AP Breaks Internet With Brutalist[Re]Master02; Bamford Revives First Solar Digital Watch; Junghans Updates Flieger; Maurice Lacroix's Pontos S Divers; Last RM x Nadal; And New Gold Material

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I went on a family trip Friday morning and had a great time over the weekend. This means that I wrote the Friday issue on Thursday evening and scheduled it to publish. I believed this wouldn’t be an issue, as it never was. Only, it was. AP decide to release what will surely be their watch of the year on Friday and it really sent the watch world into a meltdown, as it’s not something that was expected from a usually very restrained brand. So, I missed it. Not only did I miss the AP, this was the one weekend of the year when everyone just dumps new releases on the public, so bear with me this week as I will be catching up with stuff.

In this issue:

• Audemars Piguet Breaks The Internet With The Brutalist-Inspired [Re]Master02

• Bamford London Revives The First Ever Solar-Powered Digital Watch With The Extremely Seventies Inspired Neprosolar

• Junghans Updates Their Trio Of Meister Pilot Automatic Watches With New, More Subtle, Colors

• Maurice Lacroix Releases Black and Bronze Versions Of The Pontos S Diver

• Richard Mille And Nadal Continue Collaboration With Super-Light RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon

• Audemars Piguet Unveils A Stunning New Polychrome Camouflage Gold Alloy

Today’s reading time: 12 minutes and 37 seconds

👂What’s new

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Audemars Piguet Breaks The Internet With The Brutalist-Inspired [Re]Master02

Four years ago Audemars Piguet caused quite a stir in the watch world with their [Re]Master01. It was a big deal as AP doesn’t really release new watch collections. It’s a well used joke that AP is actually called the Royal Oak company, only, it’s not a joke. They currently make several versions of the Royal Oak and have recently started a second watch line called Code 59. No other watchmaker has been as successful as AP with just one line. That’s why the [Re]Master01 was very welcomed, despite it essentially being a mashup of several of their best watches from the 1940. People had big expectations for this new line, but as time went on, it seemed that they forgot about launching a new line. Oh, it turns out they haven’t forgotten. They were just working on something really special. On Friday, AP introduced the [Re]Master02 Selfwinding, a stunning modern reinterpretation of the Model 5159BA from the 1960s known for its strong, brutalist aesthetic. And oh boy, did it stir up the internet.

While writing my predictions for 2024 last year, I was pretty much spot on when I said that we would se a very strong revival of late 80s and early 90s styles and colors in watches. And I was pretty much spot on. What I didn’t see coming at all is the very sudden influx of brutalist-like styles. Whether it’s something neo-brutalist like the Kollokium watches, something actually brutalist like the Maurice de Mauriac Pillow Watch or something inspired by brutalist architecture like the Toledano & Chan B/1, it seems to be a trend that’s very much creeping to the forefront. And now it’s pushed right into the limelight with the [Re]Master02, an asymmetrical wide watch with angles and sharp cuts everywhere.

The [Re]Master02 is difficult to measure correctly, as the dimensions change depending on where you measure, but let’s just say it measures 41mm wide and 9.7mm thick. This is significantly larger than the original, and it’s kind of funny to see them side by side (you can do so in this article from Monochrome). The case is made out of AP’s proprietary and beautiful sand gold that they just showed off a couple of months ago and that has a sandy hue to it. But the most impressive thing on the watch has to be the sapphire crystal that not only extends to the right side out of the case, but also has numerous angles and facets cut into it.

The dial takes on equally retro aesthetics combining the feeling of brutalism and the 50s that gave birth to the movement with influences that look almost Art Deco. The base of the dial uses the famous midnight blue color called Bleu Nuit Nuage 50. While the dial doesn’t have a patterned dial we have seen in other AP watches with that color, it has a linear satin finish on the dial that’s divided into 12 different triangles. It looks stunning.

Inside is the Calibre 7129, an extra-thin automatic movement with hour and minute functions. It beats at 4Hz and has a power reserve of 52 hours. It’s also very pretty with Côte de Genève finishing and sand gold rotor with asymmetric skeletonization. The watch comes on a really beautiful looking matte blue alligator strap that has a 18K sand gold pin buckle.

Not only is this a great looking watch, it also signals that the [Re]Master line might become something extremely interesting for AP, even if it is destined to be owned by just a few people. The [Re]Master02 Selfwinding is limited to 250 pieces and priced at €47,400. See more on the Audemars Piguet website.

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Bamford London Revives The First Ever Solar-Powered Digital Watch With The Extremely Seventies Inspired Neprosolar

The new Bamford London Neprosolar comes as a huge surprise to everyone who hasn’t heard George Bamford talk about anything on any watch podcast for the last four months. If you have heard him talk just once, then you would have heard him say that he is absolutely obsessed with the old Nepro watch brand and has gotten in contact with the founding family. It was pretty much clear that he was working on something with them. And boy, is it a watch! Interestingly, it’s also very adjacent to the brutalist-inspired style that we are seeing now. The watch is called the Bamford London Neprosolar, a simple thing with just one display and some very nifty features.

Like I said, I’ve heard Bamford wax poetic about Nepro for some time now. “Nepro is one of the unsung heroes of the watch industry and has a magical, wonderfully nostalgic story to tell,” he said, adding that he fell down a rabbit hole exploring the brand ever since he first saw the 70s solar watch. He eded up meeting the family who still own Nepro and the collaboration was on.

The watch has a very unique look, more like a bracelet than a watch. Well, that’s mostly because it is a bracelet whose loop is broken up with a slight change in shape to hold the display and solar panel. That part measures 36.2mm wide and about 11mm thick. The entire thing is made out of black PVD treated stainless steel and the most prominent part of the watch is the display which is a blue OLED. The watch has two buttons: one on the left to set the watch; another on the right to control the blue OLED display. A touch of the right button illuminates an hour and minute display, a second touch shows the day and month, a third shows the power reserve. The display is programmed to sleep after 4 seconds, but that can be adjusted to 10 seconds or be set to always on.

Above the display, which is angled towards up towards the wearer, is a mirrored solar cell, above which is a blue etched Bamford Neprosolar logo. The battery is also very interesting and varies greatly on your usage. Set the watch to always on and keep it in the dark and it will deplete in 10 hours. Keep the watch in the dark and with the display off, and the battery will work for three years. But in regular use, the battery is expected to last about 500 days and it takes the battery 20 hours to recharge from zero.

The Bamford London Neprosolar is a limited edition, not limited in number but through a date window. They will be offered for sale until Friday, June 7th, at a price of £582.50 or about €684. Once the order window closes, that’s it and all orders made in the week will be fulfilled. See more on the Bamford London website.

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Junghans Updates Their Trio Of Meister Pilot Automatic Watches With New, More Subtle, Colors

An argument could be made that the vast majority of racing chronographs or divers look the same. And yet, there is so much design diversity that can be found in these genres. But I will argue that one genre of watches - the pilot’s watch - is very much stuck looking always the same. Yes, there are two or three overall styles, but it all ends up in the same place - flat dials in monochrome colors with fantastic legibility, verging on minimalism. It understandable why, as they still remain faithful to the original tool watches. But then, there’s Junghans. The brand that is known for it’s simple, understated and minimalist watches has taken on the task to create a pilot’s watch and we got the Meister Pilot - a crazily designed case with a busy dial and great colors. What a world we live in. Now they have an update to the Meister Pilot Automatic in the form of new colors.

Like I said, the Meister Pilot Automatic comes in a highly unusual case for the fliegers we know today. But seeing as how Junghans has been making instrument clocks and watches for pilots for more than 100 years, it ver much makes sense. The watches come in either satin-finished steel or black DLC covered steel and measure 43.3mm wide and 12.5mm thick. But most of the unique look comes from the bi-directional bezel with 12 huge concave recesses that provide a lot of grip when you’re using pilot’s gloves.

All three watches have the same dial setup, just different colorways. The steel versions come with either a green or a grey dial with cream lume used in the large Arabic numerals, while the black DLC version gets a grey dial with white lume. All three have the same lacquer finish and the same gradient effect that turns to almost black towards the edges of the dial. A large and curved date aperture stands at 12 o’clock, while a black small seconds sub-dial sits at 6.

Inside is the J840.1.6 movement which is based on the ETA2824, which means there are plenty of spare parts for it and plenty of people who can service it. It beats at 4Hz and has a 38 hour power reserve. All three watches come on riveted leather straps, color matched to the dial.

The three new Junghans Meister Pilot Automatic watches are on sale right now and priced at €1,990, with included VAT. See more on the Junghans website.

