Farer Releases Pilot Series II In Titanium; Sinn Echoes A Legend With The New 544; Orient Star Continues Celebration; Gerald Charles Adds A QP To The Masterlink; A Smaller De Bethune Moonphase

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Long time no read, sorry about that. We’re back on schedule now, with some interesting watches coming out.   

In this issue

• Farer Takes Their Pilot Series Into Titanium With The Series II Collection

• Sinn Echoes A Legendary Reference With The New 544 And 544rs

• Orient Star Continues It’s 75th Anniversary Celebration With Two Different Watches

• Gerald Charles Adds A Perpetual Calendar To Their Integrated Bracelet Masterlink Collection

• The De Bethune DB25Vxs Silver Moon Is A Smaller, Reconfigured Take On Their Classic Moonphase

• IAT COLUMN — CARRIE ON WATCHING: It Is A Promising Time For Someone Looking For Female- And Unisex-focused Timepieces. Let’s See What I Can Find For Myself.

👂What’s new

1/

Farer Takes Their Pilot Series Into Titanium With The Series II Collection

Farer has covered a lot of ground since introducing their first pilot watches back in 2020. The Bradfield and Morgan were good-looking, practical, steel-cased watches with anti-magnetic Faraday cages and a clear eye on color. Now, with four new Series II Pilot watches, they've upgraded the formula: the steel is out, grade two titanium is in, and the brief has shifted noticeably toward the tool-watch end of the spectrum.

The four models — the Curtis, Curtis Eastern Arabic, Barnwell, and Hewlett — all share a new 40mm titanium case, 10.9mm thick, with a 43mm lug-to-lug. The bead-blasted finish runs across the case, with a brushed bezel. On top is a domed sapphire crystal with multiple anti-reflective coatings, and there's an oversized conical crown designed to be worked with gloves on. Inside the case, the Faraday cage returns, shielding the movement from magnetic fields up to 500 Gauss. Water resistance is 100 meters.

Each model handles the dial differently while sticking to classic pilot layouts. The Curtis gets a segmented blue-grey guilloché-style dial with pale yellow lume. The Curtis Eastern Arabic swaps in Arabic numerals and is a limited run of 100 pieces. The Barnwell follows a Type B layout — large outer minute track, smaller inner hour scale — in bronze tones with hints of blue and orange. The Hewlett is the clean one: deep ink blue, bold markers, and what looks like strong lume contrast.

Inside each is the Sellita SW300-1 in Elaboré grade. It beats at 28,800 vph and delivers a 56-hour power reserve. At this price, this is one of the more affordable SW300 versions I’ve seen. The watches ship on leather straps, with color choices matched to each model.

The Farer Pilot Collection Series II is priced at €1,555. See more on the Farer website.

2/

Sinn Echoes A Legendary Reference With The New 544 And 544rs

Sinn's first Watches & Wonders appearance is was a fun time. The Frankfurt brand has been an enthusiast staple for decades, the kind of brand that shows up in serious collections alongside watches that cost ten times as much, and having their place in Palexpo was quite appropriate. The 544 is a completely new reference — but collectors will clock the DNA immediately. The hooded, lugless case is derived from the long-running 144 chronograph and the discontinued 244, the cushion-cased titanium model first introduced in 1994 after Sinn was acquired by IWC engineer Lothar Schmidt. The 544 is the natural heir to the 244, just in steel instead of titanium, with Arabic numerals around the chapter ring rather than lume dots.

The case is bead-blasted stainless steel, 38.5mm wide. The crown tucks away at 4:00, which keeps the profile clean and contributes to the comfortable wear those relatively short hidden lugs already promise. You don't get Sinn's Tegiment treatment or an Ar dehumidifying capsule here, but the D3 crown system is present, and water resistance is 200 meters.

The dial is matte black and sparsely decorated, with the Sinn logo at 12:00 and the date window framed at 8:00. The framing will divide people, but it's cleanly executed and preferable to trying to disguise it. What's genuinely new is the lume application: hand-applied hybrid-ceramic luminous markers with luminous pigment integrated directly into the ceramic mold, which perform impressively in practice. The 544 RS swaps the white seconds hand for red.

