The Tudor Ranger Now Comes In 36mm And With A Sandy Dial; Louis Erard x Chaykin Is Unfrogettable; A Desert Ressence; An Anime Zenith; A Salmon Grained JLC Master Ultra Thin; Two New Renaud Tixiers

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. We’re all in a bit of a pinch this week. You see, Dubai Watch Week has started. I am currently sitting on a backlog of more than 80 watches, and I want to get them out as soon as possible. So, for this week only, expect emails every day, all the way through Sunday. That will be fun!

In this issue

• Tudor Is Making Some Great Moves With The Ranger, Now Available in 36mm And A Very Nice Beige Dial

• The New And Completely Bonkers Louis Erard x Konstantin Chaykin Unfrogettable Is Exactly What It says

• Ressence Welcomes Dubai Watch Week With A Desert Colored Type 1 Round

• Zenith Brings Back The Chronomaster Revival Daisuke Jigen Edition

• The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Gets A Salmon Grained Dial

• Renaud Tixier Introduces Two New Versions Of Their Flagship Monday Watch

👂What’s new

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Tudor Is Making Some Great Moves With The Ranger, Now Available in 36mm And A Very Nice Beige Dial

Every so often, someone outside of Tudor will remember that they make the Ranger, think fondly of it, browse to it on their website, and then put the phone down because not really much has changed. The Ranger takes inspiration from 1960s explorer (get it?) watches. They tried remaking it in 2014, but that didn’t prove to be really popular. In 2022 they reworked it and shrunk it from 41mm to 39, but since then, not much has changed. Well, it’s the start of Dubai Watch Week and the update to the Ranger collection, so far, just might be the best release we’ve gotten from the show. Not only are we getting a new Dune White dial (that is by no means white, it’s beige), but also, after millions of bytes written about it online, a 36mm case. I think this will be more significant for Tudor than people realize.

So, there are two case options from now on. The 39mm version hasn’t changed at all, still measuring 12mm thick, while the smaller one measures 36mm wide and 11mm thick. There’s alos one other difference, with the smaller one getting a slightly narrower lug width of 19mm. Everything else is the same, not just from previous versions, but also between the two sides. They both have satin brushed finishes, on top are domed sapphire crystals, solid casebacks, screw-down crowns and 100 meters of water resistance.

Then we have the dials. The matte black we’ve seen before, but the Dune White, oh boy. I’m getting hot flashes looking at it. I love it. It has a grained surface, compared to the flatter matte of the black version. The the Arabic numerals and hour markers are printed in black and are not lumed. Instead, you get lumed dots on the minute track. There’s no date aperture, and the hands are lumed, with the hour one having an arrow tip. Both versions have a touch of red on the top of the seconds hand.

Inside, you’ll find two different movements. The smaller one uses the MT5400, while the larger has the MT5402, both made by Kenissi for Tudor, and both virtually identical other than a small difference in size — they both beat at 4Hz, they both have 70 hours of power reserve and are COSC certified. The watches can be had on either a 3-link, satin-brushed steel bracelet with folding clasp and T-Fit micro-adjustment or a green fabric strap with red and beige stripes.

The new Tudor Ranger collection in 36mm and 39mm is available now, is part of the permanent collection and has a range of prices. The smaller is priced at €3,120 on the strap and €3,450 on the bracelet, while the larger version comes in at €3,230 on strap and €3,560 on steel. See more on the Tudor website.

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The New And Completely Bonkers Louis Erard x Konstantin Chaykin Unfrogettable Is Exactly What It Says

It is well known that the folks over at Louis Erard have great taste when it comes to choosing collaborators to work with, mostly on their regulator watches. It’s also well known that they have worked with the Russian watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin on several cool watches, with the Halloween ones standing out. It’s also well known that Chaykin is known for very wild designs, incorporating fictional characters into his work. But ladies and gentlemen, I have never seen something like this. In time for Dubai Watch Week, the duo is releasing the Louis Erard x Konstantin Chaykin Unfrogettable. And I don’t think there’s ever been a more fitting name. This watch, styled to look like frog princesses will be hard to forget.

On the outside, the case look familiar, but has gotten some interesting updates. The case is made out of grade 5 titanium which gets a satin finish with polished details. It measures 40mm wide and 12.45mm thick, with a domed sapphire crystal on top. Water resistance is 50 meters. But come on, look at it, do you really care about the case. Well, care for just one more second, as there’s a trick behind the whole look of this watch — a movement rotated by 90 degrees. Not only did that allow them to use the regulator sub-dials as eyes, it also put the crown at 12 o’clock. And since the inspiration for this watch are frog princesses, the crowns are shaped like actual royal crowns, gold colored on one and silver on the dial.

So, the rotation of the movement moves the regulator setup, which is usually vertically oriented into a horizontal orientation. That means that Chaykin has turned this dial into a frog face with eyes on either side. The hours are indicated at 9 o’clock, in the middle is the central arrow-shaped minute hand, and at 3 o’clock is the seconds counter. But that wasn’t weird enough and didn’t convey the full effect. Instead of using hands, the two sub-dials use rotating discs with little markings for orientation that end up being pupils in the eyes. It’s all wild. There are two colors available, a violet with silver details and a dark green one with gold details, with the second really driving the princess frog theme home.

The watch is powered by the same Sellita SW266-1 caliber that drives all of Louis Erard’s regulators that can be seen through the semi-transparent, tinted caseback. It comes in an élaboré grade and can run the watch for 38 hours. But you know what I find the funniest of all. On one of their previous Timeater collaborations, the watch came on very coal toad-leather straps. This one? It’s Himeji Kurozan leather, hand-rubbed and Urushi-lacquered, with violet or green stitching and a matching vivid inner lining. Teh animal it comes from? A freaking cow! How do you not make it out of toad leather?

The new Louis Erard x Konstantin Chaykin Unforgettable is limited to 178 pieces per colorway and launches tomorrow, November 20th, at 11AM CET. Price is set at CHF 4,500 without taxes. This is some watch. See more on the Louis Erard website.

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Ressence Welcomes Dubai Watch Week With A Desert Colored Type 1 Round

Let’s keep this one short, sweet and unemotional. Because if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know my love for Ressence. There are few, if any, watches that can stand up to the Ressence Type 3 in terms of not just incredible looks but also mechanical achievement. But while my heart will always flutter for the Type 3, that doesn’t mean they don’t make other great watches. In fact, I might dare to say that Ressence might be the only brand that doesn’t have a watch I don’t like, if we exclude brands with less than five models. Now, they are reworking their Type 1° Round for Dubai Watch Week to get a more desert-like rose gold colorway.

The Type 1° Round comes in a grade 5 titanium case that measures 42.7mm wide. The rotating display consists of a German silver dial topped with a double-domed sapphire crystal and polished wire lugs connect the fully round case with no crown to the strap. You adjust the watch through the caseback and you get no water resistance. I’m not kidding. Ressence rates this as splash-proof.

Then, there’s the new dial. While it pays homage to the desert, it’s not as cool as the TYPE 9 that they created for the 75th anniversary of the Ahmed Seddiqi dealership that had actual sand embedded into the dial. That was fantastic, but this is cool as well. This dial is made out of German silver, with a sunray finish and rose gold plating. The three eccentric discs, displaying the hours, seconds and days of the week in the central part of the dial, have silver frames and snailed interiors.

Inside the watch is the humble ETA 2829. But that somewhat pedestrian movement is connected to Ressence’s proprietary Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS) which connects to the ETA and operates the extremely complex fully rotating dial and counters. However, the ETA beats at 28,800vph and has a rather short 36 hour power reserve. The watch comes on a grey suede strap with a pin buckle.

The new Ressence Type 1 Round RG is limited to 70 pieces and priced at CHF 18,150, without taxes. See more on the Ressence website.

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Zenith Brings Back The Chronomaster Revival Daisuke Jigen Edition

There’s two types of Anime that I ever watched. The first was stuff that I was introduced to by my dad. Stuff like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll — God, the 90s were the peak era of Anime movies. A bit later I added to that stuff that was coming out of Ghibli and maybe Paprika. Those were the Anime I really liked. Note that they are all movies. Then there were the Anime series. Stuff like Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, Lupin the Third and whatever else faded from my memory. I could never get into the series. There were just so many episodes. And they were all the same. But… there was this one extremely cute girl in my kendo class (are you picturing the level of nerdery here) that really liked Anime series so I was along for the ride. That’s why I know who Lupin the Third is — an anime adaptation of the manga of the same name. The main character was Lupin III, a thief, and it was actually a very groovy show. He was also the character that Zenith used as inspiration for their Lupin collection of Chronomasters between 2019 and 2022. And while they announced the last one as the final edition, it turns out that their collaboration with the Lupin the Third universe is not over. Zenith just announced the new Zenith Chronomaster Revival Daisuke Jigen Edition.

But wait, who is Daisuke Jigen. That’s Lupin’s right-hand man who on several occasions wears an El Primero A384 in the show. So that’s cool. What’s even cooler is that this watch is an (almost) exact replica of the one in the show. It’s based on the old Zenith A384, a recreation that came out a couple of years ago. To get a more vintage look, curiously, Zenith gives this watch a microblasted titanium case that gives it a darker and weathered look. The case keeps its angular looks, domed crystal and vintage looking pushers. Water resistance is 50 meters.

Moving on to the dial, this is where it’s most like Daisuke Jigen’s watch. You get a very light beige base to the dial, with snailed black chronograph counters and peripheral tachymeter scale. The indices are applied, with a polished finish, just like the hands, with beige lume that matches the dial.

Inside, you’ll find the El Primero 400 which beats at 5Hz and has a 55 hour power reserve. It’s an automatic chronograph with a column-wheel architecture that derives a lot of its architecture from the 1969 calibre 3019 PHC. Speaking of 1969, the bracelet it comes on is a late 60s Gay Frères–designed ladder bracelet, also done in titanium.

You know what’s coming now… availability. The new Zenith Chronomaster Revival Daisuke Jigen Edition is limited to just 200 pieces and will first be exclusive to a Zenith pop-up in Japan before going on global sale on November 26th. Price is set at CHF 10,400. See more on the Zenith website.

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The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Gets A Salmon Grained Dial

The nickname ‘the watchmaker of watchmakers’ did not start out as a marketing slogan for Jaeger LeCoultre. It was a fact. Way before they started making their own watches, and even after they did, JLC made some of the most legendary movements of all time for other watch brands. Today, LeCoultre makes a bit fewer movements for outside clients, but their own watches? Their watches are spectacular. It can hardly get much better than the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Moon, which now gets a beautiful salmon grained dial.

This is as classic as you can get in a watch. While on the large side for a dress watch, it’s not one of those 42mm thin things. No, instead, the stainless steel case measures 39mm wide and just 9.3mm thick, despite the moonphase complication. These cases look stunning in gold, but polished steel, which won’t shred your wallet, does the job with subtle and short lugs and a simple bezel on top. You even get a decent 50 meters of water resistance, not something that you would expect from a dress watch.

Then we have the expansive dial that gets a salmon color and a very subtle grained effect to it. It’s truly beautiful.At 6 o’clock JLC positioned the moon phase indicator, a blue disc with a golden moon and stars. Around the indicator is a small subdial that displays the date with a subtle silver hand. Speaking of silver hands, the main three hands — with the hour and minutes being Dauphine shaped — are also executed in the same color, just like the sharp indexes.

Inside the watch is the Calibre 925, JLC’s in-house automatic movement that gets 70 hours of power reserve and the kind of finishing you’d expect from a watchmaker of this calibre. The watch comes on a brown alligator leather strap which echoes the blue of the dial.

The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Moon in steel with a salmon dial is, of course, limited, and to just 800 pieces. And I know that JLC has been going wild with their prices lately, but I can’t stop thinking that the asked €12,600 is not THAT bad. See more on the Jaeger-LeCoultre website.

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Renaud Tixier Introduces Two New Versions Of Their Flagship Monday Watch

Last year, two well known watchmakers Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier came together to form a new high-end independent brand bearing their name — Renaud Tixier. Renaud is a legend in the field, who has been responsible for developing some of the most elaborate movements for the likes of Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille. Tixier, on the other hand, is only in his early 30s and is one of the few watchmakers in the industry who can make very element and component of a timepiece from scratch. According to interviews at the time, they intended to produce seven concepts that Renaud has come up with, with the first called “Monday”. It’s kind of obvious what the other six would be named, but we’re not there yet. What we’re getting now, presented at Dubai Watch Week, are two new dials options for the Monday, and what dials they are. Keep an eye out on these as they might be quite special. There are some rumors flying around the high end collector world that the partnership might be a bit shaky, but more on that when I get some confirmations. For now, I’ll just say that only Renaud will be presenting the watch in dubai.

The watch comes in a white gold or rose gold case that measures 40.8mm wide and 10.5 thick, with a 51.3mm lug-to-lug. Out back is a flat sapphire crystal, while on top is a domed one, held down with a minimalist bezel. It looks like a perfectly simple case, with round shape and angled lugs. But flip it on its side and enjoy the incredible hand engraved texture along both flanks, and on the plates between the lugs. That’s a thing of beauty. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The original Monday came with a very simple dial with a sunray or hand-grained finish in either slate grey or silver. These new versions come with a lot of intricate finishes. The base of the dial gets a grained finished, with a circularly brushed satin finished ring around it holding the applied nine faced indices. Further out is a minute scale. At 4 o’clock sits the oversized small seconds display while at 9 o’clock is a large opening into the beautiful movement There are two dial colors available: the rose gold gets a a taupe center surrounded with racing green on the minute scale and on the small seconds scale; while the white gold a blue base with white details.

The watch is powered by the RTVI2023 movement, which brings some serious improvements to the micro rotor movement. Micro rotors enable the creation of thinner movements, as the winding system is integrated into the movement rather than placed over it. Yet, one of the drawbacks of this elegant solution is that micro-rotors tend to have lower winding efficiency due to smaller size. To combat this issue, Renaud Tixier will use an auxiliary mechanism, dubbed the dancer, to improve its efficiency. To do so, a central propeller and shock absorber, capable of absorbing and restituting energy from the wearer’s move, will wind the main spring optimally. The movements beat at 2.5Hz, with a 60 hour power reserve. The rose gold variant comes on a British green calf with textile texture, while the white gold gets a deep blue calf suede strap.

The new Renaud Tixier’s “Monday” duo will be presented at Dubai Watch Week and will be available for CHF 79,000, for both variants. The watches are still not up on the Renaud Tixier website but should be soon.

⏲️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

• Erin Patterson used death cap mushrooms in a beef Wellington she served to members of her extended family in 2023, killing three of her four lunch guests in a triple homicide that shocked Australia. For Vittles, Aaron Timms asks, “What were the specific historical conjunctures that led Patterson to choose, for her victims, death by duxelles?”

• In Snigdha Poonam’s essay for The Dial, excerpted from her book Scamlands, the reporter details her methods for infiltrating scammer circles and call centers in India. Poonam navigates “a complex and multilayered landscape of deceit”; her antagonists share the same false name, promise her the same bogus lottery winnings, and then offer her jobs deceiving others. Her complex portrait of “grassroots fraud” left me with a feeling of vertigo, as each new turn revealed some greater, evasive complexity.

• This week, Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed prosecutor overseeing retaliatory cases against James Comey and Letitia James, became the subject of a bar complaint. The watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability has demanded an investigation into her professional conduct, including a bizarre Signal exchange she had with Lawfare reporter Anna Bower, who documented the back-and-forth in a recent feature. Halligan texted Bower for two days, and only at the tail end did she insist the conversation was off the record—which isn’t how journalism works.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

There is zero need for anyone to ski down Mount Everes with no oxygen, but it sure is fun to look at.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk