Citizen Reworks Titanium For Platinum Shine; echo/neutra's New Rivanera Piccolo; Avant-Garde Bell & Ross; FC Celebrates 37 Years; Gerald Genta Oursin Grows Up; GP Mashes Together Iconic Collections

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I promised you a Sunday edition just so that we can get through the Dubai Watch Week releases and I’m not regretting it. There’s some very cool stuff coming out of the fair. Just look at that Genta. I could imagine wearing one.

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In this issue

• Citizen Expands The Attesa Collection With The Striking Platinum Shine Models

• echo/neutra Shrinks Down Their Rectangular Runaway-Hit. This Is The New Rivanera Piccolo

• Bell & Ross Goes Full Avant-Garde With Their New BR-X3 Tourbillon Micro-Rotor

• Frederique Constant Celebrates 37 Years With The Elements Five-Watch Box-Set

• The Gerald Genta Oursin Grows Up To 41mm With A Couple Of Great Meteorite Dials

• Girard-Perregaux Mashes Together Two Iconic Collection With The Laureato Three Gold Bridges

👂What’s new

1/

Citizen Expands The Attesa Collection With The Striking Platinum Shine Models

Citizen has been working with titanium for 55 years, which is quite a long time. And you would expect that after 55 years, a brand would have explored every single possible option of using titanium — from various coatings to different polishing techniques. But nope, Citizen is not done yet. They’re introducing the Attesa Platinum Shine Collection which is the first to use recrystallised titanium, a material so complex to produce that each watch effectively grows its own pattern under extreme heat and pressure.

Since all three new models share the same material, here’s a few words before we get to the details. The majority of the case is made from Super Titanium, Citizen’s titanium that is treated with Duratect Platinum which increases hardness to five times that of steel. But we’ve seen that before. What’s new is the recrystallized titanium which is used for the mid-links of the titanium bracelets. Recrystallized Titanium is a material created by applying a high-temperature heat treatment followed by a cooling process. This creates unevenness in the composition of the metal, producing unique crystal patterns on the surface. Each crystal pattern is unique to every watch. All three watches also share the same dial, which gets a metallic ink treatment that gives it an icy look that matches the mid-links.

The simplest of the three watches is the CB0284-66A whcih measures 40.6mm wide and 10.6mm thick. It’s water resistant to 100 meters and it’s powered by the calibre H145 Eco-Drive Radio-Controlled. It has a two-year power reserve in power-save mode with world time functionality. The watch is limited to 1,400 pieces and priced at $1,220.

Then, we have the slightly more complex AT8284-61A whose case measures 42mm wide and 10.8mm thick. It, too, gets 100 meter water resistance, but inside is the more capable calibre H800 Eco-Drive Radio-Controlled movement. It has Citizen’s Direct Flight system which allows you to adjust the time and date across 26 time zones with a twist of the crown. It also has a chronograph, perpetual calendar and power reserve indicator. Speaking of power reserve, you get 10 months of it. This one is limited to 2,500 pieces and priced at $1,319.

Last, and most complicated is the CC4076-65A. It’s a beastly watch that measures 44.6mm wide and 15.4mm thick. Hopefully, the titanium construction helps. On top is a glossy black sapphire bezel with city codes for easier time zone switching. Inside, they are using the Calibre F950 which is an Eco-Drive Satellite Wave GPS movement, meaning you get automatic time zone changes. You also get a chronograph, perpetual calendar and power reserve indicator. This one will be the most available at 2,200 pieces, but also the most expensive at $2,437.

See more about the new Citizen Attesa Platinum Shine Collection on the Citizen website.

2/

echo/neutra Shrinks Down Their Rectangular Runaway-Hit. This Is The New Rivanera Piccolo

Echo/neutra, while not a huge brand, has been making incredibly cool sports-centered watches for year. So, it came as quite the surprise last year when they launched the rectangular and quite small Rivanera. It was a huge hit for the company, as it came at the crest of the wave of shaped watches that was building last year. Fairly priced, with an equally retro and modern design. What everyone expected from echo/neutra was incremental changes to this watch, with new colorways and straps. What I didn’t expect is for them to come out with the Rivanera Piccolo, which now has a smaller and squarer shape, while keeping the same design language of the larger version.

The Piccolo is still made out of titanium, with the sharp angles, dark sandblasted case and a faceted crystal on top. The dimensions are now even smaller, measuring 26mm wide, 6.9mm thick and a lug-to-lug of 33mm. This makes it a very unisex watch, something that is lacking in the market. Water resistance is 30 meters.

There are three dials available at launch. Two feature a radial guilloché-like textured pattern consisting of around 1,000 tiny granules that they call Grain de riz. These are available in grey and white. There are no hour markers, just two of the simples hands you can imagine. The texture of the dial has a square brushed border offset from the edges and that’s interrupted with a date aperture at 6 o’clock. The third option has a Musou Black which absorbs 99.4% of all light, making it look impossibly dark.