Inside is a Sellita SW200-2 automatic with a 60-hour power reserve, an upgrade over the SW200-1 in the 556. The hidden lugs take standard 20mm spring bars, so you're not locked into the bracelet — Sinn offers their H-link, an integrated rubber strap, and leather options, all featuring the new tool-free micro-adjust clasp.

The 544 and 544 RS are priced at €1,390 on leather or rubber strap and €1,740 on bracelet. See more on the Sinn website.

3/

Orient Star Continues It’s 75th Anniversary Celebration With Two Different Watches

Orient Star turns 75 this year, which means it's their turn after Orient's own anniversary last year. We’ve already gotten a bunch of anniversary releases from them, and now we’re getting two more — a new Contemporary Date and a M34 F8 Date with a meteorite dial.

The Contemporary Date case is the same as before — 38.5mm wide, 12.3mm thick, stainless steel with brushed and polished surfaces, with a domed sapphire crystal, and 100 meters of water resistance. The M34 is slightly larger at 40mm wide and 12.9mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 47.3mm, and the same sapphire and water resistance specs. Both have transparent casebacks, the M34's engraved with the anniversary and a serial number.

The Contemporary Date usually has three colors in the regular lineup (soft purple, dark beige, brown leather), but this new anniversary-specific addition gets a gradient green dial that looks almost teal-blue. The date window at three still unbalances an otherwise symmetrical dial, but you could also argue that the power reserve at 12 and text at 6 already make things a bit wonky. The M34 meteorite dial is all monochrome: silver Widmanstätten pattern over iron meteorite brightened with silver PVD, matched to the steel case, applied indices, and hands. The power reserve arc at 12 interrupts the meteorite texture in a way I find hard to justify.

The Contemporary Date runs the F6N43, Orient Star's in-house automatic at 21,600 vph, 50 hours of power reserve, +25/-15 seconds per day. The M34 gets the considerably better F8N64: 60 hours of power reserve, a silicon escape wheel, and +15/-5 seconds per day accuracy — a properly accomplished movement for the price. Both watches ship on stainless steel bracelets.

The Orient Star Contemporary Date 75th Anniversary is limited to 1,200 pieces, priced at about €800. The M34 F8 Date Meteorite 75th Anniversary is limited to 255 pieces, priced at €3,249.99. See more on the Orient Star website.

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Gerald Charles Adds A Perpetual Calendar To Their Integrated Bracelet Masterlink Collection

The Masterlink arrived in 2024 as Gerald Charles's bid for the integrated bracelet sports watch market, and it came in the form of a 38mm square case with that distinctive Genta-designed chin at six o'clock, a wafer-thin micro-rotor movement made by Vaucher, and none of the octagonal-bezel clichés you'd expect from a brand tracing its lineage to Genta. For Watches and Wonders 2026, Gerald Charles is pushed the Masterlink into considerably more demanding territory with a perpetual calendar, which the brand is calling its most complex watch to date.

The case remains in Grade 5 titanium at 40mm wide, carrying over the Masterlink's architectural lines and that signature chin. At 10mm thick for a perpetual calendar, it really is ultra-thin designation. Total weight on the integrated titanium bracelet comes to 95 grams, which makes the watch feel almost uncomfortably light in hand. Surfaces combine polished and matte areas with what Gerald Charles calls Darkblast — a sandblasted treatment the brand describes as giving the case a soft, almost rubber-like touch. Water resistance is 100 meters.

There are two available dials, with two completely different looks. The smoked version has a two-layer construction with vertical grille cutouts finished in ruthenium. The open-worked version replaces that with a thin sapphire layer that suspends the hour markers above the movement, leaving the calendar mechanism fully visible beneath. Both use an asymmetrical layout that puts the date in an oversized display, with the month and leap year indicators scaled down. The case's smile at six o'clock anchors the composition and keeps the asymmetry from feeling chaotic.

Inside is the automatic calibre GCA11000, built on a Vaucher micro-rotor base with a proprietary perpetual calendar module. It beats at 3Hz and has 50 hours of power reserve. The bridges are finished in two stripe patterns, straight Geneva stripes representing the city's roads and curved stripes for Lake Léman, with a black ruby marking the location of the Gerald Charles atelier on Rue du Mont-Blanc. The gold-plated micro-rotor carries a hexagonal honeycomb motif. The watch comes on a two-finish titanium bracelet.

The Masterlink Perpetual Calendar is priced at CHF 63,000 for the ruthenium-finished smoked dial and CHF 70,000 for the sapphire dial version. See more on the Gerald Charles website.

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The De Bethune DB25Vxs Silver Moon Is A Smaller, Reconfigured Take On Their Classic Moonphase

De Bethune has been making the spherical moon phase since 2004, and they have never tired of finding new ways to build a watch around it. The DB25Vxs Silver Moon is a smaller, reconfigured take on the DB25L — itself the watch that launched the brand's classic collection, and one that used the moon phase as its centerpiece from the start. The new version brings the case down from 44mm to a more considered 40.6mm while keeping everything that made the original worth caring about.

The grade 5 titanium case measures 40.6mm wide, with a familiar drum shape, thin rounded bezel, and hollowed ogival lugs that have become as recognizable as any signature De Bethune element. The entire thing is highly polished, including the lugs, and water resistance is 30 meters.

The silvered dial carries a hand-guilloché barleycorn pattern and rose gold Breguet-style hands that are hand-curved to arc over the three-dimensional moon at 12 o'clock. That moon is fashioned from palladium and flame-blued steel, set against a reshaped blued titanium sky scattered with gold stars. It's an extraordinary piece of micro-sculpture dressed up as a dial complication, and the whole thing is better for being framed in a case that doesn't overwhelm it. But my favorite part of the dial are the undulations — look at how cool the curve of the numbers track meets the curve of the center of the dial.

Inside is the DB2105V5, a hand-wound movement running at 28,800vph with a six-day power reserve from a self-regulating twin-barrel. It incorporates De Bethune's flat terminal curve balance spring, a silicon escape wheel, and their triple pare-chute shock absorption system. The moon phase mechanism requires a single day's correction every 122 years. The watch comes on an extra-supple alligator strap with a grade 5 titanium pin buckle.

The De Bethune DB25Vxs Silver Moon is priced at CHF 82,000 excluding taxes. See more on the De Bethune website.

IAT COLUMN — CARRIE ON WATCHING: It Is A Promising Time For Someone Looking For Female- And Unisex-Focused Timepieces

Carrie Conta is a NY-based watch enthusiast at the start of her watch journey and she will be documenting her path of building a watch collection as a woman in her monthly column on It’s About Time. You can follow her on Instagram.

My interest in watches didn’t start with a purchase. It started with an inheritance.

A 1905 Hampden Molly Stark pocket watch, an engagement gift from my great-grandfather to my great-grandmother before he left for World War I. It’s worn now. The face is damaged. The initials etched carried a promise, a promise he kept when they married upon his return in 1918. It was since affixed to her fleur-de-lis pin. I stared at it on our family shelf for as long as I can remember, since I could look up to the cabinet the pocket watch sat in between their two pictures. She was someone I connected with and that watch remained a piece I admired as it was pinned with the fleur-de-lis on my wedding bouquet and beyond.

I didn’t think of that as the beginning of anything at the time. Watches, in my life, were never a category to explore. They were gifts. Markers. Occasional accessories that appeared and accumulated without much thought. A Swatch here. A circa-1990 women’s Rolex there. Pieces that felt significant, but not yet a clear decision I had made for myself.

That only shifted when I chose one as a gift for an anniversary present: a Montblanc 1858, limited edition, inspired by the same era as that original pocket watch. It was the first time a watch felt less like something passed down and more like something I had a clear vision for myself.

