Longines Partners With Commonwealth Games For An LE HydroConquest; Depancel's Colorful Allure Mono Eye; Beaucroft's Tropical Contour GMT; Norqain's Wild One Skeleton Chrono; A Smaller Mauron Musy

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I will own a Mauron Musey one day. They’re huge, they’re wild, and I’m completely in love with them.

In this issue

• Longines Teams Up With The Commonwealth Games For Another Limited Edition HydroConquest

• Depancel Allure Mono Eye Brings Bold Colours To An Affordable Retro Chronograph

• Beaucroft Releases The Contour GMT With A Tropical Teal Dial

• Norqain Gives The Wild One Skeleton A Transparent Chronograph

• Mauron Musy Debuts Its First In-House Movement, First Integrated Bracelet, In The New, Smaller, NODE°

👂What’s new

1/

Longines Teams Up With The Commonwealth Games For Another Limited Edition HydroConquest

Longines has been timing the Commonwealth Games since 1962, which makes this kind of release practically tradition at this point, considering the fact the games happen every four years. The HydroConquest Commonwealth Games 2026 is the latest in a line of event-tied editions, following the Birmingham 2022 version, and it's built on the newly redesigned slimmer HydroConquest that debuted earlier this year.

The case comes in your choice of 39mm or 42mm wide, both measuring 11.7mm thick, in brushed stainless steel with a screw-down crown and sapphire crystal. The unidirectional rotating bezel uses a black ceramic insert with teal numerals and the obligatory lume capsule at 12 o'clock, and the caseback is engraved with the official Glasgow 2026 logo alongside a "Limited Edition – One of 2026" inscription. Water resistance is 300 meters.

The dial is where the (un)official Glasgow color scheme comes into play: the official palette of Steel Grey, Turquoise, Pink, and Purple is translated into a teal-to-black gradient, with the Longines signature rendered in violet and the central seconds hand tipped in pink. Rhodium-plated hands and applied geometric indices carry Super-LumiNova, which keeps things legible despite everything going on. There's a date window outlined in white at 3 o'clock.

Inside is Longines calibre L888.5, the brand's ETA 2892-based automatic that has been significantly upgraded with a silicon balance spring for improved antimagnetic resistance. It beats at 25,200 vph and offers a 72-hour power reserve. The watch ships on a black rubber strap with a double-folding clasp and micro-adjustment.

Available from May 2026, the HydroConquest Commonwealth Games 2026 is limited to 2,026 pieces in each size, priced at €2,300, regardless of the size you choose. See more on the Longines website.

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Depancel Allure Mono Eye Brings Bold Colours To An Affordable Retro Chronograph

Depancel has been making the Allure in various configurations for a while now, and the French brand has found a lane that suits them: retro-influenced chronographs with motorsport detailing, sold at a price that doesn't require a second mortgage. The new Allure Mono Eye is the latest in that line, now available in five dial colours with the single sub-dial layout that gives the watch its name.

The stainless steel case comes in at 39mm wide, 11.5mm thick, and 45.8mm lug-to-lug. Those are well-proportioned numbers for this kind of watch. Finishing is a mix of brushed and polished surfaces with a red accent band on the crown. Could have been cool if these were matched to the dial. On top is a K1 mineral crystal, which is the one downside that one might point out. Water resistance is 50 meters.

Five dials are available: red, blue, and orange stand out for their vividness, while mint green and off-white are just a bit more subdued. Each one is structured the same way — a large colored ring around a central black sunburst section with a pulsometer scale, a 60-second subdial at nine o'clock (the "mono eye"), and a tachymeter ring at the outer edge. The red chronograph hand ties everything together. Applied hour markers are polished and lume-filled.

Inside is the Seiko VK64 mechaquartz, which combines quartz timetelling with a mechanical chronograph module. The practical upside is obvious — you get a satisfying clunk from the pushers and a proper sweeping chrono hand, alongside quartz-accurate timekeeping and a battery life of around 36 months under normal use. Each watch ships with a choice of a textured black FKM rubber strap or a black perforated racing-style bull leather strap. .

The Depancel Allure Mono Eye is available now, priced at €495. See more on the Depancel website.

3/

Beaucroft Releases The Contour GMT With A Tropical Teal Dial

Cambridge-based Beaucroft has been building a reputation on the back of their Element, a watch that impressed with its wearablility — the 39.5mm diameter and 46.5mm lug-to-lug kept it from being yet another microbrand that doesn’t take the lug-to-lug into account. The newly released Contour GMT is their first complication, and the smart money would have been on them not overcomplicating the jump. They didn't.

The case carries over the Element's DNA almost entirely: 39.5mm wide, 46.5mm lug-to-lug, made out of 316L stainless steel. The only real change is a 0.9mm increase in thickness to 12.6mm, which is a fair trade for adding a GMT module. The case features a blend of polished, brushed, and bead-blasted surfaces with a scratch-resistant coating rated at 1,200–1,300 Vickers. A sapphire box-style crystal sits on top with three layers of AR coating. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial comes in the Tropical Teal colorway, and it’s handsome enough. But the cool thing is how they’ve handled the GMT complication. Rather than the conventional chapter ring printed with a 24-hour scale, Beaucroft has buried it around a central sunburst disc, allowing for a shorter GMT hand and no day/night shading. The ring has a ribbed texture that gives it just enough visual presence. There's no date window, which many believe to be blasphemous on a GMT but I love, and the applied polished hour markers sit on a second dial plate layered over the base.

The movement is the Miyota calibre 9075, which is one of the rare affordable and mass-accessible traveler-style GMT movement, which means that you can sent the local

side is the very familiar Miyota 9075, which allows the wearer to jump the local hour hand, meaning that it’s a “true” or flyer-style GMT movement. It beats at 28,800 vph, 4Hz and has a power reserve of about 42 hours. It’s also regulated to ±10 seconds per day. The steel three-link bracelet shares the scratch-resistant coating of the case, includes micro-adjustment on the folding clasp, and uses quick-release spring bars for easy strap swapping.

The Beaucroft Contour GMT is priced at £795 / US$899 and is available now for pre-order. Deliveries are expected in September. See more on the Beaucroft website.

4/

Norqain Gives The Wild One Skeleton A Transparent Chronograph

Norqain has been releasing Wild One variants at a steady clip — the purple skeleton last year, the meteorite dial before that, a smaller size somewhere in between. So many, in fact, that I often miss what’s new from them. Like, for example, this Wild One Skeleton Chrono that came out almost a month ago, with a interesting catch: it brings the flyback chronograph movement first seen in the 2024 Independence into the Wild One's Norteq cage, opening that complication up to a more sport-forward audience. Three variants at are available at launch, one of which wraps the whole thing in 18k red gold, because why not.

The case is 42mm wide and 13.6mm thick, built from Norqain's proprietary Norteq carbon fibre composite with a titanium inner container for the movement and rubber shock absorbers rated to 5,000g of impact resistance. The standard edition pairs a black Norteq cage with turquoise accents; the second, limited to 400 pieces, swaps in burgundy Norteq. The red gold edition — 75 pieces — uses a PX Impact 18k red gold cage over a black Norteq caseback with grey shock absorbers and gold and grey accents. Water resistance is 200 meters.

In place of a conventional dial, you get the movement exposed on both sides. Two transparent discs float over the calibre at 12 and six o'clock for the 30-minute counter and running seconds, with printed pointer arrows instead of hands on the sub-dials. A mountain silhouette bridge crosses the dial; the flange carries a pulsometer scale for heart rate monitoring and a chapter ring with applied, diamond-cut indices treated with Super-LumiNova. The central seconds hand gets a lumed arrow tip. It's busy, but it's meant to be.

The movement is the AMT-developed flyback chronograph built on a heavily modified Sellita SW500 base, with a column wheel, COSC chronometer certification, and a 62-hour power reserve. I've said before that Norqain's proprietary claim on this calibre is fairly well-earned given the extent of the modifications. The watch ships on a rubber strap with a choice of pin buckle or folding clasp.

The Wild One Skeleton Chrono starts at CHF 7,200 for the standard black version and CHF 7,300 for the burgundy 400-piece edition; the red gold reference comes in at CHF 18,950. See more on the Norqain website.

5/

Mauron Musy Debuts Its First In-House Movement, First Integrated Bracelet, In The New, Smaller, NODE°

I've written about Mauron Musy quite a few times because I really, really do like them, but every time I've had to add a small caveat: the watches are spectacular, but they are big. The Architect runs 44mm wide and it's not a watch that works on everyone's wrist. I can pull it off, but I have rhino wrists. The new NODE° doesn't change the design language, it doesn't change the engineering philosophy — it just makes the brand's world available to a wider group of people. At 41mm, it's the smallest Mauron Musy watch to date, and it comes loaded with firsts: the brand's first in-house movement, and their first integrated bracelet.

The NODE° case is grade 5 titanium, 41mm wide and 12.8mm thick, with the same bolted construction that distinguishes every Mauron Musy case. The nO-Ring gasket-free sealing system — where the precision-machined case components press together so tightly that no rubber seal is needed to keep the water out — provides 200 meters of water resistance here. There are double domed sapphire crystals front and back, with a screw-down crown on the side.

The dial is semi-open, and Mauron Musy uses the open space deliberately. The angular balance bridge at nine o'clock sits on view like a display piece, the movement's architecture becoming part of the visual composition rather than a separate attraction visible only through the caseback. Small seconds at seven, with the balance wheel itself visible to the left. Three options: blue with a brushed finish, grey and silver both with a grainé texture. All of them look excellent in the press images.

Inside is Calibre MM03, Mauron Musy’s first proprietary movement. It's a micro-rotor automatic — the rotor is a ball-bearing mounted tungsten micro-rotor — measuring 5.5mm thick and working at 28,800 vph with 32 jewels set in traditional chatons and a free-sprung balance with inertia screws. Power reserve is 96 hours. The integrated bracelet is machined from the same grade 5 titanium as the case, with brushed surfaces contrasted against polished hexagonal link accents and a butterfly clasp. An additional rubber strap with folding clasp is included.

The Mauron Musy NODE° is a limited production of 300 pieces per year, priced at CHF 48,000. See more on the Mauron Musy 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

• According to Google, Anthropic, Amazon, or most any other tech giant, artificial intelligence belongs in classrooms. They say it will make education more “efficient,” teachers’ experiences “richer,” and the work students produce more “impressive.” But research indicates that AI poses serious risks to children’s cognitive and social development. Jessica Winter, a self-declared AI hater, finds that resistance to AI in education is mounting.

• Alan Michael Parker was a poet and teacher for four decades. Alan Michael Parker still teaches. But Alan Michael Parker is no longer a poet. Now, he’s a cartoonist. A single-panel cartoonist, to be specific—and in this piece for VQR, he turns the critic’s eye on himself in order to explain what makes the form so joyous and multilayered. Red cowboy boots and sparkly nail polish never signified so much.

• Upon its release in 1986, Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s Keyboard Fantasies “sounded like it was recorded in a future that hadn’t yet come to pass,” writes Bijan Stephen. Three decades later, the album’s unlikely rediscovery brought new appreciation to a musician whose work is “very clearly the product of a lifetime of moral thinking.” Stephen’s appreciation casts Glenn-Copeland as an artist at once deeply concerned with his time and yet operating outside its usual boundaries.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’ve been on it with movie trailers, especially superhero movie trailers, but this looks like it’s going to be a really nice superhero summer.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk