The Zenith A384 Gets A Chocolate Panda Dial; Stowa's Brilliant Field Watch; Louis Erard Brings Back The Esprit Flinqué; The Anoma A1 Is A Permanent Fixture; Hublot Refreshes The Big Bang Unico

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I think that Stowa field watch might be the best thing we see all week. Other than that, what are your thoughts on fauxtina?

In this issue

• Zenith Chronomaster Revival A384 'Chocolate Panda' Adds A Tropical Dial To The Retro Collection

• STOWA Fieldwatch Terra Brings the Brand's Minimalist Principles to Land

• Louis Erard Brings Back The Blue Flinqué, And Adds A Grey Variant

• Anoma Turns Its Best-Selling A1 Into A Permanent Fixture With Two New Dials

• Hublot Refreshes The Chronograph That Put Them On The Map With The Big Bang Unico Reloaded

👂What’s new

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Zenith Chronomaster Revival A384 'Chocolate Panda' Adds A Tropical Dial To The Retro Collection

Tropical dials are one of those collector obsessions that makes no rational sense until you see one in person. A manufacturing defect — UV exposure reacting with the lacquer chemistry — gradually turns a black dial brown over decades, and somehow that slow fade became more desirable than the original. Zenith's "chocolate panda" A384 Revival skips the fifty-year wait and delivers the look from new: warm brown sub-dials and tachymeter ring against an off-white background, with "old radium" lume on the hands and markers. Some love the fauxtina look. Others believe it’s cheating.

The case is 37mm wide and 12.6mm thick, steel throughout, built from the original 1969 blueprints with the same radial-brushed bezel, polished bevels, and pump-style pushers. A domed sapphire crystal sits on top, the one concession to modernity, along with the exhibition caseback. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is the main attraction. The "chocolate panda" configuration takes the classic white-background, black-counter layout and warms the whole thing up: the three sub-dials and the peripheral tachymeter ring go brown, mimicking the look of a vintage dial that's been quietly changing color for decades in someone's drawer. The off-white lacquered background works well against those warm tones, and the faceted hour markers and hands carry "old radium" Super-LumiNova to complete the aged effect. The red chronograph seconds hand with its rectangular lumed lozenge, the slightly overflowing numerals on the 12-hour sub-dial, the period-correct font, all of it screams vintage. The date aperture at 4:30 is still an eyesore, but it was an eyesore in 1969 too.

Inside is the El Primero calibre 400 — the direct descendant of the original 3019 PHC, running at 5Hz with a 50-hour power reserve. The architecture is unchanged from 1969; the improvements are in tolerances, not topology. On the wrist it comes on the ladder bracelet, with those open central links that look like the rungs their name implies. Gay Frères made the original; Zenith has recreated it here for the Revival, and it's the detail that makes this release more than another colorway.

The Chronomaster Revival A384 Tropical is a permanent collection piece, priced at €9,600. See more on the Zenith website.

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STOWA Fieldwatch Terra Brings the Brand's Minimalist Principles to Land

STOWA built its reputation on the Flieger, a watch that came out of the same 1940s German Luftwaffe program that produced most of the pilot watch designs still being referenced today. The brand has leaned into that heritage with dive watches and aviation pieces for decades. The Fieldwatch Terra is a departure — not a military field watch in the vintage sense, but a modern outdoor tool watch aimed squarely at hikers and trail runners, in three earthy colorways and with a clean, functional brief.

The case is 38mm wide and 11.5mm thick, in stainless steel with a matte bead-blasted finish and gray PVD coating. I don’t mind the PVD, but this looks prime for a cerakote coating that matches or contrasts the dial. Lug-to-lug measures 46.9mm and lug width is 18mm. On top is a sapphire crystal. There's a screw-down crown with an integrated crown guard and 200 meters of water resistance, which is meaningfully more than any field trip will demand.

The matte dial carries a recessed 24-hour scale for orientation, a structured minute track around the edge, and two-tone hands. The five-minute markers are printed in red, which glow orange at night via Superluminova C1. There’s no date window, which I’m a fan of. There are three dial options available: Desert, Forest, and Soil, which translate to sand, green and brown colors.

Inside is the Sellita SW200, a reliable Swiss automatic with a stop-second function and magnetic field protection rated to 80,000 A/m, which matters if you're around equipment with electronic interference. It beats at 4Hz and has a 40 hour power reserve. The watch ships on a braided elastic fabric strap, which looks incredibly cool and is likely very comfortable.

The Fieldwatch Terra is available now, priced at €1.039, with my 25% VAT included. That’s a pretty good deal these days. See more on the STOWA website.

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Louis Erard Brings Back The Blue Flinqué, And Adds A Grey Variant

Louis Erard has made the Regulator its creative playground for years now, and it’s been paying off. Earlier in 2025, the brand teamed up with Worn & Wound on a blue flinqué-inspired Regulator. That watch is back — and it's brought a grey companion. The new Esprit Flinqué comes in two versions, both limited to 99 pieces.

The case is the same one that's been showing up on every Louis Erard Regulator collaboration, and that's fine. Stainless steel, fully polished, 39mm wide and 12.82mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 45.9mm. A domed sapphire crystal sits on top, with anti-reflective coating on both sides, and the caseback is transparent. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The dial is the whole point. Louis Erard isn't working with actual flinqué enamel here — that would push the price up considerably — but the construction captures the spirit of the technique. A fluted base layer radiates outward like sun rays from the center, in either light blue or light grey. Above it sits a lacquered minutes counter in deep cobalt blue or dark grey, with the same fluted geometry. Two skeletonised sub-dials, hours at noon, seconds at six, sit on the base layer and revolve beneath the minutes counter. The only text on the dial is "Swiss Made" at 30 minutes. Louis Erard's fir-tree hand handles the minutes.

Inside is the Sellita SW266-1 in élaboré grade, manually wound, running at 28,800vph with a 38-hour power reserve. The blue version ships on a grained beige calfskin strap; the grey on a matching grey one. Both have polished steel pin buckles and quick-release spring bars.

The Louis Erard Esprit Flinqué Le Régulateur is CHF 3,990, without taxes in either colour, 99 pieces each. See more on the Louis Erard website.

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Anoma Turns Its Best-Selling A1 Into A Permanent Fixture With Two New Dials

Anoma launched with a single watch and a single question: what happens when a retailer with genuinely good taste decides to make something himself? Matteo Violet Vianello, of A Collected Man, drew his debut A1 from a 1950s Charlotte Perriand table — all flowing curves, no straight lines, no obvious precedent in the watch world. The limited pre-order sold, people liked it, and now Anoma is doing what any sensible young brand does with a hit: they're keeping it. The A1 Core Collection makes two versions of the watch permanently available.

The case is the same one that made the A1 interesting in the first place — a rounded triangular 316L stainless steel form measuring 39mm by 38mm and just 9.45mm thick, with all edges polished to that particular mirror lustre you only get from the higher-grade alloy. No lugs to speak of; the leather strap tucks under the case edges. The triangular sapphire crystal sits flush in the upper bezel portion. Water resistance is 50 meters, and the whole thing is said to wear closer to a 36mm or 37mm round case on the wrist.

Two dials are available. The A1 Abyss builds a teal-green from three layers of lacquer, one greenish-blue base, two deep midnight blue over it, and divides the surface between a sunburst outer section and a mirror-polished center, so the same watch reads differently depending on the angle. The A1 Stone goes grey, with a grain-textured center meant to evoke river-bed stones, again framed by a sunburst outer ring. Both are sector dials, laid out triangularly and offset from center. Silver printed hands, no seconds hand.

Inside is the Sellita SW100 automatic, beating at 28,800vph with a 38-hour power reserve. The watch comes on grained Italian leather.

The A1 Core Collection is available now from Anoma's online boutique. The first production of 300 pieces will be delivered by June. Price is £2,200. See more on the Anoma website.

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Hublot Refreshes The Chronograph That Put Them On The Map With The Big Bang Unico Reloaded

Hublot launched the Big Bang in 2005, and it was the start of a line that brought about a lot of controversy to an already controversial brand. The Unico followed in 2010, bringing a fully in-house flyback chronograph to the collection and giving the Big Bang something it hadn't exactly had before: watchmaking credentials. Now, 16 years on from that launch, Hublot is marking the anniversary with the Unico Reloaded, a five-piece sub-collection built around a revised dial and a two-part bezel. But they also showed off a couple of other things at Watches and Wonders as well.

For the Unico Reloaded, the case stays at 44mm wide and 14.5mm thick, water-resistant to 100 meters. The major change is in the bezel, which is now split into two parts, letting Hublot mix contrasting materials and finishes across the five references. Magic Gold gets the brand's scratch-resistant 18k gold alloy. Three references use coloured ceramic — All Black, blue, and dark green. The fifth pairs titanium with black ceramic.

The dial revision is the real substance of the update. A central plate now covers some of the movement's inner workings, which sounds like a regression but actually results in a cleaner dial. The column wheel and oscillating pinion are still visible, now highlighted in colour and labelled with their names. The 60-minute sub-dial has been redesigned with bolder colour contrast and a peripheral track with coloured markers at ten-minute intervals. The date has moved from inside the 60-minute counter at 3 o'clock to 4:30, indicated by a coloured Super-LumiNova arrow. The small seconds at 9 o'clock is slightly less open-worked than before. On non-All Black references, two-tone colour accents run through the chronograph hand tip, the "Flyback" inscription on the peripheral track, and the lower pusher ring.

Inside is the second-generation Unico calibre, a flyback chronograph with five patents, a 72-hour power reserve, and a stated accuracy of -2/+4 seconds per day. The rotor has been updated with a cut-out H motif. Both a fabric-style rubber strap and a plain black rubber strap come included, each with Hublot's One-Click quick-change system and a folding clasp.

Alongside the five permanent references, there are two 200-piece limited editions with ambassador input: the Kylian Mbappé edition in King Gold and microblasted white ceramic, with a gold-toned "10" at 6 o'clock; the Usain Bolt edition in black ceramic and carbon with a yellow gold bezel, a lightning bolt-shaped seconds hand, numerals reading 658, and authentic Jamaican training ground soil sandwiched in the sapphire caseback.

The Big Bang Unico Reloaded is part of the permanent collection. Pricing starts at €23,500 for the titanium-ceramic reference and €24,700 for the All Black, blue and dark green ceramic versions. Magic Gold comes in at €43,600. The Mbappé and Bolt limited editions are €29,400. See more on the Hublot 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

• Angela Chen and Clara Collier are “fascinated by what happens when we try to reduce the most violent and unpredictable of human actions down to a set of rules.” Their conversation with games historian Jon Peterson, author of Playing at the World, reveals how efforts to mirror the complexities of military strategy yielded more complicated tabletop games, even among the anti-war crowd.

• When serendipity came knocking, Philip Connors answered the door. Disenchanted with new editorial duties assigned to him at The Wall Street Journal, Connors made a surprising and and abrupt decision to become a fire lookout in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness of New Mexico for the United States Forest Service, thinking that the job would be the perfect setting from which to write. For The Baffler, Connors recounts ditching his cubicle to get paid to look out the window all day.

• Since childhood, novelist Vincenzo Latronico (Perfection), has been beset by terminal insomnia—the kind that kicks in to interrupt his sleep cycle. He can fall asleep no problem, but he’s also more familiar with 4:00 a.m. than most people who don’t work a graveyard shift. For The Yale Review, he muses on the specific breed of torment that lurks at the end, but manages to color the extent of his days.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

This is a very bitter-sweet trailer. You might think of Jackass as a bunch of idiots seeing how close to permanent disability they can get for a few laughs, but for a lot of people in my generation, it’s so much more. Jackass is cultural landmark because it proved that a group of genuinely creative, fearless individuals could build a massive, lasting empire entirely on their own terms: rejecting polish, pretension, and corporate formulas in favor of raw authenticity, deep friendship, and the radical idea that joy, chaos, and human connection are more than enough.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk