The Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer Is About As 70s Cool As You Can Get; Squale's Orange Diver For Sea Shepherd; Lorier And Urban Gentry Release A Different Pilot's Watch; Ulysse Nardin’s Work Of Art

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Oh boy, Mido just made the perfect watch for me. I’ve been saying for years that brands need to dig more into the 70s, that there’s some cool stuff there. And here we are!

In this issue:

• The New Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer Is About As 1970s As You Can Get

• Squale Releases A Fantastic Orange Take On The 1521 Diver With The Sea Shepherd

• Lorier Teams Up With The Urban Gentry For The WWII Pilot’s Watch-Inspired Merlin

• Ulysse Nardin’s Blast Free Wheel Maillechort Really Is A Work Of Art

👂What’s new

1/

The New Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer Is About As 1970s As You Can Get

Mido is good at making modern watches. They’re good looking, well built, reliable and well priced. But where they really excel, are their vintage-inspired watches. For example, their Ocean Star Decompression World Timer is one of the coolest watches you can buy today, at pretty much any price point. And it’s not expensive, it’s in the €1,200-1,300 range. Well, today they are solidifying that reputation for makers of great looking vintage-inspired watches. This is the new Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer and it sensational.

The Ocean Star case remains the same as we’ve seen before. Made out of stainless steel, it measures 40.5mm wide, 13.4mm thick and, due to the long-ish lugs, has a lug-to-lug of 47mm. On top is a unidirectional rotating bezel that has a black aluminium insert with white engraved city names. Here’s the quirk with this watch. It’s not a true World Timer, one that has the 24-hour indicator for the entire city ring. It’s not even a GMT World Timer that has a third GMT hand that points to the city ring. This is an old-school second-time zone watch, one you would get in the 1970s — just a city ring that you offset from your local time. The bezel surrounds a box-shaped sapphire crystal and water resistance is a pretty great 200 meters.

But the true retro groove comes from the roulette dial. The base gets a textured silver dial with a black-and-red chequered pattern that’s very much reminiscent of 1970s sports watches. There’s a framed day and date aperture at 3, which also has a retro vibe. The baton hands and the lollipop seconds hand are all filled with lume.

Inside the case is Swatch Group’s Powermatic movement (a.k.a ETA C07.621 or Mido Calibre 80). This evolution of the ubiquitous 2824 now features an antimagnetic Nivachron hairspring, with a regulating organ beating at 3Hz. You get a solid 80-hour power reserve. And now, for the best part. Just the other day, I was talking to a friend how there haven’t been any new releases, despite the rise in popularity of 70s watches, that come on Bund straps. And here we are! This comes on a black Bund-style leather strap with red and white stitching. If the 70s rock/porn start look of the Bund strap is too much for you, you can remove the lower layer of the strap and wear it like a regular watch.

The new Mido Ocean Star Worldtimer is available now, as part of the regular collection, and it’s priced at €999. See more on the Mido website.

2/

Squale Releases A Fantastic Orange Take On The 1521 Diver With The Sea Shepherd

With dive watches being as popular as they are these days, the number of partnerships with ocean conservation organizations is practically endless. Some are small operations, others are major players. But now, we’re getting a collaboration with one of my favorite organizations — Sea Shepherd. They’re a pretty badass group of people who do everything in their power to protect and conserve the world’s oceans and marine wildlife, mostly from illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Helping them in this effort now is Squale, with the 1521 Sea Shepherd Limited Edition.

The new watch comes in a 316L steel case that measures 42mm wide, 12.5mm thick and has a 48mm lug-to-lug measurement. The case has a fully polished finish — something that’s super risky on a diver, but I absolutely adore — and on top is a coin edge bezel which has a matte aluminium insert done in a bright orange with a white fully graduated 60 minute scale. On top is a flat sapphire crystal and the crown sits slightly recessed at 4 o’clock. But best of all, the watch has a 500 meter water resistance, which is quite a feat at just 12.5mm thickness.

The dial looks familiar, with a black matte finish and lumed circular and rectangular hour markers that are printed on in slightly green lume. At 3 o’clock is a date aperture and classic pencil hands are done in white for the hours and orange for the minutes, both lumed. Where this dial stands apart is the inclusion of the Sea Shepherd logo, which is a stylized skull.

Inside is a very familiar movement - the Sellita SW 200-1. The automatic movement comes in the elaborè grade, beats at 4Hz and has a 38 hour power reserve. The movement is known for being mostly reliable and easily servicable thanks to a familiar architecture and readily available parts. The watch comes on a black and orange NATO-style strap.

The new Squale 1521 Sea Shepherd is limited to 500 peices and priced at €1,555 (with my 25% VAT included, so it will be cheaper for you). See more on the Squale website.

3/

Lorier Teams Up With The Urban Gentry For The WWII Pilot’s Watch-Inspired Merlin

The market of vintage military-inspired pilot’s watches has been almost completely dominated by German watches and their Type A and Type B fliegers. Which is a shame. Not because I don’t like the German fliegers, but because there’s a whole world of pilot’s watches from other countries, that just aren’t recreated anywhere. Well, that seems to be changing. In 1937, U.S. Navy Officer P.V.H. Weems was asked by Longines to design a pilot’s watch. His product featured a lockable rotating bezel, a white dial and heat-blued hands for maximum legibility. The British Air Ministry adopted this design as the CK2129 by placing an order for 2,000 units from Omega in January 1940, right before the Battle of Britain began. Rolex also produced the Zerograph, a very similar watch. Now, The Urban Gentry YouTube channel and the U.S. based micro brand Lorier are teaming up to release the Merlin, styled after Weems watches worn by WWII Allied pilots and named after the legendary Rolls Royce Merlin engines that powered the iconic Spitfire planes.

