Nivada And Hodinkee Release Grey Antarctic GMT; Fortis Introduces Minimalist Space Duo; Circula Celebrates With MOP Dial; Armin Strom And Revolution Team Up; Bianchet Introduces Sapphire UltraFino

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Say what you will about Hodinkee over the years, but I kind of missed their limited editions.

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In this issue

• Nivada Grenchen Teams Up With Hodinkee For A Ghostly Grey Antarctic GMT

• Fortis Introduces A Minimalist Space Watch Duo, One With A Very Hot Dial

• Circula Celebrates 70 Years With A Really Nice Mother Of Pearl AquaSport II

• Armin Strom And Revolution Team Up For A Tremblage Dual Time GMT Resonance

• Bianchet Introduces The UltraFino In A Sapphire Case, The Thinnest One On The Market

👂What’s new

1/

Nivada Grenchen Teams Up With Hodinkee For A Ghostly Grey Antarctic GMT

Pretty much every Nivada Grenchen release is destined to be a very cool watch. Since Nivada is dedicated to recreating watches from their long and storied past, you know they will be retro and different from pretty much everything made today. Some Nivada releases are based on more popular models from their past, stuff like the Chronomaster Aviator Sea Diver and the Antarctic Diver, but some are less known. This latest release is a modern reinterpretation of one such rare watch and it’s made in collaboration with Hodinkee, based on a rare old Nivada sold in Hodinkee’s store. It’s a very dark take on their Antarctic GMT, but also the first Hodinkee limited edition since Watches of Switzerland bought them last year.

The Antarctic GMT looks like it comes in a compressor case, but it’s not a real one. Instead, it just has the look of the old EPSA Compressor with its two crowns, but without the compressing capabilities that made the watch more waterproof the lower you went. The stainless steel case is all brushed and has a very 70s inspired cushion shape, with some pretty great proportions — 36mm wide, 11.1mm thick and a great lug-to-lug of 41mm. On top is a box style plexiglass crystal for a vintage look and feel and you get 100 meters of water resistance.

Gone are the earthy brown and yellow colors that we were used to, replaced by a matte grey dial, a black and white internal 24‑hour bezel operated by a secondary crown, and a lot of lume. Not just on the markers and hands, not only on the bezel, but also on the dial text. That’s cool. All the lume glows a cool green color. At 12 o’clock you’ll find the Nivada Grenchen wordmark, with Automatic GMT at 6 o’clock. The GMT hand has a black and white checkered pattern.

Inside, you’ll find the seldomly used Soprod C125 which features a caller style GMT complication. The watch beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a grey NATO strap.

The new Nivada Grenchen Antarctic GMT Hodinkee Limited Edition is on sale right now and limited to 225 pieces. Price is set at $1,740. See more on Hodinkee.

2/

Fortis Introduces A Minimalist Space Watch Duo, One With A Very Hot Dial

On one hand, I would love it if more people talked about Fortis. They make some seriously cool tool watches that always have a quirk to them that make them stand out from the fray. On the other hand, I kind of like it that Fortis is this hidden treasure. It’s a brand for those in the know. If you see someone in the wild with a Fortis, you can be sure that they are an interesting person. Now, the brand is adding two new watches to the Stratoliner S-41, a collection that’s a perfect modern space exploration watch, one a very cool and stealthy Gravity Black edition and the other the Reentry Edition which comes with an incredibly compelling dial.

The two watches share a case, one made out of recycled stainless steel and measures 41mm wide, 15mm thick, with a 50mm lug-to-lug. Large, sure, but with a lot of different sized layers to the case, it actually doesn’t look huge. The Reentry Edition comes in an uncoated case, while the Gravity Black has the first application of a DLC coating, giving it a surface hardness of around 4,500 Vickers. You get sapphire crystals on top and bottom and water resistance is 200 meters — much appreciated, especially on a chronograph, but hopefully you won’t have to test that out in space.

Then, we have the dials. Both versions have a very classic setup, with subdials at 6, 9, and 12 o’clock, and a day/date window at 3 o’clock. The rehaut holds the 60 minute scale, and both have light blue details all over the place. The Gravity Black has a textured black surface, paired with black hands that have white lume inside and look pretty cool. But cool is not badass. And the Reentry Edition has a badass dial. It’s made out of titanium and then flamed in the 10 o’clock area by hand, making it look like titanium parts of spaceships Returning to earth. You really won’t get this anywhere else.