Inside, you’ll find the Sellita SW1000 movement beating at 4Hz with a 46 hour power reserve. The rotor has been decorated with côtes de Genève and a Rivanera logo, and the bridges are finished with perlage. The watches come with two straps, a black ribbed rubber strap and a black leather strap, allowing you to dress it up or down.

The new echo/neutra Rivanera Piccolo is available now, priced at €1,640. See more on the echo/neutra website.

3/

Bell & Ross Goes Full Avant-Garde With Their New BR-X3 Tourbillon Micro-Rotor

Bell & Ross has always been best known for their unusual watches. Well, the one unusual watch shape, as they’ve made dozens of watches shaped to mimic airplane cockpit instruments — square cases with circular openings. They’ve done huge things with this shape, from plain three-handers to wild stuff like carbon composite cases infused with lumed material. Now, however, they’re going full avant-garde with the new BR-X3 Tourbillon Micro-Rotor which is unlike anything they’ve done before (despite them already making watches with both tourbillons and micro rotors).

The case looks familiar, sure, as it has the same instantly recognizable square case, but it’s so very different. The case measures 40mm wide (and tall) and 9mm thick. You still get the four screws in the corners, but the similarities stop there. The case has a satin-brushed and polished steel middle case, with sapphire crystal tops and bottoms, extending all the way to the edges, with no bezels, making it seem like a fully sapphire case. Despite the wild construction, it still gets 50 meters of water resistance.

The sapphire transparency is made even more airy when you see that there is no dial. Instead, you see the calibre BR-CAL.389, a proprietary automatic movement developed for Bell & Ross. And it’s quite obvious that this is a movement made just for them. It uses horizontal and vertical bridges that create an artchitectural look. Time is told on the off-centred smoky grey sapphire disc at 2 o’clock, while at 5:30 you’ll see the one-minute flying tourbillon is suspended. Since everything is so transparent, you also see the micro-rotor at 7:30. At noon is a skeletonised barrel that gives you 58 hours of power reserve. The watch comes on a grey alligator strap colosed with a steel folding buckle.

The new Bell & Ross BR-X3 Tourbillon Micro-Rotor is limited to 25 pieces and priced quite aggressively. Now, Bell & Ross has been creeping up in price over the years, but it sure hasn’t touched such highs often. This is priced at €89,000. See more on the Bell & Ross website.

4/

Frederique Constant Celebrates 37 Years With The Elements Five-Watch Box-Set

37 years is not exactly a short amount of time (I’m 38), but in the watch world, it’s a blink of an eye. Especially if we’re talking about a watch brand like Frederique Constant, which has developed a huge number of in-house movements and grown quickly into a brand that those in the know turn to when they want a really well made watch for a fair amount of money. Now, at Dubai Watch Week, they are introducing The Elements Collection, a 5-watch box set that features their top five complications and a plethora of beautiful stone dials. And seeing how all five watches are completely different, if you can afford it and are just getting into watches, this might be the perfect starter box.

Let’s go in chronological order of how the complications launched. The Classic Tourbillon Manufacture was released in 2008, and here it gets a stainless steel case that measures 39mm wide and 11.14mm thick, paired with a black onyx dial with sharp and dramatic hour markers and hands, with a large opening for the tourbillon at 6 o’clock.

Next up is the Classic Moonphase Date Manufacture, which was the brand’s second manufacture movement. However, this is based on the reworked model from 2024 with the new calibre FC-716. It comes in a steel case that measures 40mm wide and 11.98mm thick. It gets a great turquoise dial with a moonphase aperture at 6 o’clock that also has a small pointer date. The watch comes on a blue alligator leather strap and from what I gather, this will be one of two models available outside the box set in Q1 2026 for CHF 4,895, limited to 716 pieces.

Then we have the Classic Worldtimer Manufacture was launched in 2012, which is one of the best world timers in the market, offered here in what has to be their best edition. The case measures 42mm wide and 12.5mm thick, made out of steel, while the central dial is now made out of a wildly cool lapis lazuli. This is the other model that will be available outside of the box, limited to 681, and also available in Q1 2026 for CHF 5,395.

Moving on to the 2016 Classic Perpetual Calendar Manufacture, which was an incredibly affordable perpetual calendar. It now comes in a smaller 40mm wide steel case that’s 12.1mm thick. This shrinking was part of the update the collection got this year, which included the new calibre FC-776 that now has a 72 hour power reserve. It’s also paired with a beautiful dark green heliotrope stone dial.

Last, and most wildly designed, is the Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar which comes in the Highlife case that measures 41mm wide and 12.65mm thick. This is the only one that doesn’t have a stone dial, but rather an openworked one with burgundy counters and an opening at 6 o’clock for the tourbillon.

The new Frederique Constant The Elements Collection comes with all five watches, is limited to 37 pieces and it’s priced at a potentially reasonable CHF 64,000. See more on the Frederique Constant website.

5/

The Gerald Genta Oursin Grows Up To 41mm With A Couple Of Great Meteorite Dials

While on holiday in Corsica in the 1990s, the famed watch designer Gérald Genta became enamored by sea urchins and started sketching watches with this inspiration in mind. The result was the Oursin, a fully round watch that was covered in urchin-like spikes. A lot has happened since, including the Gérald Genta brand changing many hands. First it was sold to Bulgari, where it stagnated, only to be sold to LVMH two years ago. The conglomerate since announced they will revive the brand as part of their high-end manufacture La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. And LVMH has been dong some pretty amazing stuff with it, bringing back the Gentissima Oursin as one of the most stunning ladies watches on the market. Now, however, Gérald Genta — the brand — is enlarging the Oursin to fit larger wrists and giving it darker meteorite dials to appeal to more men. Good move.

The new Oursin is made out of sandblasted Grade-5 titanium and measures 41mm wide and 9.84mm thick, which is actually surprisingly thing as it looks much larger in photos. The case is still fully round and hand-set with 234 white-gold beads that reminded Genta of sea urchins decades ago. The crown is made out of white gold and has a polished cabochon. It also has a very special crystal on top, curved ont he outside and internally faceted, giving you an incredible effect. You get 50 meters of water resistance, which seems enough for watch of this kind.

There are two models available of the larger Gentissima Oursin, both with meteorite dials. While you still get the expected striations of meteorites, but with different colors — one blue and one green, both very dark and quite unique. The minutes track has colour-matched dots to the dial, lumed hour hands and polished, rounded, gold hands. The lume is also super interesting, as it has a slight pink hue.

Inside, you’l find the same movement as on the smaller models, the Calibre GG-005 which is based on the Zenith Elite movement. It beats at 4Hz, has a 50 hour power reserve, and is decorated with sandblasted surfaces, Côtes de Genève and has a 18k yellow-gold rotor. The watch comes on a color matched blue and green rubber straps.

The new Gérald Genta Gentissima Oursin 41 is part of the regular collection and is priced at CHF 25,000 without taxes. See more on the Gérald Genta website.

6/

Girard-Perregaux Mashes Together Two Iconic Collection With The Laureato Three Gold Bridges

While certainly not the first integrated bracelet sports watch, the Girard-Perregaux has been going strong for exactly 50 years. And I kind of have a soft spot for the model. Among the huge players in the genre, they often make some of my favorite models. Now, at Dubai Watch Week, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the model, they are merging the Laureato with a lesser known collection — the Bridges, known for their, well, exposed bridges. This is the new Laureato Three Gold Bridges and it’s spot on.

The case is the exact same Laureato we’ve seen so far. That means that it’s made out of stainless steel, measuring 41mm wide and 10.85mm thick, with circular satin brushing and broad polished bevels. On top is a sapphire crystal surrounded by a beautiful white gold octagonal bezel that has polished bevels as well. Despite this being based on a sports watch, water resistance has gone down to 30 meters, which is not ideal.

However, you will instantly forget about the water resistance once you see the openworked dial. Around the perimeter is a flange that holds the applied hour markers and you get centrally mounted hour and minute hands. The rest is not dial, it’s all movement. And what a movement it is.

It’s the calibre GP9620, made in-house, and as open as the dial. The most striking part of the dial are the three dramatic horizontal bridges. The centre bridge holds all the gear train and the keyless works, the top bridge holds the huge barrel and a platinum micro-rotor hidden behind it, while the bottom one holds the tourbillon escapement with a titanium lyre-shaped cage. The tourbillon also acts as the small seconds display. The movement beats at 21,600vph and has a 55 hour power reserve. The finishing is incredible, and GP says that it has 418 hand-polished bevels, of which 362 are inward angles. The watch comes on an integrated stainless steel bracelet that closes with a folding clasp that has a micro-adjustability system.

The new Laureato Three Gold Bridges is limited to 50 pieces and priced at €178,000. See more on the Girard-Perregaux 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

• Robots are invading Los Angeles, in the form of Waymo driverless taxis and Coco food delivery vehicles. Joanne McNeil, a resident of LA’s Echo Park neighborhood, examines the infrastructure behind the AVs.

• Last year, a military court in Moscow convicted Yevgenia Berkovich, a writer and theater director, of “inciting hostility and hatred” against the Russian state, for staging a play that her judge declined to read or watch. Arkady Ostrovsky traces the history of Russian theater from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present, and makes playful, critical use of dramaturgy to depict the absurdity of Berkovich’s trial. Berkovich herself is a fascinating character, disarming (“I want to go home, I want prosecco, and a big, thick steak”) and inevitable, recounting her family’s political and intellectual history before saying, “I am made up of this.”

• Soyonbo Borjgin’s career at The Inner Mongolia Life Weekly began with an editor’s embezzlement scheme and a murder investigation, and ended when the Chinese Communist Party’s Discipline Committee shuttered the newspaper for “extreme political wrongdoing.” For the inaugural issue of Equator, Borjgin recounts his five years at Inner Mongolia Life Weekly, from a calamitous early reporting trip to his unlikely rise as a feature writer, detailing the mundane and harrowing pressures that shaped his journalism—and, eventually, his decision to leave China.

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One video you have to watch today

The wide decided to redecorate half the apartment. Mostly because we have a bunch of Ikea furniture that hasn’t really manage to stand up to 5 years of not intense use. This video might explain why.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk