Seiko Celebrates 60 Years Of PADI With A King Turtle; A Grigio-Blu Mille Miglia GTS Power Control; March LA.B Shrinks The AM2 Down To 32mm; Trilobe Trente-Deux Expands; A Jaw Droping Hermès Arceau

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. This PADI Seiko got me thinking that I haven’t owned a lot of the classic Seiko and Citizen divers. It just might be time to get my hands on some.

In this issue

• Seiko Celebrates 60 Years Of PADI With A Special Edition Of The King Turtle

• The Chopard Mille Miglia GTS Power Control Gets A Grigio-Blu Dial For The 44th Race Edition

• March LA.B Shrinks The AM2 Down To 32mm With An Ultra-Thin Dress Version Called The XS

• Trilobe Trente-Deux Expands With New Dial Colors And Rose Gold Case

• Piaget Teams Up With Wristcheck For A Very Handsome Blue Altiplano Ultimate Automatic 910P

👂What’s new

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Seiko Celebrates 60 Years Of PADI With A Special Edition Of The King Turtle

The Seiko and PADI partnership started in 2016 with a Turtle-cased Pepsi bezel watch and has produced a reliable stream of collaborative divers since. Ten years in and with PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, marking its 60th anniversary, Seiko has reached back to one of the more beloved platforms in the Prospex lineup, the King Turtle, for the new limited-edition Prospex Diver's Watch PADI 60th Anniversary HBB002.

The case goes untouched, measuring 45mm wide and 13.2mm thick, stainless steel with a mix of brushed and polished surfaces. The rounded cushion shape does real work on this watch as it wears much smaller on the wrist than its dimensions suggest, which is the main reason Turtle fans have always tolerated the size. Up top is a sapphire crystal with a day-date magnifier and inner AR coating. A screw-down crown and 200 meters of water resistance round out a case that does everything a dive watch should.

The dial is the thing that sets this apart from a standard King Turtle reissue. The blue of the dial is lifted from PADI's anniversary logo palette , with red appearing on the seconds hand and the "Diver's 200m" text at six. The base is engraved with a globe motif, also a reference to the legendary PADI logo. Lumibrite fills the hands and applied markers, and a day-date window sits at three o'clock.

Inside is Seiko's automatic calibre 4R36, beating at 21,600 vph with a 41-hour power reserve. The solid caseback keeps it out of sight, which is probably fine given that the 4R36 is a dependable but unglamorous workhorse. The watch ships on a stainless steel bracelet with a three-fold clasp and push-button diver's extension, plus an additional black silicone strap printed with the full "Professional Association of Diving Instructors" name.

The Seiko Prospex Diver's Watch PADI 60th Anniversary HBB002 is limited to 8,000 pieces, available from July 2026. Price is €750. See more on the Seiko website.

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The Chopard Mille Miglia GTS Power Control Gets A Grigio-Blu Dial For The 44th Race Edition

Chopard has been the official timekeeper of the Mille Miglia since 1988, which makes the annual race edition watch a reliable fixture on the calendar. Last year they released the GTS Power Control in salmon, a color that very well receieved. This year's version swaps it for Grigio-Blu, a blue-grey that the brand describes as dashboard-inspired.

The case is unchanged: 43mm wide, 11.43mm thick, made from Chopard's proprietary Lucent Steel, an 80% recycled alloy, with alternating brushed and polished surfaces. The bezel has a thin 60-minute/60-second scale on a black aluminium insert, and you know how much of a fan of aluminium over ceramic I am. Crown guards flank a screw-down crown with a steering wheel engraved on its end. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial in Grigio-Blu has a grained texture meant to evoke asphalt, which looks good and gives the dial a bit of an interesting look. Applied metallic hour markers and oversized Arabic numerals at 12 and 6 sit alongside broad faceted hands, all filled with black Super-LumiNova. You get red details the tip of the seconds hand, the "E" on the power reserve indicator, and the 1000 Miglia arrow at the date window. That arrow is a replica of the original Brescia-Rome road sign. The power reserve arc runs between 8 and 10 o'clock, fuel-gauge style.

Inside is calibre 01.08-C, COSC-certified, automatic, beating at 4Hz with a 60-hour power reserve. Functions are hours, minutes, hacking seconds, power reserve, and date. The caseback is closed with eight screws over a sapphire crystal; the movement has a simple bridge pattern, polished bevels, and an openworked rotor. It comes on a black technical textile strap with a rubber tyre-tread lining and a Lucent Steel folding clasp.

The new Chopard GTS Power Control is limited to 250 pieces, priced at €7,940. Available exclusively in Italy and at Chopard boutiques. See more on the Chopard website.

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March LA.B Shrinks The AM2 Down To 32mm With An Ultra-Thin Dress Version Called The XS

March LA.B has covered a lot of ground with the AM2 — GMT complications, DLC coatings, bronze dive variants, annual limited Millésime editions. The one thing that never really changed was the size. The angular, octagonal-ish case stuck around the 36-39mm range, while trending to smaller sizes. Now the brand has taken things considerably further with the AM2 XS, a 32mm, 6.7mm-thick version they're positioning as a dress watch.

The case is in stainless steel or gold PVD, 32mm wide and just 6.7mm thick. Six of the signature sloping facets are polished, which gives the watch a surprising amount of visual presence for its dimensions. The two flat sections at noon and six o'clock carry a vertically brushed finish that continues onto the thin octagonal bezel. The V-shaped pointed lugs extend slightly beyond the case body and connect to a seven-link steel bracelet or leather strap with quick-release spring bars. The large screw-down crown at 4 o'clock — still there, still oversized relative to the case — maintains a 50-meter water resistance rating.