Inside, you might expect to find the Valjoux 7750. After all, it has the iconic 7750 display layout. However, what you’ll actually find is the Fortis Werk 17. Sure, it’s based on the 7750 architecture, but it’s heavily changed by La Joux-Perret. It has a custom traversing bridge and tangential micro-screw regulation for added strength and stability, while beating at 4Hz, with a 60 hour power reserve. The Gravity Black comes on a hybrid FKM rubber and textile strap, while the Reentry Edition comes on a stainless steel Block bracelet with a Slide Clasp with on-the-fly micro-adjustment.

Both the Fortis Gravity Black and Reentry Edition are available now, priced at €5,150 for the Gravity Black and €5,500 for the Reentry Edition. See more on the Fortis website.

3/

Circula Celebrates 70 Years With A Really Nice Mother Of Pearl AquaSport II

You might not know this, but the family-owned German Circula brand has been around for 70 years. They really do have an interesting story. But they also have an interesting present. And now, to celebrate the 70th anniversary, they are releasing a very cool looking Mother of Pearl version of their vintage-inspired diver, the AquaSport II.

The AquaSport II takes on the best parts of all skin-diver cases. This means you get very short lugs, but in a more modernised and curvy look. Made out of stainless steel, the case measures 40mm wide, 12.6mm thick and, thanks to the stubby lugs, a very comfortable lug-to-lug of 46mm. On top is a 120 click unidirectional rotating diver's bezel, with a black sapphire crystal insert, surrounding a sapphire crystal. The watch has a nice brushed finish with polished edges. The crown has a lumed line running down the middle, matching the lume on the bezel insert numerals. Water resistance is 200 meters.

Previous versions of the AquaSport II came in pretty fantastic colors, including bright orange and yellow shade. But this dial is much more subdued. It’s a slice of natural mother-of-pearl that has iridescent shades of green, blue, violet, and gold. Around the perimeter is a flange with a minute track and applied hour markers which are filled with Swiss Super-LumiNova C3 X1, just like the hands.

Inside the watches is the very well known and familiar Sellita SW200 in Elaboré grade. You know and love this movement. It’s reliable, it’s easily servicable and surprisingly accurate in my experience. It beats at 4Hz and has a 38 hour power reserve. The movement is adjusted in Pforzheim to an accuracy of -5/+7 seconds per day. You can have the watch on a black tropic dial or a metal “Jubilee” style bracelet.

The new Circula AquaSport II Mother of Pearl is available for order now, with deliveries starting October 2 and priced at €940 on the rubber strap and €990 with the metal bracelet. See more on the Circula website.

4/

Armin Strom And Revolution Team Up For A Tremblage Dual Time GMT Resonance

20 years ago, Wei Koh started Revolution magazine, one of the most influential watch magazines on the market. Now, he is celebrating the 20th anniversary with a really, really nice collaboration, one with Armin Strom. What we have here is the Dual Time GMT Resonance Tremblage. The resonance in the name of the new watch doesn’t refer to a sound a watch might make, like in a chiming watch. But any confusion might be excused because resonance is a term originally derived from the field of acoustics. It occurs when two close vibrating frequencies synchronize, mutually absorbing each other’s energy and eventually arriving at the same frequency. It is also one of the most elusive phenomena in watchmaking, one that Armin Strom is very well known for making use of. It was Armin Strom co-founders Serge Michel and master watchmaker Claude Greisler who invented a way of connecting two independent balance wheels to have them synchronize, as a way of protecting from gravity, temperature and motion disruptions.

The watch comes in a stainless steel case that measures 39mm wide and just 9.05mm thick, with vertically brushed sides and polished bevels. That thickness is particularly interesting since it has the trick movement and an expansive domed sapphire crystal. There’s a lot Armin Strom fans will recognize here, including the lip on the thin bezel at 6 and the crowns at 4 and 8 o’clock, each of which operates one of the two dials.

But thing get different on the dial, where master engraver Juliane Gfeller took over the two gold dials with the tremblage technique. That means that the solid gold dials are engraved with a micro-etched pattern, paired with blackened hand-engraved day/night indicators at 6 o’clock of both dials. The peripheral chapter ring is snailed and set with polished, faceted indices. Positioned between the dials is the three-dimensional ratchet wheel supported by a circular-grained bridge. All of that sits above the frosted gold baseplate with mirror-polished balance bridges and clutch.