 4/

Maurice Lacroix Releases Black and Bronze Versions Of The Pontos S Diver

Over the past two years, Maurice Lacroix has turned me from a skeptic into a true believer. I was on the fence with their genta-esque Aikon collection, but that all changed when they introduced the Aikon Tide Benzilla version. Sure, it could be considered a bit pricy for a plastic watch with a quartz movement and a €750 price tag, but I loved it from the get go. And that got me noticing the other Aikon watches and they grew on me more and more, as did the rest of the lineup. Now, it’s time for ML to refresh their funky diver, a modern take on the supercompressor, the Pontos S Diver with a new black DLC or bronze case.

The new Pontos S Diver retains a lot of the characteristics of the original model from 2013, including the slightly weird 2 and 3 o’clock positioning of the crowns for the internal bezel and time setting/winding respectively, instead of the more traditional compressor-style setup of 2 and 4 o’clock. It also gets just a bit smaller. While the original measured 43mm wide, the new one is 42mm wide and 13mm thick. However, along with the shrinking, the watch lost a bit of capabilities along the way. I doubt that this is the result of a smaller case, more likely of ML wanting to make a more accessible diver, so gone is the 600 meter water resistance and helium escape valve, but you do get 300 meters of WR.

There are two versions of the new Pontos S Diver. First up is the bronze cased version that has a grained black dial. The hands and applied markers are executed in 4N gold PVD to match the case, while all the lume is beige-toned Super-LumiNova. Second is the black DLC version that has a sandblasted finish. It also has black grained dial, but all the accents are white and yellow. The markers and hands are blackened and filled with white SLN, while the minute hands gets a yellow outline and the seconds hand has a yellow tip.

Inside is the calibre ML115, which is just a rebranded Sellita SW 200-1. This movement is a clone of the ETA2824 and beats at 4Hz with a power reserve of 38 hours. The bronze watch comes on a brown leather strap with a bronze pin buckle, while the black version gets a black rubber strap with a black DLC pin buckle.

The bronze version of the Maurice Lacroix Pontos S Diver is limited to 888 pieces and priced at €2,650, while the black DLC version is part of the regular collection and sells for €2,200. See more on the Maurice Lacroix website.

 5/

Richard Mille And Nadal Continue Collaboration With Super-Light RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon

Way back in 2010, I was a different type of watch enthusiast. Much more exclusive and bit of a snob. Most of that came out of my severe lack of knowledge of watches. But, the more you learn, the more you open up your sights. Back then I didn’t really understand what Richard Mille watches were all about. But my eye was intrigued by their collaboration with Rafael Nadal, one of the three best tennis players of all time. This set me on a path of exploring RM every now and again and to a point in which I actually like them. A lot. So, it’s no surprise that I’m completely enamoured by the new collaboration with Nadal, the “climactic conclusion to the RM 27 saga”, the new superlight Richard Mille RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon Rafael Nadal that weighs in at just 11.5 grams and is resistant to accelerations in excess of 14,000G.

To get the weight this low, RM reworked the case which now measures 37.25mm wide, 7.2mm thick and has a lug-to-lug of 47.25mm. It retains the tonneau shape and it’s made out of a new material for RM, Carbon TPT B.4. It’s created by stacking hundreds of layers of parallel carbon filaments that are oriented at an angle of 70 degrees to optimize their strength-to-weight ratio. A new high-performance resin is used to impregnate the fibers before the material is heated under pressure and turned into a solid block. This is a much more rigid material than regular Carbon TPT, allowing RM to make the watch thinner. It’s a monobloc design to keep the number of parts low and the movement mounts directly to the middle case and caseback which are machined from a single piece of Carbon TPT B.4. All this adds to a weight of just 11.5 grams without a strap. That’s less than three sheets of printer paper. Water resistance is a paltry 10 meters, but what do you expect?

Like so many Richard Mille watches, this one doesn’t have a dial other than the outer flange that contains its hour markers and minute track. A pair of centrally-mounted hands display the time, while a V-shaped bridge made from Carbon TPT extends across the dial and comes to a point at the 5N PVD-finished flying tourbillon. The skeletonized flying barrel also has the 5N PVD finish.

The movement is based on the ultra-thin Caliber RMUP-01 with mainplate and bridges crafted from PVD-treated grade 5 titanium, with a V-shaped gear train bridge that is machined from Carbon TPT. There’s a flying tourbillon on the lower half of its display, while the mainspring barrel that sits opposite it on the upper half of the dial also features a flying design, where it is mounted only from one side to permit a thinner overall profile. The movement beats at 3Hz and has a 55 hour power reserve. The movement has been tested to ensure that it remains stable during acceleration forces beyond 14,000G. The watch comes on a black elastic fabric strap.

The Richard Mille RM 27-05 Flying Tourbillon Rafael Nadal is limited to an incredible 80 pieces. And that’s truly a lot once you take the price into consideration which is $1,150,000. See more on the Richard Mille website.

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Audemars Piguet Unveils A Stunning New Polychrome Camouflage Gold Alloy

A week or so before Watches and Wonders, Audemars Piguet gathered a bunch of journalists together in Milan to show them about 20 of their new watches for this year. Among them was a watch you couldn’t buy, as it was just a showcase of a new technology they developed and would at some point make available to the public. It is called chroma ceramic and it allows AP to mix two shades of ceramic together to create the first ceramic camouflage pattern. Now, they just did the same, but with gold. Called chroma gold, AP can now mix two shades of gold to create a solid gold camo pattern. It’s equally completely unnecessary and supremely awesome.

AP makes sure to point out that this is actually solid gold that is not coated or the result of bonding two materials, it’s a process that results in a homogenous material with different tones of gold on a single piece. They do this by using Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) technology which allows them to melt the three shades of gold (white, yellow and pink), then droplets of the gold are atomised into powder. Each powder is then carefully placed in a circular graphite mould to create the desired pattern. The mould is then sintered by passing a powerful electric current through the graphite. This current creates a meteoric rise in temperature, which, combined with the mechanical pressure on both sides of the mould, allows extremely rapid sintering to take place. The resulting disc reveals the various shades of gold.

This is just a prototype and no AP watches currently use this tech. But it sure looks interesting enough to share here.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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A review of the Delma 1924 Tourbillon

2/

Hands on with the Hermés Cut

3/

A review of the Chopard Mille Miglia Classic Chronograph JX7 watch

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The Jack Mason Strat-O-Timer GMT offers value-for-money, nostalgic style, and watch enthusiast sensibility

With a nostalgic, vintage sports watch style, the 40mm Strat-O-Timer GMT case is tonneau-shaped with a round dial, and produced in stainless steel. The case is 13mm thick, but feels thinner given that about 2mm of that is the box-style sapphire crystal. It has a modest 47mm lug-to-lug distance. That equates to a very comfortable wearing experience for most wrists. The case is water resistant to 200 meters, and it has a higher-end feature not found in many watches at this price point – a sapphire crystal overlay on top of the rotating GMT-style bezel. Even though this is a modern timepiece, the Jack Mason brand did an excellent job of giving it a vintage feel in both how it wears and what it looks like.

Read the whole review on A Blog To Watch

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Trump was found guilty and it’s always interesting with stories like that to go back in history and see decade by decade how he, one of the most famous men in the world, was seen by the public. Here’s a fantastic portrait of Trump from the 80s, when Trump was at the peak of his tackiness and Vanity Fair was at the peak of profiling vain people.

• For decades, Sean Combs was hip-hop’s boisterous showman. Now, dozens of former friends, employees, and Bad Boy artists allege an abusive, menacing figure behind the facade. This is Diddy’s history of violence.

• Propelled by its viral moments of violence, the combat sport of professional slap fighting, in which combatants take turns smacking each other in the face, is soaring in popularity online and off. Why?

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’ve seen a couple of mixed reviews for the new Mad Max movie, Furiosa. I still haven’t seen ti, but I would be very sad if it’s not good. Mostly because Fury Road is one of the best movies of the 21st century. What I didn’t know about that film is that it was a complete hell to make. Sure, it looked like hell, but there was so much going on in the background it takes 22 minutes to tell the whole story.

💵Pre-loved precision

Buy and sell your watches. Think of this section like old school classifieds - i don’t guarantee anything except that a bunch of people will see your ad and I’ll put the buyer and seller in touch. Want to advertise your watch? Contact us 

• LOOKING TO BUY: Here’s a crazy request. One of you is looking to buy the Ōtsuka Lotēc No. 7.5. Sure, it’s a big ask, but if any of you have one and want to sell, reach out to and I’ll put you in touch

• SOLD: Well, not really new. It’s a great looking mid-90s Tudor Submariner 75090, offered for sale by a member of the It’s About Time reader crew. I love the way it looks and seems to be in great condition. Check it out over on Chrono24.

• LOOKING TO BUY: One of our readers is looking to purchase three very specific watches: an Islander ISL-133 Mother of Pearl, a Sinn 556 Mother of Pearl or a Zelos 300m GMT Mosaic Mother of Pearl. If you’re selling any of these, reach out to us and we’ll put you in touch

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-Vuk