the return of the things we loved from the early MCU days. But if this trailer is anything to go by, we’re in for a couple of very rough years from Marvel again.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk