THE ELEMENTS

H Moser & Cie Venturer Concept Blue Lagoon

The graduated, fumé dial of Moser’s Venturer Concept Blue Lagoon has an almost hypnotic effect, like a watching eye. It also conceals this watch’s otherwise pared-back aesthetic, a signature of the independent company’s Concept pieces – note it has no dial markings, no logo, and no seconds hand. Instead, it’s a pure expression of the watchmaking form; as nature intended, you could say. The watch’s 18-carat red gold case and braided leather bracelet are accompanied by one of Moser’s exquisite hand-wound calibres, this one with a three-day power reserve. Only 20 pieces will be made.

F.P. Journe Élégante 40

F.P. Journe’s Élegante 40 claims to offer ‘comfort of use’ and to be ‘adapted to modern needs’. What this means in practice is that it has an ingenious electromechanical movement with a motion detector at 4 o’clock. This puts the watch into standby mode when it detects the watch hasn’t been worn for 30 minutes, and then as soon as it’s put back on, it wakes up and the hands automatically adjust to the correct time. In doing so, it becomes in sync with our rhythms, giving the wearer as much as 10 years of daily use without having to change the battery. For context, most manufacturers recommend a battery change every two to three years. This model has a 40mm extra-flat red-gold ‘tortue’ (French for ‘tortoise’) case lined with diamonds and is set on a glittering snakeskin strap.

Ressence Type 1W ‘White’

The brilliance of Ressence’s Type 1 never grows old. Its Ressence Orbital Convex System, or ROCS, is inventive and playful, displaying the time via a series of subdials that rotate around one another, rather like the Earth and its sister planets in our solar system. Its quirks continue with a convex white dial made of German silver and a double-domed glass, and a crown-less case (the watch is adjusted via a lever on the case back) that gives it its organic shape. The case is 42mm in diameter and made of Grade 5 titanium and comes on a cognac ostrich leather strap.  

Water

Tudor Pelagos

Despite advances in technology, professional and recreational divers continue to include mechanical watches on their kit list. Properly fashioned diver’s watches, such as Tudor’s Pelagos, are designed to perform in the hazardous conditions found in the depths and to act as back-up in the event computerised equipment fails. Tudor’s is particularly robust and hard-wearing. The Pelagos’s 42mm case is made of lightweight, satin-finished titanium and promises water resistance to 500 metres. The blue bezel insert is made of scratch and fade-resistant ceramic, while the minutes gauge, like the dial detailing, is finished in luminescent material. Note the snowflake central seconds hand, designed to deliver reassurance in the gloom of the subaqueous world that the watch is running.

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver

The original Royal Oak was a convention-defying sports watch, angular in design and made in utilitarian steel, but priced like a gold dress watch. Audemars Piguet’s icon, which is only a few years short of its 50th anniversary, has since become one of the most covetable designs in all watchmaking, a mainstay in collectors’ watch wardrobes. This iteration in ‘tropical turquoise’ sits in the family’s beefed up Offshore Diver segment, a chunky, ready-for-action piece with a stainless steel case measuring 42mm across and a thick-set 14.1mm deep, and a rubber strap. Despite being water-resistant to 300 metres, it has a sapphire crystal case back, an unusual feature in a diver’s watch, but welcome here given it affords the owner a view into Audemars Piguet’s in-house automatic movement.

Ulysse Nardin Diver Lady Diver

Few brands have a tighter connection to the high seas than Ulysse Nardin, which was built on the strength of the marine chronometers it produced in the 19th century. These were accurate, reliable ship’s clocks that navigators used to help them plot their position – analogue GPS, if you like. That legacy has filtered through history into the current collection, which includes this glamorous Lady Diver, a watch with a shimmering mother-of-pearl dial and diamonds set into eight of its hour markers, the bezel and the link in the white rubber bracelet. The stainless steel case is 40mm in diameter and water-resistant to 300 metres, and the in-house automatic movement gives the watch date and small seconds functions. Proving its mettle, Ulysse Nardin has given this watch – as it does all its watches – a five-year warranty, an industry high it shares with Rolex.  

Air

IWC Pilot’s Watch Mark XVIII

IWC was one of the first Swiss watch brands to fully embrace the tool watch requirements put forward by early pilots, and in particular military pilots. Chief among those were precision, accuracy, legibility, robust build quality and the ability to protect the watch’s mechanical movement from the effects of magnetism. Cockpit instruments emitted strong magnetic force fields, kryptonite to the metal moving parts in a watch, which when magnetised still today become sticky, and eventually stop. IWC wrapped its unfussy watch in stainless steel and inside that cloaked the movement in a soft-iron inner case, like a Faraday cage, and in 1948 created the Mark XI. That iconic watch is brought back to life in this silver-dialled Pilot’s Watch Mark XVIII, a 40mm classic on a black calfskin strap made by Italian leather specialists Santoni.

Breitling Navitimer 1 B01 Chronograph 43

Breitling’s celebrated pilot’s watch is the longest-running mechanical chronograph in history – it’s been in continuous production since the early 1950s. The Navitimer design was unveiled in 1952 and as this contemporary model shows, such is its strength that it’s changed little in nearly seven decades. The grippy bezel knurling, vintage chronograph pushers and dial markings remain, as does its defining function, the circular slide rule. This device can be used for all manner of calculations, including speed, distance and fuel consumption. The ‘B01’ designation points to the in-house calibre inside the watch, Breitling’s chronometer-certified, 70-hour power unit.

Bell & Ross BR V2-94 Bellytanker ‘El Mirage’ The Rake x Revolution

Bell & Ross’s Vintage collection is a gorgeously retro take on watches and military fliers of a bygone age. It includes this piece, made in partnership with global style and watch magazines The Rake and Revolution. It’s a limited edition model of 500 pieces inspired by the emergency drop tanks fitted to the undersides of fighter planes in the 1940s and 1950s – hence ‘Bellytanker’. Some of those tanks have since been restored and transformed into race cars. The quirks of this Instagram-filter-friendly limited edition include a 41mm satin-brushed bronze case, a champagne dial with brown twin counters and a matching brown minutes track, and a brown calfskin strap.  

Fire

De Bethune DB28 Kind of Blue

The explosive nature of De Bethune’s unconventional, helter-skelter watches has catapulted the brand into the close affections of collectors all over the world. The brand’s signature look toys with structure and plays with symmetry, meaning its watches flirt with convention and yet somehow blow it out of the water it at the same time. This typically detailed model fuses a blued Grade 5 mirror-polished titanium case with a black zirconium bezel and blued ‘Côtes de Bethune’ movement bridges. It features a hand-wound movement with a spherical moon phase indicator at 6 o’clock and a thumping six-day power reserve, shown by an indicator on the watch’s reverse. De Bethune’s creations are painfully low volume – the independent company says it’ll only make 10 of these a year.

Meistersinger Salthora Meta X

Meistersinger breaks with its own conventions in this Salthora Meta X, the most visually arresting model in the German watch company’s arsenal. Typically, you can expect a watch with a single hand from Meistersinger, the philosophy being to slow time down by showing it with a hand that makes a tour of the dial once every 12 hours. What’s five minutes here or there, is the thinking. But the Salthora line added a jumping hours function, that is, a digital hour display viewed through an aperture on the dial. The disc underneath it ‘jumps’ forwards on the hour, hence the name. The Meta X, with its transparent dial, sports case, ceramic bezel, water resistance to 200 metres and fiery red detailing takes it up another notch, giving it a look that suggests its been specifically designed for exploring volcanoes.

Romain Jerome Eyjafjallajökull-DNA Evo

Romain Jerome, founded in 2004, is known for taking bits of otherworldly things and adding them to its watches – hence the ‘DNA’ collection. Previously, the Moon and the Titanic have been immortalised in time inside its watches. Here, the characterful watchmaker has introduced into the watch's dial volcanic lava stone from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that erupted in 2010, spewing a huge dust cloud into the atmosphere, causing widespread travel disruption that affected an estimated 10 million travellers. The watch has a 43mm black PVD-coated steel case and a hand-painted enamel ‘lava flow’ running through the dial. The playful finish is the plane-shaped hands, a nod to the aircraft grounded during Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption. Only 99 will be made.