Seiko Cries Blue Tears, Yema Goes Very Extravagant, Laco Even More So, And New Watches From De Rijke And Hublot

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👂What’s new

1/ Seiko Takes Inspiration From Blue Glow Of Bioluminescent Plankton For The Blue Tears Samurai

You probably won’t find this Samurai at a dealer in Europe or the US, but it's such a good looking watch it might be worth it to employ a few workarounds to get this thing. The new Seiko Prospex “Blue Tears” HBB006K1 was made with Thong Sia Group and is sold in only five Asian markets. Its theme is the blue glow of bioluminescent plankton at night. It’s a colour variant of a watch you already know, and a very good one.

The case is the familiar Samurai shape: 41.7mm wide, 12.3mm thick, with the sharp lugs and flat facets that set it apart from Seiko’s rounder divers. The unidirectional bezel has a navy insert and a knurled edge. Water resistance is 200 meters with a screw-down knurled crown, and the lugs are drilled, so strap changes are easy. The crystal is Hardlex, Seiko’s toughened mineral glass which is really becoming annoying. It's really not that much of a step up in price to give the watch a sapphire crystal.

The dial is a dark blue sunburst that goes from almost black to bright blue as it moves in the light. The bezel matches it closely, so it all appears as one unified color. The only accent is the seconds hand in a brighter blue. Applied markers and wide hands are filled with lume, and there’s a date at three.

Inside is the Seiko calibre 4R35, an automatic running at 3Hz with 41 hours of power reserve. It’s a reliable workhorse and nothing more. The watch comes on a three-link steel bracelet with faceted links and a folding clasp, and a rubber navy strap is included in the box.

The Seiko Prospex “Blue Tears” HBB006K1 is an edition of 1,200 and is priced at SGD 953.80 (about €665) before tax. It’s available in Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Brunei, but I'm sure there has to be a way to get them to your home country easily. See more photos here and the watch on the Seiko website.

2/ Yema Adds A Star Map To The Tourbillon For The 2026 Edition Of The Millésime

Every year Yema picks one watch to call its Millésime, a French wine term for a vintage year. It’s the most complicated and most limited thing the brand makes that year, built by hand in Morteau around its own movements. Last year that was the Superman Tourbillon CMM.31, a titanium dive watch with a tourbillon, limited to 100 pieces at €12,000. Nobody asked for it, and a few people bought it anyway. This year’s Spacegraf Heure Sidérale Tourbillon Volant drops the dive bezel and adds a sidereal time display to a flying tourbillon. And it's even more expensive.

The case is made out of grade 5 titanium, 42mm wide and 12.15mm thick, with vertically brushed flanks and lugs and a circular-brushed bezel with polished edges. That’s a smaller footprint than last year’s 43mm Superman and a reasonable thickness. On top sits a 1.60mm thick double-domed sapphire crystal, the crown is a titanium push-pull, lug width is 21mm and water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is black, sandblasted and PVD coated, with brushed minute and seconds tracks around the edge. The disc at 12 o’clock is a very interesting complication, most seen on much, much, much more expensive watches. It completes one rotation every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds, the time Earth takes to turn once relative to the stars, so it gradually drifts against the hour hand and shows you the sky overhead. It sits under a sapphire cover tinted smoky at one end and clear at the other. The tourbillon takes up the lower half at 6 o’clock. Indices are raised 3D rings of Super-LumiNova BGW9 Grade X1, and the numerals, hands, tracks and the star disc are lumed too, so the whole map glows in the dark. My one question is which latitude the map is drawn for, because a single disc can’t show the correct sky everywhere you might wear it.

Inside is the CMM.32, made by Yema in Morteau. Accuracy is rated at -3/+7 seconds a day and the power reserve is 105 hours from a single off-centre barrel supplied by Générale Ressorts. The escapement parts are made using LIGA, the hairspring is non-metallic, and Yema rates the movement to 2,000 Gauss and 5,000 Gs thanks to Kif shock absorbers. Those are serious numbers for a tourbillon, which is usually the most fragile thing in a watch. Through the caseback you get blue bridges engraved with constellations and a flame-blued ratchet wheel with a map of the Earth. It comes on a black leather strap tapering from 21mm to 16mm, closing with a titanium pin buckle.

The Spacegraf Heure Sidérale Tourbillon Volant is limited to 150 numbered examples, with a price set at €14,500. See more photos here and the watch on the Yema website.

3/ Laco Brings Back the Full-Size Observation Watch With The 55mm Replika

One of the funniest watches I've ever put on my wrist is a 1940s pilot navigator's watch made by Laco. The thing was a chunk of steel that measured 55mm and even on my wrist it looked hilariously huge. However, as the good folks at Laco tell me, there's a significant number of collectors that want this original watch. Some even wear it on a semi permanent basis. So, it only makes sense for Laco to release exactly what the people want. And what you get is the new Replika 55, a 1:1 copy of the 1940s navigator’s watch.

The case is 55mm wide and 19.5mm thick, in Laco’s dark sandblasted steel, with straight lugs and a large onion crown. Lug width is 26mm, and the whole thing weighs about 217 grams. It's really not subtle at all. There’s a double-domed sapphire crystal on top, 50 meters of water resistance, antimagnetic protection, and the “FL23883” code engraved on the case flank as on the wartime watches. The matte finish was originally there to kill glare for the navigator, and I guess it still works.

You get two dials, as you would expect.. Type A is the simple layout, with large numerals and the triangle at 12. Type B puts minutes on the outer track and hours on an inner ring. Both are matte black with no logo. The hour and minute hands are thermally blued steel, the minute and seconds hands have curved tips, and everything is filled with Super-LumiNova C3. Type B is the more authentic choice, but A is simpler and easier for everyday use.

Inside is the hand-wound Laco 97, an ETA 6497.1 that Laco converts in Pforzheim from small seconds to central seconds. It beats at 18,000vph with roughly 46 hours of power reserve, and has Incabloc, a swan-neck regulator and hacking seconds. The serial number is engraved on both the movement and the caseback, and the inside of the caseback has period correct markings. The 26mm brown leather strap is riveted directly onto fixed bars, so you slide the watch over your hand to put it on. It’s awkward and you can’t swap it, but it’s also period correct.

The Replika 55 goes on sale in late October, with a price of €3,950. There’s also an Erbstück version with a hand-aged case, dial and strap for €5,490. See more photos here and the watches on the Laco website.

4/ De Rijke & Co. Makes The Fantastic Capri Permanent With Three New Frosted Dials

Last December, De Rijke & Co. released its first dress watch, the Capri, in three dials limited to 50 each. It was one of my favorite watches of the year. The Capri is now a permanent part of the collection with three new dials (champagne, salmon and silver) and no edition limit. Ant it's still a fantastic watch.

This is a small watch, but it's proportions are near perfection. The Capri is 28.5mm wide, 6.5mm thick and 38mm long. The sapphire crystal covers almost the whole top of the watch and curves down at the edges to meet the caseback, so there’s no bezel. There are no lugs either. The strap goes straight into an opening in the case, which looks retro and modern at the same time. The crystal is anti-reflective coated on both sides, and water resistance is 30 meters, which is all a watch like this needs.

The new dials have a frosted finish over nickel silver plating, and like before, they curve along with the crystal toward the back of the case. The original dials had no markers, but these get applied ones. That makes the Capri a little more conventional, but they still look good. All three have a small seconds subdial at six. The salmon has a blue seconds hand and a matching blue strap. The silver dial is almost monochrome and has only a red seconds hand for color. The champagne is the warmest of the three, with silver hands and the same red seconds hand.

All three watches use the La Joux-Perret calibre D100. At launch, only the Capri Blue used it, and the other two used the D101 which doesn't have a small seconds. The D100 is a hand-wound movement based on the Peseux 7001. It beats at 3Hz and has a 50-hour power reserve. The calf leather strap tapers from 24mm at the case to 18mm at the buckle.

The De Rijke & Co. Capri Permanent Collection is priced at €2,495 without tax, which is €300 more than the limited launch editions, but very much worth it. Deliveries are expected in March 2027. See more photos here and the watches on the De Rijke & Co. website.

5/ Hublot Brings Back Their Icon, The Classic Fusion, Now Called The Tributo

In 1980, Carlo Crocco put a slim gold watch on a black rubber strap, lined the bezel with 12 screws and sold it under the MDM Genève name. It did well enough that the watch’s name, Hublot, became the company’s and an icon was born. Now, whatever you may think of Hublot now – and I love them for the most part – there's no denying that this watch, which later became the Classic Fusion, is one of the most iconic watches in the business. Over the years, Hublot has reissued that watch many times in many configrations. There was a chunky 45mm variant with six bezel screws and a variant that came in at 42mm and 38mm with Sellita movements. This one, however, is a bit different. Because it's really good. The new Hublot Classic Fusion Tributo measures 38mm, it has the original 12 screws on the bezel and it has a pretty good movement inside.

The case is 38mm wide and 9.5mm thick, 2mm bigger than the 1980 quartz original. The yellow gold version mixes polished and satin surfaces, while the white gold is all polished. The 12 bezel screws are H-shaped, made out of titanium and still work as hour markers. On the gold model, the screws are black plated. On the side is a screw down crown that gives you 100 meters of water resistance.

Since the screws on the bezel have traditionally been used as hour markers, there are no indices on this variant either. The yellow gold model gets matte black lacquer with a gold MDM signature at six. The white gold gets polished black onyx with the signature in silver. Both have a date at three in white on a black disc, plus an H-shaped counterweight on the seconds hand.

Inside is the calibre HUB1711, built by Zenith on its Elite 670 base. It beats at 4Hz with a 60-hour power reserve. Through the sapphire caseback you see an openworked H-shaped rotor in 22k gold on the yellow model and black tungsten on the white. The strap is ribbed black rubber with a folding clasp in gold and black-plated steel.

The Hublot Classic Fusion Tributo isn't limited and it's priced at €30,200 in either metal. Quite a lot of money, yes. See more pictures here and the watch on the Hublot website.

⚙️Watch Worthy

• A review of the Straum Jan Mayen Stormy Seas
• Hands on with the Louis Vuitton Monterey

⏲️End links

• Paul Rankin’s account of a father-son camping trip and an exchange with an inscrutable stranger reads like it was plucked from an anthology of Southern gothic tales. It’s a tense, slightly spooky meditation on how private faith can grow wild and unruly, how isolation breeds suspicion, and how readily we project our fears.
• Eve Livingston sensitively draws us into the worlds of two women who share a similar past: abusive partners who committed suicide. Through powerful scene‑setting, we’re there when each woman hears the news, and we feel the complex emotions these deaths provoke. This is a difficult, complicated subject—not often tackled. Livingston bravely shines a light on how, in these particular circumstances, suicide can bring both grief and relief.
• Krill, writes Gordon Peake, are “the least zeitgeisty creatures imaginable”: small, shrimp-like crustaceans whose total population numbers in the hundreds of trillions. Until recently, krill has mostly served as a snack for whales. Now, however, krill is “the latest iteration of capitalism on the frozen frontier,” a health supplement whose market is valued at roughly a billion dollars. Peake spends weeks aboard the Allankay with a crew of vegan activists devoted to ending the krill trade. His dispatch is a brisk history of extractive capitalism in the Antarctic, a fascinating study of an utterly uncool creature, and an uproarious account of a reluctant sailor earning his sea legs. Take the journey with him.

👀Watch this

It's been obvious for a while that you can find some pretty amazing stuff on YouTube. But this horror short? Just might be one of the best.

Thanks for reading

Vuk

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