Doxa Adds Second Time Zone To Their Iconic Divers; CW And Mr Jones Make A Fantastic Moon Phase; Delma Updates 1924 Tourbillon; The Kudoke 3 Flakes Is Even More Beautiful; HYT Adds Sport Collection

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I want to see more collaborations like the one between CW and Mr Jones. Gives us a brand that makes solid watches and connect them with a truly creative brand, and it will always end up being cool.

In this issue:

• Doxa Adds A GMT Function To Their Cult Divers With The SUB 250T GMT

• Christopher Ward Teams Up With Mr Jones For A Much Funner Take On The Moonphase

• Delma Updates Their 1924 Tourbillon With New Dial Colors And Textures

• Kudoke Makes The Kudoke 3 Even More Beautiful With A Flaked Engraved Dial

• HYT Introduces The S1 Ti Sport Collection With Fluid Hours And New Colors

👂What’s new

1/

Doxa Adds A GMT Function To Their Cult Divers With The SUB 250T GMT

You know what I greatly appreciate about Doxa, aside from the making great dive watches. And that’s how well they fill out their collection, while making them super easy to understand. Going up in numbers — 200, 300, 600, 1500 — will show you how capable (and large) the watch is, and a letter following the number will usually tell you if it comes in the cool helmet/C-shaped case or a more conventional case. But there have been a couple of notable missing watches from their lineup. They only have one or two chronographs, and zero GMT watches. Which is strange, considering the very strong GMT craze of recent years. The last Doxa GMT was the SUB 750T from 2006. But that stops now, with the introduction of the SUB 250T GMT, a well proportioned classic diver that can track a second time zone.

Now, would you ever need to tell the time half way around the world while underwater with your hardcore diver? No, of course not. But then again, this isn’t a hardcore diver. Sure, it’s still obviously a tool watch but its relatively compact size makes it a perfect all-around watch. That means you can wear it both while diving and on the beach, where the GMT function might come in handy. In terms of size, the SUB 250T GMT sits right in between the 200T and its more capable brother, the 300T. The stainless steel case measures 40mm wide and a very perfect 10.85mm thick. But best of all, thanks to the rounded case shape, the L2L is just 42.9mm, making this a very wearable watch. On top is Doxa’s recognisable no-decompression bezel with a 60 minute scale and depth inscriptions that are either dial or accent colored. Water resistance is, as the name suggests, 250 meters.

But perhaps the best thing about the new SUB 250T GMT is the fact that it looks exactly like a Doxa. The GMT function is incredibly well blended into the watch. You’ll have to look close to see the two-tone 24-hour scale around the chapter ring and the skeletonised GMT fits in perfectly into the existing handset. And since this is Doxa, you get all the classic Doxa dial colors — Professional orange, Searambler silver, Sharkhunter Black, Caribbean, Divingstar Yellow, Aquamarine, Whitepearl and the relatively new Sea Emerald. Along with all of those, you also get a choice of a very fauxtinaed model, one that almost looks like the Clive Cussler limited editions. It comes with a vintage Sharkhunter color, with a dark brown sunburst dial and aged lume.

Doxa is well known for its use of Sellita movements, and this one is no different. Inside, you’ll find the SW330-2 which beats at 4Hz and has a 50 hour power reserve. All of the watches can be had on either a dial-colour-matched FKM rubber strap or, for €40 more a stainless steel beads of rice bracelet. Both are closed with a clasp that has a diver’s extension.

The new Doxa SUB 250T GMT collection is available now, priced at €2,550. See more on the Doxa website.

2/

Christopher Ward Teams Up With Mr Jones For A Much Funner Take On The Moonphase

Christopher Ward makes a lot of serious watches. It’s not a bad thing, but there’s no denying that they rarely veer off the beaten path. Sure, they have the Bel Canto and The Twelve, which will entertain a pop of color, but they don’t like to experiment. So, what if they wanted to? Could they? I’m sure they could. But why not hook up with another British brand, one that has made a name for itself making quirky and fun watches. That seems like a much better course of action. And that’s exactly what they did. They teamed up with the legendary Mr Jones for a great looking dial on their C1 Moonphase 37.

Being the 37 version means that this watch comes in the smaller of the two cases. It measures 37mm wide, 13.1mm thick and with a pretty great 44.07mm lug-to-lug. The case gets surfaces and highly polished bevels. Water resistance is 30 meters, but it’s supposed to be a dress watch so what more would you want.

What’s new, obviously, is that gorgeous dial. Sure, the original aventurine dial was cool, but this one is unique. Mr Jones is known for employing great designers and illustrators across the board and giving all of their staff a chance to design a watch. And this one is no different. Designed by lead assembly technician Bea Watts, it has a playful take on an otherwise conservative complication. She claims that she was inspired by “the magical feeling of sitting outside to watch the sunset and staying there till day transitions into night” and is has fluffy clouds on the entire bottom half of the dial. Up top is a huge aperture for a fully illustrated moon.

Inside, you’ll find the elaboré-grade Sellita SW220-1 that’s paired with an in-house-developed JJ04 moonphase module, which explains the thickness of the watch. The base model beats at 4Hz and has a 38 hour power reserve. You can have the watch on either CW’s Consort bracelet or on a blue or gray leather strap.

The new Christopher Ward × Mr Jones Watches Celestial is a limited edition of 300 pieces and it’s priced at €2,850 on leather and €3,020 on steel. See more on the Christopher Ward website.

3/

Delma Updates Their 1924 Tourbillon With New Dial Colors And Textures

While not a household name to the general public, Delma has a cult following among enthusiasts of rugged and capable tool watches. They are chunky, they can go to incredible depths and are often built with very specifict tasks in mind, like the Delma Quattro Decompression Diver which you can easily pop out of it’s housing and attach to a decompression plate. What they don’t make and have never made, are (almost) dress watches with incredible movements. Last year, Delma was celebrating its 100th anniversary with a bunch of new models, including the 1924 Tourbillon which featured their first in-house movement. Now, the model gets a couple of new, much nicer, dials.

That new watch was also a debut of this new tonneau shaped stainless steel case that measures 41mm wide and 14mm thick. A big boy, for sure, but part of that thickness is also down to the domed sapphire crystal on top. The crystal is surrounded with a fixed bezel and the majority of the watch has brushed finishes except for a dramatically wide polished bevel running the length of the case. It’s a good looking case. On the side is a hobnailed crown, protected by the oversized crown guard. Water resistance is a surprisingly deep water resistance of 200 meters.

While the original 1924 Tourbillon featured a matte black dial, these two new models come with much more interesting dials. First, there are two colors to choose from — blue and salmon. But both of them get a beads-of-rice guilloché-style pattern that radiates the centre of the dial. You get applied hour markers and matching palladium hour and minute hands with white Super-LumiNova. At 6 o’clock is the opening for the 60-second tourbillon. Since it rotates once every minute it also functions as the seconds indicator with a blue hand mounted on top.

And that tourbillon is part of the most impressive part of the watch, the Calibre DT100.01, Delma’s first ever proprietary movement developed with the help of Olivier Mory from La Chaux-de-Fonds. Manually wound, it has a power reserve of 105 hours. It has a variable inertia balance with a shock absorption system that protects it up to 5,000G as well as featuring an alloy hairspring and Glucydur balance wheel for magnetic field resistance up to 2,000 gauss. It’s not bad looking either, with perlage and a Côtes de Genève striped pattern. The watch comes on a stainless steel bracelet with deployant clasp with an additional black Italian calf leather strap with buckle.

The new Delma 1924 Tourbillon is for pre-order now, with each color limited to 25 pieces. If you get it by March 31st, you will get it at a lower price of CHF 9,250 and with a delivery date in May. After the 31st, the price goes up to CHF 12,900. See more on the Delma website.

4/

Kudoke Makes The Kudoke 3 Even More Beautiful With A Flaked Engraved Dial

There are many independent watchmakers out there that are deserved of our attention and praise. So many. But I kind of try to keep a top 10 list of my personal favorites. And among possibly my top 5 indies, you’ll find Kudoke, the German indie brand led by Stefan Kudoke. The Kudoke 1 and 2 were very cool, but my favorite has to be the Kudoke 3, which splits up the dial into two halves and tells time with a triple-scale hour display. That lower plate of the dial always served as a great canvas for decorations, but this latest release, the Kudoke 3 Flakes, just might be the best.

On the outside, things remain the same. You get the same stainless steel polished case that measures 39mm wide and 10.3mm thick. Well, it’s stainless steel as standard. You can also option it up to a gold case, which would really be something. On top is a sapphire crystal surrounded by a stepped bezel, and on the size is an onion style crown. You won’t go diving with this, but the 50 meter water resistance is welcomed.

The setup of the dial is also the same — the three-scale hour display of Kudoke 3 is applied to the lower silver-plated dial level, while on top is an upped dial plate with a minute ring on the periphery. But all new is the treatment of that upper dial plate. It’s available in either yellow gold plating or a rhodium finish, hand engraved with a technique that removes flakes of material creating a beautiful texture. One that’s unique to each dial.

Inside, you’ll find the Kudoke Kaliber 1 which is based on the very cool Habring2 A11. it beats at 4Hz and has a 46 hour power reserve. The hand-engraved balance cock is decorated with an infinity symbol, it is also repeated as the counterweight of the minute hand and a 60-minute mark on the minutes ring. The watches comes on a leather or Alcantara strap.

The new Kudoke 3 Flakes is priced, in its basic configuration, at €12,434, without tax. See more on the Kudoke website.

5/

HYT Introduces The S1 Ti Sport Collection With Fluid Hours And New Colors

Last year, HYT — the brand best known for their novel way of telling the time with different colored liquids traveling around a regular dial — teased a new collection. They did so with a super limited S1 Titanium “Japan Limited Edition” that came in a titanium case, integrated bracelet, openworked dial and monochrome colors. Only eight pieces of that thing were made, so chances are you haven’t seen one. Well, now the S1 is becoming a part of the regular lineup for HYT and it gets new colors.

While the numbers of this watch are huge, keep in mind that these have gotten increasingly more wearable. But still, it measures 45.6mm wide, a ludicrous 17.2mm thick and a completely normal lenght of 46.3mm. OK, to be fair, that thickness is needed for the heavily domed crystal and the titanium helps make it a bit more wearable. The titanium case has a very futuristic look, with hollowed flanks and no bezel on top and the crown is integrated into the angular case, with crown guards and positioned at 2:30. There are three versions of the watch — one with an untreated titanium finish and two with black DLC finishes. You even get 50 meters of water resistance, which is not something you expect from a watch that looks like this.

While the dial on the Japan LE was extremely monochromatic with no color to it, not even for their signature fluidic time indicator, this one gets more signature HYT details. The hour ring that sits on the periphery of the dial opening, around the visible movement, is color matched to the case and the fluid hour indicator gets three colors to choose from — green and blue on the black watches and a red on the silver. The fluid gets shifted around by the two bellows that you can see through the dial at 6 o’clock. They push and pull the two liquids that cannot mix, pointing at the time, and when the colored fluid reaches the end of the capillary, it performs a retrograde motion and returns to its initial position to begin a new 12-hour cycle. To show the minutes, HYT uses a central skeletonized hand with white Super-LumiNova.

All of this is powered by the HTY 501-CM manual-winding movement. It beats at 4Hz and has a 72 hour power reserve. The watch comes with two straps, one grey nylon strap with a hook and loop closure, and the other a black rubber, both integrated into the case.

The new HYT S1 Ti collection is part of the permanent HYT lineup and available now. Price is set at CHF 58,000. See more on the HYT website.

⏲️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

• For nearly a quarter of a century, an epic, you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it treehouse has stood outside the Sherman Oaks, California home of The Simpsons producer Rick Polizzi. It has delighted children, especially on Halloween, and Halle Berry and Will Ferrell are among its fans. A riot of California bureaucracy and maddening, expensive red tape– code enforcement has demanded soil reports, structural designs, Americans With Disabilities Act compliance—now threatens the treehouse’s existence.

• Joan always suspected she had been handed someone else’s baby by the hospital when she gave birth more than 70 years ago. Then an Ancestry DNA test seemed to prove her right. Now in her 90s, she is in a race against time. Can she find her missing child?

• A portrait of the life and mind of Tyler Cowen, a 61-year-old economist at George Mason University in Virginia who is a bestselling author, podcaster and the toast of Silicon Valley. Fans of his blog, Marginal Revolution, include billionaires and young DOGE gang-bangers. He is the man who wants to know everything.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I’ve posted about the Barkley marathon here before. It’s known to be the toughest race in the world, with only something like 20 people complete it in 30 years. It’s put together by this wild character, Lazarus Lake, who comes up with an incredibly tough route of 100 miles in under 60 hours. It’s not a test of physicality because ti goes way beyond what should be physically possible and tries to break your mind. After last years record 5 people finishing, Lazarus had to have his revenge and put together a horrific route that brought balance to the marathon.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk