Breitling Refreshes The Chronomat; The GO Sixties Chrono Goes Purple; Nodus Adds Damascus To Sector Deep; Marco Tedeschi's MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours; JLC's Stunning Reverso Hybris Artistica Pegasus

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Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Not much to say today, enjoy the weekend!

In this issue

• Breitling Refreshes The Chronomat Collection With A New Case And Dressier Approach

• The Glashütte Original Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2026 Looks Fantastic In Purple

• Nodus Adds Damascus Steel And A Better Movement To The Sector Deep

• Marco Tedeschi MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours Brings a New Name To A Quirky Brand

• Jaeger-LeCoultre Turns The Case Into The Canvas With The Reverso Hybris Artistica Pegasus

👂What’s new

1/

Breitling Refreshes The Chronomat Collection With A New Case And Dressier Approach

The Chronomat has always occupied an interesting position in the Breitling lineup. Originally conceived as a pilots' watch that could pass muster in a formal setting, it gradually lost that duality and started looking more like a dressed-down Avenger. For 2026, Breitling has made a concerted effort to correct that drift, touching all three sizes and introducing one new model. The changes center on a lug redesign that is more significant than it might sound, so let's start there before getting into the individual watches.

The big structural news across the whole collection is the new lug treatment. Previously the Chronomat showed visible lugs flanking the bracelet, giving it a stepped profile where the case met the strap. The new design buries those lugs under the case edge, so the bracelet flows directly from the case in a single smooth curve. The watch still takes interchangeable straps — the lugs are there, just hidden — but the visual effect is of full integration. Paired with the steel Rouleaux bracelet, it looks really good.

First up is the new size. The Chronomat Automatic has previously topped out at 36mm in the time-only range, with 40mm reserved for the GMT, so the B31 40 is the first three-hand Chronomat at this diameter. The proportions are good at 40mm wide and 11mm thick. The dial comes in three sunray-brushed finishes: white, blue, and green, all appropriately uncluttered for a time-and-date watch, with the date at 3 o'clock. A fourth reference pairs an ice blue dial with a platinum bezel on a steel case. Inside is the calibre B31, the movement Breitling rolled out recently in the Superocean Heritage, COSC-certified with a 78-hour power reserve. The standard steel versions are €6,400 on bracelet; the ice blue platinum reference is €8,350 on rubber and €8,750 on bracelet.

The B01 42 is the flagship chronograph and the one most people picture when you say Chronomat, mostly thanks to the recognizable sub-dials. It gets the same hidden-lug treatment, which is cool. But what’s cooler is the fact that they managed to cut down on thickness by a substantial 1.3mm. It’s still 13.77mm thick, but that’s down from a whopping 15.1mm. The crown guards have been slimmed to match, making the crown easier to operate, and the bezel has been consolidated from an 18-piece assembly of ring, insert, rider tabs, and separate screws into a single-piece unit. Dial options include a panda setup, blue, and green in all-steel; grey in bi-metal steel and gold; brown in full 18k red gold; and ice blue in steel and platinum, all with black chronograph counters. Each comes on either a metal bracelet or rubber strap. The B01 movement remains unchanged, in-house and COSC-certified with a 70-hour reserve. Steel references start at €9,200 on rubber and €9,600 on bracelet, climbing through €11,200/€14,200 for bi-metal, €11,950/€12,300 for steel-platinum, and €28,500/€49,900 for red gold.

Rounding out the update is the Chronomat Automatic 36, already the most wearable of the three and now slightly more so. Thickness drops from 10.01mm to 9.68mm, and the redesigned lugs bring the same cohesion as the larger models. The one thing to pay attention here is the movement: calibre 10 is Breitling's rebadged Sellita, COSC-certified but with a more modest 42-hour reserve than the B31 or B01. Entry is a blue dial in steel at €5,650, with a mother-of-pearl option at €6,900, and lab-grown diamond bezels and bi-metal cases pushing the range up to €13,650 at the top.

The updated Breitling Chronomat collection is available now. See more on the Breitling website.

2/

The Glashütte Original Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2026 Looks Fantastic In Purple

Every year, Glashütte Original produces a new dial for the Sixties Chronograph and calls it the Annual Edition. And every year, it’s a fantastic watch. The formula is simple enough: take the same polished steel case, the same reliable movement, and hand over the bronze dial blank to the team in Glashütte to do something interesting with colour. This year the colour is purple, which puts the 2026 edition squarely in psychedelic territory and is, frankly, fantastic.

The case hasn't changed, which is fine — it didn't need to. At 42mm wide and 12.4mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 48.5mm, it sits on the larger side but the soft curves keep it from feeling aggressive. Polished steel flanks, a slim bezel, domed sapphire crystal, piston-style pushers and a fluted crown complete the picture. Water resistance is 30 meters, which could be a bit better in 2026.

But who cares of water resistance when you have a dial like this. Starting as a thin bronze blank, it's embossed with a textured motif, domed, galvanised in gold, and then hand-coated with translucent purple lacquer before going into the kiln. The lacquer lets the gold base breathe through it, giving the colour depth. After firing in a kiln, the hour markers are manually incised directly into the lacquered surface, exposing the underlying material for contrast. You also get white Arabic numerals at 12 and 6, luminous dots along the minutes track, and slightly curved gold-plated hands. The bicompax sub-dials at 3 and 9 have a snailed finish, showing you seconds and elapsed 30 minutes respectively.

Inside is the automatic calibre 39-34, beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour with a 40-hour power reserve. The three-quarter plate with Glashütte stripes, swan-neck fine adjustment, bevelled edges and polished screws are all expected and here. The watch comes on a black synthetic fabric strap with a pin buckle.

The Glashütte Original Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2026 in Purple is priced at €10,300, and available for a limited period before it exits the catalogue. See more on the Glashütte Original website.

3/

Nodus Adds Damascus Steel And A Better Movement To The Sector Deep

The Nodus Sector Deep is truly an impressive watch. The ball-bearing bezel alone is worth the price of entry, let alone its great finishing, the 500-meter water resistance rating and great price. Now, we’re getting a new model with two significant changes — a Damascus steel bezel and a new movement from Miyota instead of Seiko.

The case is 38mm wide and 13.6mm thick, made out of steel with a gunmetal grey DLC coating. And just like previous versions, the bezel sits proud of the case, making the measurement at the bezel 42mm. And that’s a new bezel that uses the same ball-bearing mechanism, but is now made out of Damascus steel and then covered with black DLC. It’s still fully lumed, which looks great on every Sector Deep, and has the dual scales: a 60-minute dive timer and a 12-hour display that lets the watch pull double duty as a second time zone.. The knurled crown screws down and gives you an ample 500 meters of water resistance.

The dial is clean black with square Swiss Super-LumiNova markers and white hour and seconds hands. The orange arrow-tipped minute hand is the one pop of color, and it looks good. The date aperture remains at 6 o’clock.

Inside is a Miyota calibre 8315, replacing the Seiko NH35 from the previous version. The 8315 runs at 21,600 vph and delivers a 60-hour power reserve, up from 41 hours of the Seiko. It's not a technically exciting movement, but it's reliable and the power reserve improvement is useful. The watch ships on a steel bracelet with matching grey DLC coating.

The Nodus Sector Deep Damascus is available now, priced at $800. See more on the Nodus website.

4/

Marco Tedeschi MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours Brings a New Name To A Quirky Brand

Chances are, you haven’t heard of Kross Studio, which is a real shame for two reasons. First, because they made some pretty groovy watches, most notably as collaborations with DC Comics and Warner Brothers. Second, because Cross Studio is undergoing major changes. No worries, though, they just changed their name to Marco Tedeschi. The name is new, but the fully openworked designs that marked Kross are here to stay. Last year, they teased the name change with the MT1 Tourbillon, and now fully under the new name (Kross Studio is supposed to stick around for the collaborations), we’re getting the MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours.

The case is a rounded, lug-free pebble, 44mm wide and just over 15mm thick. No lugs means it wears much smaller than the diameter might suggest and the pebble shape helps make it look a bit thinner. The case is rendered in one of four materials: grade five titanium, titanium with black DLC, tantalum, and pink gold. You get domed sapphire crystal on both sides, and you might have noticed that there’s a fully flush pusher in place of the crown. That’s because you use that pusher to select the crown function, be it winding or time setting, and then you flip out the flat titanium D-ring shaped crown that’s integrated into the back to operate it. I got to play with it a bit in Geneva and it’s very, very cool.

The dial is fully openworked, front to back, and there’s a lot going on over here. The new power reserve indicator at 12 o'clock sits directly across from the flying tourbillon at 6 o'clock. Rose gold-colored hands with white Super-LumiNova read well against the darker movement architecture, especially on the tantalum and DLC versions where the contrast is sharpest. The back is closed with a large bridge finished in concentric patterns, which makes for a tidier caseback than the typical openworked approach.

The MT 7010 IRM is an in-house manual-wind calibre running at 21,600 vibrations per hour with its seven-day power reserve delivered through a single oversized barrel. All four versions come on black calfskin with pusher-operated quick release.

The Marco Tedeschi MT1.1 Tourbillon 7 Jours is priced from CHF 69,900 for the titanium, CHF 74,900 for the black DLC, CHF 79,900 for tantalum, and CHF 89,900 for pink gold. See more on the Marco Tedeschi website.

5/

Jaeger-LeCoultre Turns The Case Into The Canvas With The Reverso Hybris Artistica Pegasus

The Reverso has been many things over its 94-year history: polo player's companion, Art Deco icon, vehicle for enamel miniatures; but the Hybris Artistica line exists to push it somewhere else entirely. This is where Jaeger-LeCoultre brings in the Métiers Rares Atelier, its decorative arts division, and lets them do their best. The Pegasus is the fourth iteration of the Gyrotourbillon complication inside the Reverso case, and it pairs the calibre 179 with hand engraving across the entire pink gold case.

The case measures 51.1mm long, 31mm wide, and 12.41mm tall. Those are the stats of a Reverso at full stretch, and it’s made out of pink gold. The engravers at the Métiers Rares Atelier have carved Pegasus in relief across the rounded case sides, the winged horse surrounded by a field of clouds with polished profiles and grained interiors that extend from the flanking gadroons all the way out to the fixed lugs. Just spend a few minutes looking at the picture above. The finishing is impeccable.

Like a good Reverso, this one also has two dials, but they go above and beyond. Starting with the front dial, the blue lacquered sub-dial at 12 o'clock shows you local time, while the surrounding dial surface features 50 individually hand-filled cloud motifs in graduated shades of blue lacquer. Flip the watch and the reverse opens up to a skeletonised view of calibre 179: the hand-bevelled and skeletonised bridges are filled with blue lacquer, and the time zone ring and two-tone 24-hour indicator sit above the tourbillon aperture at 6 o'clock.

The Gyrotourbillon itself is the technical centrepiece. The inner cage, rendered in ultra-light hand-bevelled titanium, rotates 360 degrees every 16 seconds; the peripheral carriage, mounted on ball bearings, completes one rotation per minute and acts as the seconds indicator. The two axes run perpendicular to each other, which is what separates a Gyrotourbillon from a conventional tourbillon. The constant multi-directional rotation is meant to average out positional errors more thoroughly. A mirror-polished blue lacquer disc on the watch's supporting cradle reflects and amplifies the movement. The Calibre 179 winds manually; the greyed hemispherical balance spring and double-anchor balance are shaped to minimize air drag. The watch ships on a blue alligator strap with a pink gold folding clasp.

The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Artistica Pegasus is a limited edition of five pieces. Price is available on request, but many outlets report it to be over €650,000. See more on the JLC 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

• Not so long ago, authors whose work smacked of AI would own up to help from the bot. Not so now, according to Vauhini Vara, who covers the scandal clouding the Commonwealth Story Prize for The Atlantic. “The award came with 2,500 British pounds and publication on the website of Granta, a prestigious British literary magazine,” she writes. Three of the five regional winners have been accused of using AI to generate their stories in whole or in part. Vara reports that using AI to win a fiction prize is deeply troubling, of course, but the public responses from the prize itself and from Granta have been even more so.

• A gun on the conference table, a tenure dispute gone feral, and a single meeting that turns a university into a crime scene: this is the kind of opening that seems to promise one story, then keeps pulling back to reveal another. Beneath the violence lies a darker, stranger question about family, memory, and whether the truth of an old tragedy can ever be cleanly separated from the stories people tell to survive it.

• A wildfire winter in Venice becomes the backdrop for a roommate ordeal that spirals from awkward subletting into surveillance, restraining orders, and two arrests. Frankee Grove wants to believe in people, in tenants’ rights, and in the systems she has always defended — but what happens when all of them seem to turn on her?

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