The original pilot’s watches were fairly small at 34mm, made to look even tinier with the broad bezel that made the dial very small, but Lorier’s reimagining bumps up the dimensions. Not by much. The stainless steel case measures 37mm wide and 9mm thick (just the case, add to that another 2mm for the crystal), with a 45mm lug-to-lug. Actually, that length is surprisingly large beacuse the lugs are just tiny nibs that extend from the overall brushed case, with polished facets on the edges. On top is a domed Hesalite crystal, which draws a connection with the originals. People online tend to get irrationally angry when a watch comes with Hesalite, but I love it for its warm look. And before you say: “but it’s not as strong as sapphire”, sure, it’s not. But it also won’t shatter. And Lorier is one step ahead of you by shipping the watch with a tube of Polywatch, so you can buff out any scratches. Surrounding the crystal is a stainless steel brushed bezel with a black 60 minute scale and a red triangle at 12. The edge of the bezel is coined and it’s a friction fit bi-directional bezel. Friction fit is also true to the original, and the watch has a secondary crown at 4 o’clock to lock down the bezel. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial keeps things, once again, very similar to the originals. An off-white base gets a black railway track around the perimeter is used for the minute markers, while hours are indicated with beautiful Arabic numerals. Except on the cardinal positions where you get rectangles at 3, 6 and 9, and a triangle at 12 o’clock. The minute hand is classic syringe shaped, while the hour hand is a beautiful 30s-inspired leaf hand. Both the hands and the numerals get Old Radium Superluminova.

Inside, you’ll find a much more modern movement, the Miyota 90S5. It’s a familiar and reliable movement that beats at 4Hz and has a 42 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a brown single-pass deerskin leather strap that looks like it will age fantastically.

The new Lorier x The Urban Gentry Merlin is limited to 500 pieces and priced pretty fantastically at $549. See more on the Lorier website.

4/

Ulysse Nardin’s Blast Free Wheel Maillechort Really Is A Work Of Art

I will not be calling out any brands by name, but a lot of haute horology watches are trying to one up their competition when it comes to extravagance. The wilder the watch, the higher horology it is. Or at least those brands seem to think so. Ulysse Nardin has a different approach. Their new Blast Free Wheel Maillechort is equal parts interesting and subdued. Almost normal. But still packing a lot of horology, regardless of the more conservative look, since this new watch is based on the GPHG-winning Flying Tourbillon with Constant Force Escapement.

While quite large at 45mm wide and 12.4mm thick, this is one of the more striking cases you’ll see today. Made out of 18-carat white gold, it has an incredible shape full of facets, right angles and gentle curves. It has the familiar triple-lug design, with incredible polished and brushed finishes. UN says that they use lasers to do the finishing because there are parts in those nooks and crannies that can’t be reached with tools. Even more impressive is the humongous glassbox sapphire crystal, which cuts into the flanks of the case and doesn’t have a bezel, giving it a unique look. Just so you have a sense of how prominent that crystal is, the case without the crystal measures just 8.75mm thick.

Then, there’s the dial. Not like one you’ve seen before. The base is made maillechort, also known as German silver, also known as nickel silver. But don’t let that name confuse you, this ain’t silver. In fact, it’s a copper, nickel and zinc alloy. The surface of the dial is laser etched to get a grained finish and then you get five or so movement components that rise out of the dial, which is really cool. Between 8 and 12 o’clock, you’ll find the double barrels, at 3 is the winding mechanism, at 4 is the power reserve indicator, and at 6 o’clock is the Flying Tourbillon with Constant Force Escapement. The power indicator uses a rotating disc to show how much power is left, and time is told with traditional lumed central hour and minute hands.

Powering all of this is the manual wind in-house calibre UN-176 which beats at 2.5Hz and has a great power reserve of 7 days, thanks to those double barrels. But the star of the show is the tourbillon which has the constant force escapement. The constant force mechanism makes sure that the movement gets constant power through the entire power reserve of watch. This doesn’t happen on regular movements. In them, as power depletes, accuracy decreases. With a constant force, you get the same accuracy through the entire reserve. The watch comes on a blue velvet effect rubber strap, closed with an 18-carat white gold deployant buckle

The Ulysse Nardin Blast Free Wheel Maillechort is limited to 50 pieces, priced at $126,600. See more on the Ulysse Nardin 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

• After he began a project intended to unmask extremist groups in North Carolina and beyond, reporter Jordan Green got a first-hand look at how a movement known as “militant accelerationism” operates. Hate-mongers came to his door and threatened his family, but he refused to quit pursuing the truth about them.

• Watching the Tour de France can be boring. Then again, with three weeks of daily six-hour rides that hinge on conserving energy for 90% of the time, it’s mathematically impossible not to be boring. Enter Charles Petersen, whose love for the sport comes with twin scoops of self-deprecation and cynicism. Whether or not you watch a single moment of this year’s Tours—note the long-overdue plural, now that the women’s sport finally has an official Tour of its own—you should at the very least let Petersen sell you on their herculean demands, undeniable grandeur, and soap-opera-worthy microdramas.

• Joseph Earl Thomas happens to be a competitive Pokémon player and an astute cultural critic, which makes his remit far wider than a mere subculture story: In interrogating why Pokémon’s competitive scene has always looked blessedly different from other games’, he brings all of himself to the project, in the best way possible.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

For a second there, Singer’s Porsches became a bit boring. Well, this thing is the exact opposite.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk