Welcome to Watch-Guy Watches, GQ’s monthly curation of high-end timepieces for the true watch nerds among us. This July, we’re featuring a tactical new Blancpain; the first tourbillon-equipped Bremont; a Czapek with dual escapements; and a summer-ready ceramic beaut from Zenith.
When it comes to calendar-equipped watches, you typically picture something elegant, thin, and rendered in precious metals. What you almost certainly wouldn’t imagine is a black PVD or black ceramic watch on a matching bracelet—the type of thing a Navy SEAL might wear if he were transitioning from underwater demolition to cocktail attire in a single evening.
Leave it to the good folks at Blancpain, however, to upset the established order of things by offering a black ceramic complete calendar (with moonphase) within its dive-ready Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe collection. Unexpected and undeniably sexy, it’s the answer to a question that no watch collector has ever posed…but that most certainly needed asking.
Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantième Complet Phases de Lune
To be fair, this is far from the first complete calendar with moonphase that Blancpain has offered within its Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe line. For that matter, it’s far from the first ceramic case within the Bathyscaphe line. (The brand has offered one since 2015.) But this is the first time the high-end Swatch Group maison has offered a black ceramic-cased complete calendar with a matching bracelet, which has proven incredibly difficult to machine to Blancpain’s exacting standards. The results speak for themselves: One glance at this tactical-looking, matte-black timepiece with its beautiful deep blue dial and Liquidmetal markers and you’ll be wondering how you could’ve ever lived with it. Powered by the in-house, automatic caliber 6654.P4, it’s water resistant to a deep-diving 300m—meaning that despite its wealth of complicated functionality, you don’t have to baby it one bit.
Bremont Terra Nova Dual Time Tourbillon
Designing and building a tourbillon—a device that averages out positional errors (and thus inaccuracy) in a watch escapement by placing its components within a rotating cage—is a feat of micromechanics that few watchmakers attempt. Bremont, the British watchmaker headed by famed watch designer Davide Cerrato, makes complicated tool watches, certainly, but has never ventured into haute horlogerie territory by making its own tourbillon. All that has changed with the introduction of its new Terra Nova Dual Time Tourbillon, a timepiece that combines Abraham-Louis Breguet’s whirling invention with a dual-time complication in the form of a domed globe. Developed by watchmaker Olivier Mory, its movement is hand-assembled at Bremont’s The Wing facility in Henley-on-Thames and is paired to an anthracite gray guilloché dial within a black DLC titanium case.
Czapek Place Vendôme Complicité Stardust Cobalt
When one escapement won’t do, try two: Czapek’s Place Vendôme Complicité features dual escapements at 4:30 and 7:30 connected by a differential at 12 o’clock, making for an attractive dial that shows off the watch’s regulating organ while increasing accuracy. Previously offered in white gold with a gray dial and rose gold with a sapphire blue dial, the new Stardust Cobalt iteration—white gold with a circular-grained gray minutes/hours track and blued indices and hands—may be the most stunning iteration yet. The hand-wound Calibre 8 movement features sapphire bridges, which allows the user to view the entire gear train beneath the watch’s sapphire crystal. Meanwhile, a discrete power reserve indicator above 6 o’clock lets you know how many of the movement’s 72 hours of power reserve remain. The 41.8mm case, while certainly not “compact,” has been carefully designed for maximum wearability and beauty.
Zenith Defy Skyline Skeleton White Ceramic
If the previous watch is a bit too precious-looking for you, try this new offering from Zenith on for size. The first instance of white ceramic used within the Defy Skyline Skeleton family, it pairs a 41mm case with Zenith’s skeletonized, automatic El Primero 3620 SK movement featuring a 1/10th-second indicator. (If you’ve never seen one of these things in person, it’s mesmerizing, lemme tell ya.) The blue of the dial, which forms a four-pointed Zenith star, pops against the white of the ceramic case, making for a package that positively screams to be worn somewhere in the Aegean on a hot summer’s day. The white of the case, meanwhile, extends to a matching ceramic bracelet—or, if you prefer, a white rubber strap. Beating at 36,000 vph and equipped with a 55-hour power reserve and 100m of water resistance, the Defy Skyline Skeleton White Ceramic is the most summery piece of haute horlogerie we’ve come across in 2024.