Breitling Marks America's 250th; Hamilton's Odyssey-themed Watch; FC Continues Riva Collaboration With GMT; Mr Jones Digs Into Its Rich Archive; Richard Mille Teams Up With Bike Maker Colnago

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In this issue

• Breitling Marks America's 250th With Two Limited Avengers

• Hamilton Releases A Odyssey-themed Watch For A Movie It Never Appears In

• Frederique Constant Continues Their Riva Collaboration With New GMT Models

• Mr Jones Digs Into Its Own Archive For Two New Printers Editions

• Richard Mille Teams Up With Bike Maker Colnago For The Very Expensive RM 64-01 Tourbillon

👂What’s new

1/

Breitling Marks America's 250th With Two Limited Avengers

Breitling has never been shy about a good excuse for a limited run, and America's 250th birthday is as good as any. Well, the U.S. might not be the most popular place in the world right now, but this too shall pass. The brand is marking the anniversary with two Avengers built for the occasion: an Avenger Automatic 42 America250 and an Avenger B01 Chronograph 42 Night Mission America250. This is Breitling's rugged pilot's line doing what it already does well, with a handful of American details worked in.

The Avenger Automatic 42 comes in a 42mm stainless steel case with a cambered, anti-reflective sapphire crystal and a unidirectional bezel on top, with a water resistance of 300 meters. This is standard Avenger toughness. The B01 Chronograph goes the black ceramic route instead, same 42mm diameter but a noticeably more technical, stealthier presence on the wrist, and it matches the Automatic's 300-meter water resistance.

Both have a deep blue dial. The Automatic keeps things simple: applied baton markers, a triangular marker at twelve, and a red arrow tip on the central seconds hand that has a red tip. The chronograph is busier by necessity, a tricompax layout with the 30-minute counter at three, small seconds at nine, and a 12-hour totalizer at six that also houses the date, all rendered in stencil-style Arabic numerals with red chronograph hands cutting through the blue.

The Automatic has Breitling's in-house Caliber 17, beating at 4Hz with 38 hours of power reserve, tucked behind a solid caseback engraved with the Liberty Bell. The B01 Chronograph has the more serious Caliber B01, COSC-certified, with a column wheel and vertical clutch, same 4Hz beat rate but with 70 hours of reserve, visible through a sapphire caseback with its own America250 engravings. Both come on a blue textile strap with calfskin lining, red stitching, and a folding clasp.

The Avenger Automatic 42 America250 is priced at $5,100 and limited to 250 examples; the Avenger B01 Chronograph 42 Night Mission America250 is $9,700 and limited to 50. Both are available now on the Breitling website.

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Hamilton Releases A Odyssey-themed Watch For A Movie It Never Appears In

Hamilton has a long history of dressing movie characters in their watches. Sometimes they just give production their existing, and sometimes they create brand new models just for the movie. But I would argue that the director they worked with the most was Christopher Nolan, from the iconic appearance of the Khaki Field Murph in Interstellar to the Belowzero in Tenet. Now, however, they’re releasing a slightly puzzling watch, the Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey Limited Edition. Puzzling in the fact that not a lot of watches were worn in ancient Greece. Instead of dressing a character, Hamilton built something that exists purely as a companion object to the film. While the watch is fine, it’s a huge missed chance to put out a sundial wristwatch.

Previous Field Automatic watches came in steel or titanium, but this one comes in bronze. It makes sense since the Odyssey is set at the end of the Bronze age. It measures 42mm wide and 10.9mm thick. On top is a domed sapphire crystal with double AR, surrounded by a sloping bronze bezel and the titanium caseback is engraved with Odysseus' helmet alongside Nolan's signature. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is black and vertically brushed, textured to echo the pattern on Odysseus' helmet, with sword-shaped hands finished in bronze to match the case. The seconds hand is shaped like a spear tip, and the applied marker at 12 o'clock mimics a rivet pulled from a sword's scabbard. Around the dial is a decorative frieze inspired by ancient Greek patterns.

Inside is the Hamilton's H-10 automatic, built on the ETA C07.611, the movement most people know as the Powermatic 80. A Nivachron balance spring adds resistance to magnetism and temperature swings, it beats at 3Hz, and has the legendary 80-hour power reserve. The strap is brown grained leather with heavy central stitching, closed by a titanium pin buckle, and every watch ships with a replica of Athena's pin, the talisman Penelope gives Odysseus.

The Hamilton Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey Limited Edition will be made in 2,112 pieces, a nod to the many appearances of the number 12 in the Odyssey. Price is set at CHF 1,195. See more on the Hamilton website.

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Frederique Constant Continues Their Riva Collaboration With New GMT Models

Frederique Constant has been working with Riva Historical Society, the non profit that preserves the legacy of Riva wooden speedboats that basically invented la dolce vita on Italian lakes in the 1960s, since 2013, and since then we’ve gotten new watches from the collaboration every two years. In 2026, the Frederique Constant Runabout gets a GMT function, as well as a navy blue or a teak brown dial.

The case carries over the familiar three-part polished stainless steel construction from previous versions, which means it’s 42mm wide, 12.85mm thick, with a convex anti-reflective sapphire crystal up top and a display caseback engraved with the Riva Historical Society emblem. Water resistance sits at 50 meters, which would be fine if it wasn’t a watch that’s supposed to be enjoyed on a lake. 100 meters would be so much better.

Both dials lean hard into the boat theme. The vertically satin-brushed centers with distinct lines stand in for the wooden planking of a Runabout's deck, replacing the hobnail and guilloché finishes used on earlier generations. Applied indices mix with vintage-style Arabic numerals at 3, 9 and 12, all filled with beige lume that carries over to the rhodium-plated hands. The layout has three sectors: a seconds track around the outer edge, an hour chapter ring inside that, and the 24-hour GMT scale closest to the center, tracked by a slim hand tipped with a luminous arrow. A date sits at 6 o'clock.

Inside is the FC-350, a Sellita base movement with an added manufacture module, decorated with Geneva stripes on the bridges and rotor. It beats at 4Hz with a 38-hour power reserve, and has a caller-style GMT function. The blue dial comes on black rubber with a pin buckle, the brown dial on leather with a folding clasp, and both arrive in a presentation box with a miniature wooden Runabout boat tucked inside.

The Frederique Constant Classics Runabout Automatic GMT is limited to 888 pieces, priced at €1,995. See more on the Frederique Constant website.

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Mr Jones Digs Into Its Own Archive For Two New Printers Editions

Mr Jones Watches has built its whole identity on conceptual dials rather than conventional ones, and if you’re lucky enough to have been following them since their inception, you’ve seen the style evolve. I, unfortunately, only discovered them a couple of years ago. But no matter, because Mr Jones is bringing back some of their old designs. These are the two new Printers Editions: reworked versions of Dawn West Dusk East, originally released in 2011, and Analogon, first released in 2014. Both are limited to 100 numbered examples and both were reimagined by the brand's own print technicians, Rocky and Tanith, each given a design from the archive and free rein to update it.

The case specs are identical for both watches, and it’s also the old spindly-lug style of case that the brand has kind of left in the past. They are made out of stainless steel, 37mm wide, 46mm lug-to-lug, sapphire crystal on top, and water resistant to roughly 50 meters. But it’s all about the dials.

Dawn West Dusk East was always one of Mr Jones's stranger ideas: a single aperture that migrates across the dial to mark time, closer to a mood ring than a watch face. Tanith's update gives that aperture a landscape to travel through instead of empty space, with a moodier colourway and the words "curiosity," "healing," "peace" and others printed around the dial's edge. It's a more atmospheric take on a design that was already asking you to slow down and read it differently.

Analogon goes the other direction entirely. Rocky's update keeps the original's joke intact: a robotic face built from cogs and screws, its upper teeth marking the hours and its lower jaw marking the minutes. All done in primary colors. Very nice.

Both watches have the same single jewel quartz mechanism and come on an 18mm silver stainless steel bracelet.

Dawn West Dusk East and Analogon (Printers Edition) are each priced at €285, limited to 100 numbered examples, and launch today, Friday, July 3rd. See more on the Mr Jones website.

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Richard Mille Teams Up With Bike Maker Colnago For The Very Expensive RM 64-01 Tourbillon

Cycling and watchmaking keep getting harder to separate. Half the industry majors now have a team jersey or a rider on retainer, and Richard Mille has been at the center of that overlap for years, most visibly through Tadej Pogačar, a rider who's on pace to be remembered as the greatest of all time and who happens to wear Richard Mille while doing it. The RM 64-01 Tourbillon Colnago is the brand's newest expression of that world, built in collaboration with Colnago, the Italian frame builder whose bikes have carried plenty of winners across finish lines.

The case measures 43.21mm by 49.94mm and 14.23mm thick, built from White Quartz TPT with newly developed Azure Blue Quartz TPT inserts set into the notched bezel. A 5N red gold flange runs around the edge, the first time Richard Mille has used it on a sports watch. Water resistance is 50 meters, which is not exactly sporty of it.

There's no dial in the traditional sense here. What you get instead is the movement itself, viewed through sapphire on both sides, with upper bridges finished in white lacquer and hand-painted azure blue and 5N red gold accents that lift the color scheme straight from Colnago's C68 bikes. Those bridges carry a star-shaped profile borrowed from the tubing geometry of Colnago's 1980s Master frames, a shape that actually did something functional back then by adding torsional rigidity without adding weight. The hands are cut to resemble bicycle cranksets, and the crown has a lacquered Ace of Clubs, Colnago's historic emblem.

The manually wound calibre RM64-01 has an ultra-skeletonized Grade 5 titanium baseplate, exposing all 274 components. The fast-rotating barrel sits at one o'clock, directly across from the one-minute tourbillon at seven o'clock, in a layout that's meant to echo a bike drivetrain. It beats at 3Hz on a variable-inertia, free-sprung balance with four regulating screws, and power reserve is 65 hours.

The Richard Mille RM 64-01 Tourbillon Colnago is limited to 50 numbered examples, priced at a pretty incredible CHF 800,000. Without taxes. See more on the Richard Mille 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

• Ky-Phong Tran’s piece on the joys of modifying cars goes further than nostalgia: He argues that Asian Americans didn’t just participate in import car culture during those years—they created it. And when The Fast and the Furious came along, it erased them from their own story. This is a short yet rewarding read about identity, belonging, and the magic of a car that can take you back in time.

• In this story, Roberto José Andrade Franco visits Woodburn, Oregon: a small town between Portland and Salem where Latinos, many descended from World War II-era farmworkers, make up 61.4% of the population and own 95% of the businesses downtown. Franco paints a multi-layered portrait: the food truck El Pariente Mariscos y Mas; a beloved coffee shop, Café La Onda, shuttered for good; a community still shaken from last fall’s ICE raids. As Mexico’s first World Cup match approaches, the mood in Woodburn is optimistic but fragile—joy shadowed by fear, uncertainty over whether it’s safe enough to show up and celebrate.

• This is no mere paean to the Sundance Film Festival. Instead, Claire Vaye Watkins endures a series of nature documentaries that confirm our environmental degradation, tosses back drinks at high altitude, and shares a brief and glittering connection with a field biologist, the hub around which this essay turns. Watkins, best known for her fiction, never gets overwrought with the meaning-making of it all; instead, she steadily gathers notes on her days at Sundance, building a little collection of wants and worries before going big in her final lines, setting the storytelling enterprise against a faltering world and wondering whether the former can ever steady the latter.

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