What had always been passive became deliberate. Not just what to wear, but what it means to wear it. And realizing, somewhat unexpectedly, that I want to be a participant in that decision, not just a recipient of an older piece or gifting for someone else. It was something that I could actively cultivate, like a curator for a gallery of myself.

A snag I have noticed has been the tilted scales where the industry leans so strongly masculine. The initial hurdles of finding a space for me to even start were daunting. However, I have been fortunate enough to have those in my life to support this rising interest, and others outside of my own bubble are taking notice of this rising community.

It is a promising time for someone looking for female- and unisex-focused timepieces. Since 2024, statistics have shown Millennial and Gen-Z women to be geared more toward watches that make a statement for themselves and are now increasingly wishing to make statements through quality and, most importantly, choice. The industry is listening, and I am happy to hear and spread the word.

A gateway for that exploration has been through other connections or interests and how they align with the watches I have explored for myself or others. The connection of time period for the Molly Stark and 1858 began this journey, and what has followed has been a dive into astronomy, retro-futurism, skeleton watches and more.

Of course the stars would appeal to me. I have been staring at them for years, specifically searching for places to witness them: national parks, open waters, or the clear skies of a transatlantic red-eye flight. A love of constellations and the cosmos in general was a connection point for my husband and I, and of course the conversation over them would continue during that same anniversary trip where our collective watch adventures began, his a fast leap and mine now dive.

I have looked further at men's watches with these themes in mind, searching for compatible women’s counterparts. The Christopher Ward C63 Celest I continue to eye and the Venezianico Redentore Bellanotte that bring us back to a starry night in Venice where nothing felt real but everything felt beautiful.

A moment and passion continued to be a thread woven through this budding interest. Over the last few years, as I pondered further gift ideas, I have since been enamored with the idea of a “starry night” type watch for myself. The newly released Rado Centrix Moonphase Limited Edition struck me as a perfect women’s option that appeals to everything that has me feeling sentimental on so many levels while also highlighting its durability—a key thought for any watch purchaser including those of us still acclimating to the scene. I stare at it and hope to continue to meld my interests of stars, oceans, history, and art together into something that speaks to me.

After all, watches are so much more than just time pieces; they help us express who we are and how we hope to be seen. They speak to the part of you that was looking at a vintage watch before you truly grasped what you were looking at but just knew it meant something deeply. They’re the gifts you received and milestones you met. They are gifts you give to people and to yourself that say you care about them in this moment and the next.

This is a path I will continue down and hope to bring you with me through each month.

⏲️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

• Will recommending Noah Shachtman and Robert Silverman’s investigation of Madison Square Garden’s sprawling surveillance system get me barred from “The World’s Most Famous Arena”? I guess we’ll find out. Their work, based on court filings and interviews with former staffers, positions Garden CEO Jim Dolan as a disturbing trendsetter for corporate surveillance practices and highlights a few targets of the Garden’s “biometric drift net”—among them, a transgender Knicks fan, a child, and seemingly hundreds of lawyers.

• In The Sydney Review of Books, Jane O’Sullivan takes a skeptical look at creative writing education and its prevailing wisdom: that a story must hook the reader immediately and reel them in like a fish. Moving through a wide range of first lines—from Robbie Arnott’s Dusk to Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel—she surveys how the writing advice industry’s fixation on immediacy and tension reflects a broader cultural anxiety about shrinking attention spans and an evolving publishing industry. Ultimately, O’Sullivan’s lovely piece is less a critique than a meditation: on what it means to ask a reader for trust, and on why reading and writing remain beautifully human acts.

• For The New Yorker, Lauren Collins dives into the history the message in a bottle, a phenomenon that can be traced back to “MS. Found in a Bottle,” a short story published in 1883 by Edgar Allan Poe. She profiles Clint Buffington, “one of the world’s most prolific hunters of messages in bottles.” He’s collected about 150 specimens over the years and takes Collins along on a trip to Mayaguana, the easternmost island of the Bahamas, to try their treasure hunting luck.

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