Three dials are available: green (Grall), white (Shelter), and golden (Golden Hour). All three carry a houndstooth-stamped texture, a detail that fits the dressier nature without losing the AM2's tactile personality. No date window, no lume also hint at a dressier watch. The markers are polished and faceted, the hands are baton shaped.

The movement is the La Joux-Perret D101, a 23.3mm-wide, 2.5mm-thick manual-wind calibre that's functionally related to the Peseux ETA 7001. It beats at 3Hz and offers 50 hours of power reserve. A green-tinted sapphire porthole on the caseback shows you the movement. Three strap options are available: lizard, integrated steel bracelet, and black wasp-waist alligator.

The new March LA.B AM2 XS is available now, priced at €1,995 for the lizard strap and steel bracelet options, €2,795 for the alligator. See more on the March LA.B website.

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Trilobe Trente-Deux Expands With New Dial Colors And Rose Gold Case

Trilobe has been one of the more interesting stories in recent independent watchmaking. The Paris-based brand spent years refining its three-disc display before launching the Trente-Deux last year, and with it, the Calibre X-Nihilo — their first movement conceived, developed, and assembled entirely in Paris. This round of new Trente-Deux references tests whether the platform has the range to support a broader collection. I say it does.

The Trente-Deux case measures 39.5mm wide and 10.15mm thick, built from seven individually finished components with polished, satin-brushed, and microblasted surfaces. The fluted bezel keeps its polished ridges against matte grooves, and the signed crown sits between understated guards that mirror the case architecture. The steel grey reference with integrated bracelet is the more subdued of the two. The rose gold version gets a green dial and rubber strap, a warmer and more relaxed design. Water resistance is 50 meters.

Both versions have Trilobe's patented display system: three rotating discs at different levels, with hours on the outer ring, and minutes and seconds in a figure-eight layout at center. There are no conventional hands anywhere on the dial.

Inside both is the Calibre X-Nihilo automatic, 218 components, 28,800 vibrations per hour, 42 hours of power reserve. Through the sapphire caseback, the elevated balance wheel sits above an open layout with an openworked rotor that keeps the brushed bridges visible.

New steel Trente-Deux references start at €17,500 before taxes; rose gold from €35,500. See more on the Trilobe website.

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Hermès Arceau Cavalier en Formes Combines A Tourbillon Minute Repeater With A Hand-Painted Horse

The Arceau has been the most serious thing Hermès does with watchmaking. Henri d'Origny drew the asymmetrical case with its stirrup-shaped lugs back in 1978, and Hermès has spent the years since using it as a vehicle for their most ambitious complications. The Arceau Cavalier en Formes is as ambitious as it gets: a tourbillon and minute repeater built into a watch whose dial is also a miniature painting of a cubist horse.

The case is yellow gold, measuring 43mm wide. It still keeps the asymmetry of the Arceau case is intact, with the crown offset on the trigger side and the minute repeater slider positioned on the left flank of the case. The asymmetry means that you have super short lugs on the bottom of the case and stirrup-shaped lugs at the top. Water resistance is 30 meters.

Then, the incredible dial. The source material is Gianpaolo Pagni's 2023 Cavalier en Formes scarf, which hides a horse under a geometry of colored squares and circles. The dial makers reproduced that scene in depth, with applied palm leaf elements sitting at different heights, gold-engraved horse with raised front leg in a more classical vein, and a rider rendered in purely abstract forms. Openworked hands tell the time through the composition. The tourbillon cage at 6 o'clock displays the twin "H" motif from the wrought-iron lift door at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Inside is the H1924, a manual-winding movement developed with Manufacture Haute Complications in Geneva and first seen in the 2020 Arceau Lift. The repeater chimes hours, quarters, and minutes on demand, activated by the left-side trigger. Power reserve is 90 hours. The caseback carries barrel bridges shaped as twin horse heads. It ships on an Hermès Abyss Blue alligator strap.

The Hermès Arceau Cavalier en Formes is limited to six pieces and price is available on demand. See more on the Hermes 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

• A tense airboat chase opens this excellent feature from Carlyle Calhoun, with photos from James Collier, about how climate change is complicating public access to waterways in southern Louisiana. Sea-level rise is sending more and more privately owned land under water, at a rate too fast to accurately map. Oil and gas companies, fearful of losing access to mineral rights should their submerged lands become public property, have zealously fought to keep their grip on sunken land, making it increasingly difficult for people to enter their rising waters.

• Longtime New Yorker writer Peter Hessler began his career in journalism delivering copies of the Columbia Missourian. Here he recounts his preteen years of setting out before dawn each day to do his job, the trials of which included heavy loads and vicious terriers. There was also Mr. Wood.

• Six decades ago, behavioral psychologist James McConnell wanted to prove that worms could learn. He did, using a series of somewhat gruesome experiments that culminating in feeding worms other worms. (Sorry, worms.) This turned into a bit of a cultural Thing, with McConnell going on talk shows, calling himself “McCannibal,” and publishing a zine called The Worm Runner’s Digest. And then . . . the worms stopped learning. What happened? Claire L. Evans checks in with the scientists who are trying to figure that out, her usual curiosity and low-key wit in tow.

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One video you have to watch today

It’s quite simple: I see a Harry’s Garage Video, I click a Harry’s Garage video, and it never disappoints.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk