This New Ming Will Hypnotize You, And New Watches From Fortis, Rado, Jack Mason And Czapek

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. A lot of cool lume stuff happening today, from the very complex Ming rotating lumes to the lume easter eggs on the Jack Mason. Good stuff.

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👂What’s new

1/ Ming and Massena LAB Put the Honeycomb Dial in Motion With the 57.09 Secret Honey

Ming and Massena LAB, William Massena’s design studio, first worked together in 2021 on the 17.09 Honey, which had that honeycomb pattern. So what gives? Are they just re-releasing that watch again? Well, no... The 57.09 Secret Honey looks like a plain dark brown dial until it starts moving. This time the pattern is built from rotating sapphire discs, so it changes through the day. That has to be quite the sight up close.

The case is grade 5 titanium, 40mm wide and 10.17mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 47.8mm. There’s a polished concave bezel on top, sapphire crystals on both sides and you get 100 meters of water resistance. But that's the boring part. The lugs, on the other hand, aren't boring. They use Ming’s three-step design, and each step gets its own finish: bare titanium on the outside, a TiN coating that looks like yellow gold in the middle, and a TiSiN coating that looks like rose gold on the inside. The ring under the bezel is TiN as well.

The base dial is brass, lacquered dark brown and circular brushed. Just an unrelated note: we need more brown dials. Above it sit three sapphire discs with anti-reflective coating. One turns once a day, one every 12 hours and one every hour, and each is a different color with a different pattern of cut-outs. As the openings line up and drift apart, the honeycomb appears and changes. Ming calls this “dynamic guilloché.” The hour and minute markings are printed on the two faster discs and glow orange. The indices and both logos are engraved into the underside box sapphire crystal and filled with Ming’s Polar White lume, which sounds a bit like a marketing gimmick but is actually the whitest lume I've ever seen. Maybe truly the only pure white lume.

Inside is the Ming 330.M2, which is a heavily modified Sellita SW330 GMT architecture, which is where the 24-hour disc comes from. Ming has skeletonized the bridges, brushed them and coated the bridges and mainplate in anthracite. It beats at 4Hz (28,800vph) with about 50 hours of power reserve. You get two straps: vachetta goat leather from Jean Rousseau Paris and black FKM rubber, both with quick-release spring bars and a steel flying-blade tuck buckle with micro-adjustment.

The Ming x Massena LAB 57.09 Secret Honey is limited to 125 pieces, priced at CHF 7,250 before tax. Orders open today, October 15, at 1:00 PM GMT. See more photos here and the watch on the Ming website.

2/ Fortis Gives the Already Cool Novonaut N-42 Halo Edition a Fully Lumed Dial

You see those milky white dials on the Novonauts in the picture above? That's all lume. While most lumed dials are just painted with lume, Fortis made the whole dial base from Lumicast X1, a special composite material that incorporates lume within it. That's cool. Some background if the Novonaut is new to you: Fortis supplied chronographs to Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, for three decades, starting with the B-42 Official Cosmonauts that went up to the MIR station in 1994. That partnership ended after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and in 2023 Fortis replaced the B-42 with the Novonaut N-42, a tougher, more modern chronograph. Until now it came with a plain black or blue dial on a bracelet. The three Halo Editions add the luminous panda dial and an upgraded movement, and they’re the best-looking versions of the watch so far.

The case carries over from the regular edition: 42mm wide, 15mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 51mm. It’s made out of recycled steel, brushed all over, and the head alone weighs 115 grams. This is a big chronograph and it's quite proud of it. I'm pretty sure it would look right at home on my wrist. It is tempting... The bidirectional bezel has a fully lumed 60-minute scale on a polished ceramic insert in black, blue or green. There are sapphire crystals front and back, on the side is a screw-down crown with three gaskets, and you get 200 meters of water resistance.

All three variants have a very similar setup, with a panda setup. The snailed sub-dials, day-date discs, Arabic numerals and inner flange are printed in the accent color, and the blackened hands are filled with Super-LumiNova, including a bullseye tip on the seconds. Fortis says it’s the brightest watch it has ever made. I’d believe it, since there’s simply more luminous surface here than on anything else they make. At 12 o'clock is a 30 minute totalizer, at 6 is the 12 hour one, small seconds at 9 and a day-date window at 3 o'clock, right underneath the Fortis logo.

Inside is the new calibre Werk 17 TR, built with La Joux-Perret on the Valjoux 7750 architecture but with a column wheel. The TR update reinforces the bridges, fixes the balance bridge at two points instead of one, and swaps the index regulator for a free-sprung variable-inertia balance adjusted by screws on the rim. Power reserve goes from 60 to 70 hours, and it beats at 4Hz. The Halo Editions ship on a color-matched hybrid strap in FKM rubber and textile with a steel pin buckle. Since this is a massive and heavy watch, built to be used in extreme conditions, it doesn't depend on a spring bar to hold the straps together. Instead, they use screwed pins. That's cool.

The Fortis Novonaut N-42 Halo Edition is available now in black (F2040021), blue (F2040022) and green (F2040023), priced at €5,950. See more photos here and the watches on the Fortis website.

3/ Rado Doubles Down on Cricket With the Captain Cook In Green And Gold

Rado has made its second cricket Captain Cook in quick succession, following the European Cricket Special Edition with a collaboration with Cameron Green, the Australian all-rounder. Being that Australia's cricket team colors are green and gold, this collaboration practically just made itself.

The polished steel case is 42mm wide and 12.3mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 48.6mm. The bezel pairs a gold-tone PVD ring with a green ceramic insert, and a domed box sapphire sits on top. Green’s signature is engraved on the screw-down caseback with the edition number. Water resistance is 300 meters.

The green sunburst dial is meant to look like a pitch, with three small gold dots at 12 standing in for the stumps. The minute track copies a ball’s stitched seam, and Rado’s rotating anchor sits on a red disc meant to be the ball. Applied gold indices and hands are filled with Super-LumiNova, the seconds hand is tipped in red, and there’s a date window at 3. If you follow cricket, the references are subtle enough to live with every day. If you don’t, you’re looking at a green and gold Captain Cook. So I would say that might be a win-win?

Inside is Rado calibre R763, Swatch Group’s ETA C07.611, better known as the Powermatic 80. It runs at 21,600 vph with 80 hours of power reserve, and its Nivachron hairspring resists magnetism. You get three strap options in the box: a two-tone bracelet with brushed steel outer links and gold PVD rice-grain center links, a green and gold NATO, and a black rubber strap.

The Captain Cook x Cameron Green (ref. R32138318) is limited to 459 pieces, since Green was the 459th man to play Test cricket for Australia and price is set at $4,700. See more photos here and the watch on the Rado website, when Rado goes ahead and puts the watch on there.

4/ Jack Mason Moves the Dr Pepper Strat-o-timer to a 42mm Case and Hides a 1920s Slogan in the Lume

I was 18 when I first had a sip of Dr Pepper. I had to wait so long to try this delicious nectar because it's impossible to buy in Croatia, where I'm from, and only a bit difficult to find in other EU countries. So it wasn't until I moved to the US did I finally get to try this mythical drink that was only a pop culture reference to me. And let me tell you, it's a very good thing that I am currently in Croatia and it's still as difficult to get Dr Pepper as it was 20 years ago. Because, brothers and sisters, if I could walk to the corner store and get a Dr Pep, I would certainly have diabetes. I love that drink so much. Which is why I necessarily automatically like this new Jack Mason Strat-o-timer 42: Dr Pepper 2026 Limited Edition, the brand's fourt collaboration with Dr Pepper. It's also the first in the larger 42mm case, and I'll have more to say about watchmakers moving to larger cases next week. And to close out this intro, this watch has a very cool easter egg hidden in the lume.

The steel case is 42mm wide and 13.2mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 49mm and 22mm between the lugs. On top is a domed sapphire crystal, surrounded by a bi-directional 48 click bezel which has a sapphire insert. Look at it a bit longer and you'll notice the subtle difference in color for the day and night hours on the 24-hour bezel. On the side you'll find a screw down crown, which gives you 200 meters of water resistance.

The dial has a black sunray finish with gold applied markers and gold hands. The Lone Star logo at 12 is the newer faceted version Jack Mason introduced recently. All the markers are lumed, of course, and they glow blue just like the hands. However, the markers at 10, 2 and 4 glow green, and those hours have a special place in the Dr Pepper universe. Advertisements from the 1920s and 30s told consumers that 10, 2 and 4 o'clock was Dr Pepper time, the best way to drink the soda. They even incorporated 10, 2 and 4 on the bottle label. I wish I could have a Dr Pepper at 10, 2 and 4.

Inside is the Miyota calibre 9075, an automatic beating at 4Hz with 42 hours of power reserve. It’s a flyer-style GMT, so you can jump the local hour hand on its own when you land without stopping the watch. The rotor is new for this edition: gold-tone, skeletonized and engraved with the Dr Pepper logo. It comes on a seven-link steel bracelet with a micro-adjustment clasp.

The Jack Mason Strat-o-timer 42: Dr Pepper 2026 Limited Edition is limited to 230 pieces, each numbered on the caseback, priced at $1,299. It goes on sale October 12 at 12PM ET. See more photos here and the watch on the Jack Mason website.

5/ Czapek Puts a Green Singularité Dial and a Flying Tourbillon in the Gold Antarctique

The Antarctique is Czapek’s integrated-bracelet sports watch, launched in 2020. It has a rounded barrel case instead of the angular bezel most watches in the category use. Czapek later added a flying tourbillon version to mark the brand’s 10th year. There's a collector out there that really liked the tourbillon variant, but just couldn't find colors he liked. So, naturally, he comissioned his own. The result was a beautiful green guilloché dial in a gold case. The watch was so beautiful they agreed it would be a shame if only one were made. So Czapek is now making 10 more.

The case is 40.5mm wide and 11.5mm thick, with the same barrel shape and integrated bracelet as the rest of the Antarctique line. A raised box sapphire sits on the front, with a second one on the back. The finishing is mostly vertical brushing, with a polished bevel along the edges. Water resistance is 50 meters, compared with 120 meters on the time-and-date, Rattrapante and Révélation models. But come on, a gold tourbillon...

The dial is made by the legendary dialmaker Metalem and each one is engraved by hand. The pattern, called Singularité, is made of small rhombus shapes that shrink toward the centre, so the dial seems to drop away into the middle. That very cool texture then gets a green PVD treatment. Other than that, this still has a familiar setup, with a barrel at 12, gear train below it, flying tourbillon at six, with a curved openworked bridge running across the centre. The indices sit on the raised flange so they don’t interrupt the engraving. They are outlined in green and lumed, as are the openworked gold hands.

Inside is Czapek calibre 9, an automatic flying tourbillon movement with 191 components. It beats at 3Hz and has a 72-hour power reserve. The gold rotor is hand-engraved with the same Singularité pattern as the dial. The integrated 18k gold bracelet uses Czapek’s quick-release system, and the watch is also offered on green rubber or alligator leather.

The Czapek Antarctique Tourbillon Victory Green is limited to 10 examples. It's priced at CHF 98,000 on the gold bracelet, CHF 73,600 on alligator and CHF 69,600 on rubber. See more pictures here and the watch on the Czapek website.

⚙️Watch Worthy

• A review of the Glashütte Original 70s
• Hands on with the ArtyA Complexity Métiers d’Art

⏲️End links

• By studying fire scars in ancient wood, many scientists have become convinced that Indigenous people transformed North America long before European colonizers arrived. M.R. O’Connor spends time with dendrochronologists, who study tree rings, and other experts to understand what they’re learning
• For Boston Magazine, Kara Baskin explores a growing subculture of tweens and teens who don’t feel entirely human. Some identify as one animal, like a cat or a dog; others identify with multiple animals. One kid Baskin speaks to, Sol, says she “doesn’t summon the animals, but rather they come and go on their own schedule.” These young people call themselves therians (distinct from furries, who are fans of anthropomorphic animal characters). Baskin provides a fascinating glimpse into a world where adolescents can express themselves and explore their identities.

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If you're not familiar with early 2000s European hot hatches and how insane they got, this is a must see. The Clio V6 is easily one of my dream cars of all time.

Thanks for reading

Vuk

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