echo/neutra Puts A Pink Dial Into Their Cult Dress Watches; The GMT Seiko Presage Silver Cocktail Time; A Handsome Union Glashütte; New Blancpain Villeret Ultraplates; Another Stunning Parmigiani

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Now, have a good weekend.

In this issue

• echo/neutra's New Ros'antico Collection Puts A Warm Pink Dial Into Their Cult Titanium Dress Watches

• The Seiko Presage Silver Bullet Cocktail Time GMT Is an Entry-Level Traveler With a Dress Watch's Dial

• Union Glashütte Adds A Double Moon Phase To The 1893 Johannes Dürrstein Edition, And It's A Handsome One

• Blancpain Adds More Color To The Villeret Ultraplate, Their Entry-Level Dress Watch

• Parmigiani Marks 30 Years With A Five-Note Repeater, The Carillon Tourbillon Anniversaire

👂What’s new

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echo/neutra's New Ros'antico Collection Puts A Warm Pink Dial Into Their Cult Titanium Dress Watches

For years, especially in the past few decades, the dress watch played it safe with silver, black, white, and the occasional cautious blue. Lately collectors have wanted more, and colours like salmon, lavender, and pistachio have grown in demand. echo/neutra's new Ros'antico collection rides that wave with an antique pink dial that looks absolutely sensational. Nad best of all, you can get it in either the Rivanera or the smaller Rivanera Piccolo.

Start with the standard Rivanera, which remains one of the most curious dress watches you can buy, in a very good way. The rectangular grade 5 titanium case measures 27mm wide and 40mm lug-to-lug at just 5.9mm thick including the crystal. There's an exhibition sapphire caseback and 30 meters of water resistance, which is all a watch like this needs. This is very much a neo-Art Deco design, and combined with the titanium case it’s lovely.

The antique pink dial gives the larger Rivanera a warm base for vivid electric-blue hands and a matching minute track. That contrast ties things together in a perfect way. Inside is the manually-wound ETA 7001 in Elaboré grade, a longtime favourite for anyone chasing slim proportions, good for a 42-hour power reserve and beating at 3Hz. It comes on a blue Saffiano leather strap with a titanium pin buckle, which is another great choice.

But arguably, the Piccolo is even more impressive. The smaller version of the same principle, it measures 26mm wide and 33mm lug-to-lug at 6.9mm thick, with the same grade 5 titanium. This one takes a bit more of a brutalist look due to the square nature. The dial has the same incredible pink shade, but adds a guilloché-style texture that’s just perfect. There's also a date at six o'clock. Inside the Piccolo is the Sellita SW1000 in Elaboré grade, automatic this time, with a 46-hour reserve and a 4Hz beat rate. It ships on a brown Alpine calf strap.

The watches are available now, priced at €1,490 for the Rivanera Ros'antico and €1,640 for the Rivanera Piccolo Ros'antico. See more on the echo/neutra website.

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The Seiko Presage Silver Bullet Cocktail Time GMT Is an Entry-Level Traveler With a Dress Watch's Dial

Seiko's Cocktail Time watches have always sold the same idea: a dress watch with a dial that catches light like a glass of something nice. The Presage "Silver Bullet" takes that formula and adds a GMT hand, which is the first time the cocktail concept has shared a dial with real travel functionality. What more would you even ask for?

The stainless steel case is 40.5mm wide and 12.8mm thick, which is on the chunkier side for a dress/cocktail watch. However, even though the GMT movement accounts for some of that height, the Cocktail Time watches have always been a bit chunky. Being a dressy watch, it has polished finishes, gently curved lugs with a slightly flared crown. Water resistance is 50 meters, which is just ok.

The dial is not completely unfamiliar, with a silver base and a pressed radial pattern that defines the line, fanning light out from the center like cut glass. The GMT indications are well integrated. The 24-hour scale is done in blue script sitting in between the applied markers, and the same color is used on the GMT hand. The central seconds hand is finished in gold and the GMT hand's tip echoes the stem of a cocktail glass.

Inside is Seiko's automatic calibre 4R34, the GMT member of the workhorse 4R family. It beats at 3Hz with a 41-hour power reserve and a caller-style GMT function, meaning you adjust the 24-hour hand independently rather than the local hour. The black leather strap comes with blue stitching that ties back to the dial and a steel folding clasp.

The Seikos Cocktail Time Silver Bullet (ref. SSK049) is priced at $625 and available from June 2026. See more on the Seiko website.

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Union Glashütte Adds A Double Moon Phase To The 1893 Johannes Dürrstein Edition, And It's A Handsome One

Union Glashütte sits in an odd spot inside the Swatch Group: it gets the vertical integration, but unlike most of its stablemates it can hallmark its watches Made in Glashütte rather than Swiss Made. And it’s increasingly becoming the best value for money you can find in the group. Especially the 1893 line that uses hand-wound movements and leans dressier than the brand's sportier Belisar and Noramis stuff. Their latest release is the 1893 Johannes Dürrstein Edition that now comes as a Double Moon Phase.

The stainless steel case isn’t small, measuring 41mm wide and 12.23mm thick, identical to the rose gold Moon Phase from 2024. It could stand to be smaller, but the proportions work. The flanks and lugs are brushed with a polished bezel on top, the crown is knurled and carries the UG logo, and there's a recessed corrector on the left for the day indicator. Sapphire crystals sit front and back, and water resistance is 100 meters.

The sandblasted dial has a soft champagne finish and a lot going on. It’s not overly crowded, though. A gold pointer-date hand with a half-moon tip points to the outer scale, baton markers sit inside with a Roman numeral at twelve, and twin bevelled windows at 12 o’clock show the day on the left and month on the right, both in German. Blued leaf hands indicate the time, with no seconds hand. Every scale and marking is engraved into the dial and filled with black lacquer, which is pretty great at this price point. The double moon phase at six uses a blue disc with gold moons and stars and a printed scale for the 29.5-day lunar cycle in both hemispheres. It looks fantastic.

Inside is the Calibre UN-58.S2, built on the Valjoux 7750 architecture but reworked into a hand-wound, non-chronograph movement exclusive to Union Glashütte. The large central plate is classically German, finished with broad Glashütte ribbing, blued screws throughout, polished winding gears, and gold-filled engravings, plus a silicon balance spring. It beats at 4Hz with a 65-hour power reserve. The watch comes on a brown calfskin strap with alligator embossing on a butterfly clasp.

The Union Glashütte 1893 Johannes Dürrstein Edition Double Moon Phase is not limited and retails for €3,100. See more on the Union Glashütte website.

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Blancpain Adds More Color To The Villeret Ultraplate, Their Entry-Level Dress Watch

The Villeret Ultraplate is the most affordable way into Blancpain's most classical collection, and for a while it was also one of the more old-fashioned-feeling. A thin 40mm dress watch made sense in 2010. It makes less sense now. Blancpain figured that out in 2020 with a 38mm version, and after testing warmer tones on last year's Golden Hour Series, the brand has now folded that look into the standard 38mm range. The result is fresher and a little less stiff.

The case stays at 38mm wide and 8.35mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 43.35mm that adds up to a great wearing experience. It has been gently reshaped to match the 40mm versions. The stepped bezel and fully polished surfaces are restrained, and you get a choice of stainless steel or 18k rose gold.

The dial is the obvious novelty. For the first time the Villeret gets a sunray-brushed salmon dial in steel, paired with a grey strap and darkened white gold hands and markers, and it looks fantastic. The other three references use an opaline dial in a soft beige-gold, and a boutique-only steel model with yellow gold accents and an olive strap. The Roman numerals are solid gold with satin tops and polished bevels, the XII is replaced by a JB monogram for founder Jehan-Jacques Blancpain, and there's a date window at 3 o'clock plus a thin line of lume on the leaf hands.

Inside is the in-house automatic calibre 1150, with a silicon hairspring and a useful four days of power reserve. Steel models get a new yellow gold openworked rotor while the rose gold version has a colour-matched weight, both finished with polished bevels and Geneva stripes. Every watch comes on a nubuck alligator strap, in beige, anthracite, honey or olive-green depending on reference, on a folding clasp, with a tool-free quick-change system included.

The new Villeret Ultraplate collection is permanent and priced from CHF 9,600 in steel to CHF 19,700 in 18k red gold. See more on the Blancpain website.

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Parmigiani Marks 30 Years With A Five-Note Repeater, The Carillon Tourbillon Anniversaire

Parmigiani Fleurier is quite possibly the most beloved brand among watch nerds. I don’t think I have ever heard anyone say a single thing that’s negative about them. And now they’re celebrating their 30th anniversary. You know this is going to be good. Just look at this new Carillon Tourbillon Anniversaire which draws on Michel Parmigiani's decades restoring antique chiming watches and automata, and specifically on an early 19th-century Perrin Frères pocket watch. It’s really something special.

The case is 41.6mm wide and 12.6mm thick, made out of polished 18k white gold, with the fluted gadroon midcase first seen on the Armoriale. The repeater slider sits on the left, the crown at 3 o'clock has a blue sapphire insert, and a tall box sapphire crystal is found on top. Under that crystal you can see the serpentine gongs coiling around the dial, made by Jämes Aubert, which looks almost like a topographic map markign surrounding the entire dial.

The dial is hand-hammered 18k white gold in the brand's new Morning Blue finish, the same treatment used on the recent Toric anniversary models. While the exposed hammers and the surrounding gongs could have made this a kind of busy dial, it’s kept subdued by the lack of indices and the use of simple white gold hands. You might have noticed that this is a tourbillon watch in name, but there’s no aperture in the dial to see the tourbillon, right? Well, that’s because it has one of my favorite tourbillon integrations of all time — the flying tourbillon and power reserve are both hidden on the back.

Powering all of this is the hand-wound calibre PF950, beating at 3Hz and with a 10 day power reserve from twin barrels. That’s a wild power reserve for a repeater. You get a four-gong carillon striking distinct notes, one for the hours, one for the minutes, and two for the quarters. The striking works are fully exposed at the back, flywheel and hammers visible as it chimes, and the finishing includes hand-bevelled edges, hand-grained surfaces and the engraved mezzo vibrato pattern from the Armoriale, done by Atelier Blandenier. It comes on an Akoya Grey hand-stitched alligator strap with a white-gold pin buckle.

The new Parmigiani Fleurier Carillon Tourbillon Anniversaire is limited to five pieces. Price is on request. See more on the Parmigiani 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

• June 2026 marks 100 years of Route 66—a highway that, since 1926, has connected the main streets of small-town America and been a symbol of freedom and westward expansion. To mark the centennial, Esquire sent three sets of road-trippers to traverse three different stretches of the iconic road. The result is a collective photo essay and journey that one traveler describes as “an emotional archive of America,” starting in downtown Chicago and ending in Santa Monica.

• In a thought experiment, Henry Wismayer imagines what might happen if Elon Musk, wearing an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt, stepped out onto the surface of the Red Planet. Would he die first from asphyxiation, or something like a total bodily implosion? Either way, it would not be pretty. Wismayer writes a smart, wide-ranging piece for Noēma on the dream of colonizing Mars—the physics, the biology, the politics, and the psychological toll of life on an extraordinarily hostile and profoundly boring planet. It’s clear Wismayer had a lot of fun writing this piece, and it’s just as entertaining for us to read.

• Nevada’s Highway 50 has plenty of miles. What it doesn’t have is a whole lot of people. Or amenities. Still, it continues to draw new residents along with road-trippers. For Deseret News, Natalia Galicza takes the road less traveled and talks to the folks who have made it home.

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OK, two Jack Whites in two days, but this is cool. Someone videoed the entire concert in Zagreb, so you can see how good it was.

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Vuk