These are all part of the ARF22 in-house manual-winding movement which has a 42-hour power reserve capacity. It’s also very beautiful, decorated with Côtes de Genève and you get to see the independent barrels through two round apertures on the bridge. The watch comes on a brown leather strap.

The new Armin Strom x Revolution Dual Time GMT Resonance Tremblage is limited to five pieces and priced at CHF 100,000 without tax. See more on the Revolution Watch website.

 5/

Bianchet Introduces The UltraFino In A Sapphire Case, The Thinnest One On The Market

I went into Geneva Watch Days not knowing much about Bianchet. I left Geneva Watch Days a fan. While the watches might not be technically my style, I fell in love with their story. They make some pretty extravagant watches — and they showed me a sensational thing coming out soon that I can’t show you yet — but what got me was the fact that it’s a true family business. Mom, dad, and two sons were there, answering all questions and taking to future clients with some of the most endearing passion I’ve seen in Geneva. The watch I can talk about, however, is the new UltraFino housed in a very cool transparent sapphire case.

The case of the new Bianchet UltraFino Sapphire keeps the same case and great proportions of the original UltraFino, despite being made out of sapphire, a notoriously difficult material to wield. Knowing that, the size of the case is even more impressive. The 40mm width is ok, the 47.5mm length is actually quite fine, despite the tonneau shape. What is pretty incredible is the thickness of the case, which drops down to just 9.8mm. And the watch still gets 50 meters of water resistance, which is not something you see often on sapphire cases. Also, being a tonneau shape, the case is slightly curved to better fit against wrists.

There’s not much of a dial here, except for the grey flange that holds the minute track on the perimeter. Other than that, you only get the hands that float over grade 5 titanium bridges of the of the movement and two vertical elements on either side with lumed markers for the hours. In photos, the dial looks cluttered but in real life, there’s a nice separation of layers between the movement inside and hands on top, making for a pleasant viewing experience.

The movement you see inside is the calibre UT01, an automatic tourbillon movement developed for Bianched. It’s made out of grade 5 titanium, beats at 3Hz and has a decent power reserve of 60 hours. Flip the watch over and you’ll see the solid gold rotor decorated with twelve Fibonacci spirals. The watch comes on a white rubber strap with a titanium folding buckle, with an additional black rubber strap provided.

The new Bianchet UltraFino Sapphire is part of the regular collection and priced at CHF 85,500, without txes. See more on the Bianchet website.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Cameron Crowe, the writer and director behind Say Anything, Singles, and Jerry Maguire, helped define cinema in the late ’80s and ’90s. Then, in 2000, he released the semi-autobiographical Almost Famous, which David Marchese suggests in this New York Times interview was the culmination of both Crowe’s career and life. Their conversation is easygoing yet deep, moving from Hollywood talk—his upcoming Joni Mitchell biopic, his work with Tom Cruise and John Cusack—to more personal and candid reflections on his post-Vanilla Sky films, and how they simply didn’t make the same impact as his earlier hits. “[L]ife is the best writer,” he tells Marchese of this latter period, “and sometimes you have to let life show you a little bit of what that is.” This is a breezy Q&A about art, growth, and perspective.

• In the name of journalism, Arwa Mahdawi spends a week with an AI toy called Grem. Designed to “learn” the personality of the child to whom it is handed, they are supposed to have “fun, educational conversations” together, but Mahdawi quickly finds the talking plushie a creepy concept, preferring to return to the likes of Peppa Pig. As she writes, “the little oink may be annoying, but at least she’s not harvesting our data.”

• The Great Nile Migration, a Sudan Defense Force official once said, is “too vast a thing to be comprehended clearly and as a whole by a single, casual observer.” The Wall Street Journal sent two—reporter Michael M. Phillips and photographer Brent Stirton—to document the massive migration of antelopes, an event rarely seen by those outside South Sudan. The word count here is minimal, even counting the dateline and captions. That’s not a bad thing: Stirton’s images are stunning, and a compelling attraction all their own. But Phillips makes each word count, briskly detailing a history of conflict that has hobbled ecotourism plans and yet safeguarded the migration itself.

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Thanks for reading,
Vuk