Breitling has one eye on the past, one on the future, while A Lange & Sohne lights the way for innovation

It’s the small details in watch design that matter the most. To see how precisely they do, look no further than Breitling’s new Premier collection.

The gap it fills in Breitling’s offer is simple enough: more contemporary and less overtly sport-vintage than the Navitimer 8 or the SuperOcean; more elegant and less functional than the Chronomat.

But filling that gap with a watch that look s like a Breitling means deploying some familiar details and styling. The creative team examined the original Premier from the 1940s and tried to design an equivalent for contemporary tastes, acknowledging the past without creating a pastiche.

Premier Chronograph 42, £6,600, Breitling

Take the dial, which, like some of the early Premiers, is convex. But in the new watch, this is paired with a gently sloping and wide inner bezel. The idea is to evoke a sports-car aesthetic, reinforced with the angular band around the glass and strakes on the case band.

The applied indices are polished slabs similar to other Breitlings, but with an engraved and filled centre line to add emphasis, while the 12, 3, 6 and 9 markers are highlighted by narrower side markers – a detail taken from the archive.

Typefaces are also derived from legacy designs, and the logo follows the stripped-back pattern introduced with the Navitimer 8. So while the new Premier is a masterclass in discreet design, it’s still recognisably a Breitling – only from a distance.

A Lange time coming

Think A Lange & Söhne and you’ll likely conjure up an image of the most classical watch design possible, but Lange has quietly developed a surprisingly contemporary strand that’s based on luminosity.

It had a slightly accidental birth, in that the brand was trying to go an extra step in its reworking of Dresden’s Semperoper clock in wristwatch form.

The designers already had a watch that recreated the digital display, the Zeitwerk, but wanted to see if they could make a version that glows like an opera clock. This lead to experiments with luminous paints and smoked-glass effects within the dials, culminating in the Zeitwerk Phantom.

Now comes the Datograph Up/Down Lumen, a ‘phantom’ version of one of Lange’s most characteristic watches.

As with the Zeitwerk Phantom, this watch has a special smoked crystal on the dial that allows the date numerals to charge with light even while they’re off display, so that the date will match the brightness of the hands and chronograph counters. The effect is pure Lange, but lights the way for new innovations too.

Datograph Up/Down Lumen, £84,000, A. Lange and Soehne

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