Each week, EWC will be gathering horological industry news, cultural conversations and moments surrounding our favorite topic: timepieces. Happy Friday; here’s what’s on our watch. 

It’s another doozy of a debuts week, with Dubai Watch Week in full swing and lots of new releases dropping during the festivities. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of new watches, but we’ve highlighted some of the most interesting pieces.

NEW RELEASES

Ulysse Nardin and URWERK paired up to release their latest collaboration, the UR-FREAK, with a new mechanical movement co-developed by the creative and innovative minds behind the two brands. It pulls together distinctive elements of the Ulysse Nardin Freak such as their silicon components, and adds in the signature satellite wandering hours display from URWERK. The two brands combined their out-of-the-box thinking and developed over 150 new components in order to achieve this feat, resulting in the new Ulysse Nardin caliber UN-241, which converts all wrist movement into kinetic energy, instead of relying on an oscillating weight like a typical automatic movement.

Chopard demonstrated its expertise in chiming complications with the release of its latest piece in the L.U.C. line: the L.U.C. Grand Strike. It features a 60-second tourbillon complication along with three different chiming complications - a minute repeater, and both a petite and grand sonnerie. There’s a switch on the case above the crown that allows the wearer to switch modes for automatic chiming on the hour with the petite sonnerie mode, hourly and quarterly chiming in grand sonnerie mode, or silenced mode for those times when you do not want your coworkers to glare at you while they’re trying to focus. The full minute repeater function can be activated using the pusher in the crown, no matter which mode it’s set to.

Girard-Perregaux follows up the recent launch of its Laureato FIFTY with the new Laureato Three Gold Bridges, which features a new 41mm case size and a new in-house calibre GP9620 with a tourbillon, and forgoes a traditional dial to expose the movement architecture and the aforementioned three gold bridges on prominent display. The updated case accentuates signature elements of the classic Laureato case, and for those who wish to add some sparkle to their wrist, there’s a non-limited diamond-set version in addition to the limited 50-piece version.

De Bethune introduced two new models, the DB Kind of Two Jumping GMT and the DB25 Perpetual Sky. The delightfully named Kind of Two is a double-sided timepiece that shows two different styles in a single watch, with one side showing a small hours display at the six o’clock position and the minutes around the outer track, and the other displaying a traditional classic dial layout and the second time zone. The DB25 Perpetual Sky is an updated version of De Bethune’s perpetual calendar, with a beautiful celestial dial displaying the time, day, date, month, and a moonphase display.

Zenith expanded its DEFY line with the DEFY Extreme Lapis Lazuli, featuring an open-worked dial with beautiful blue tones of natural stone. Its beauty is not only at the surface, as the dial exposes the El Primero 9004 movement housed within the two-tone stainless steel and micro-blasted yellow gold 45mm case. The edition is limited to 50 pieces and comes on a steel bracelet, with additional rubber and velcro straps. 

Natural stone dials continue to have a moment with Louis Vuitton’s expansion of the Escale collection and their introduction of two new models in platinum with ornamental stone dials in turquoise and malachite. In a demonstration of the brand’s technical mastery of case construction and a departure from the typical use of stone on the dial only, both pieces also incorporate the stone into the mid-case.

MB&F launched the new HM11 Art Deco, pulling inspiration from the Art Deco era to update its previous HM11 Architect with a fresh new look in two versions: a blue dial plate with 3N yellow-gold-tone bridges and a green dial plate with 5N rose-gold-tone bridges. Each is in a titanium case and has four different displays around the dial in individual “rooms”: a time setting module, time display, power reserve, and a mechanical thermometer, an unusually cool option rarely seen in a mechanical timepiece. Each version is limited to 10 pieces, for a total of 20 pieces to celebrate 20 years of MB&F.

Expanding its Master Ultra Thin line, Jaeger-LeCoultre presented two new timepieces with shimmering copper dials, The Master Ultra Thin Moon and Master Ultra Thin Date. The subtle shade of copper contrasts nicely with the steel case, making both pieces versatile dress watches that could also be worn with a more casual ensemble. At the six o’clock position, the Date model has a small date window with a white date disc, and the Moon model has a combined date and moonphase display. The Master Ultra Thin Moon is powered by in-house Calibre 925 and the Master Ultra Thin Date is powered by Calibre 899, and both models are automatic.

TUDOR expanded its popular Ranger line with a new “Dune White” dial as well as a new 36mm case size, in addition to the 39mm diameter case that was previously available. Both size models continue the Ranger models and their spirit of expedition and exploration, and both come in versions on a steel bracelet or a fabric strap. True tool watches, they feature 100 meters of water resistance and a COSC-certified in-house chronometer movement.

WATCH SPOTTING

GQ held its 2025 Men of the Year party on November 13 at the iconic Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, with a star-studded list of attendees and some great watches on the red carpet and at the lively party that followed. Highlights included Jesse Williams wearing vintage Chopard, GQ USA Editor-in-Chief Will Welch wearing a Jaeger-LeCoultre Tribute Reverso Monoface Small Seconds on a gold Milanese bracelet, and Shaboozey in a Rolex with a custom Chrome Hearts bracelet. 

BOOKS, BRAND HOUSES, AND FUTURE FOUNDATIONS

Looking for a comprehensive exploration of the history of watchmaking over the past 125 years? Look no further, because the new book Time Machines: How Watches Shaped the Modern World takes the reader on a visual and narrative journey through a curated selection of 100 timepieces from 1900 to today. The 320-page book, written by Blake Z. Rong and Sean Paul Lorentzen, tells the story of ingenuity, innovation, and cultural change by examining the design, craftsmanship, and style of wristwatches over time. The book is available now from Gestalten.

Most collectors have watch boxes, but none are like the new watch box announced by Audemars Piguet and Dubai Future Foundation. The prototype box not only winds the watch that’s inside it, but can also set the calendar and time on the Audemars Piguet Perpetual Calendar Royal Oak. It utilizes a camera in the box’s lid to provide visual data to an AI-assisted machine learning algorithm, which can pair with a phone app to set the watch using electromechanical components inside the box. Though it’s currently only a prototype, the features theoretically could allow future versions of the box to set other types of watches.

Breitling CEO Georges Kern announced the House of Brands, a curated portfolio of watch maisons including Breitling, Universal Genève and Gallet. This concept brings together the three iconic brands into a portfolio with a unified strategic vision, while maintaining each house’s identity and heritage. Breitling plans to fully re-launch its two recently acquired brands in 2026, with Gallet positioned as a sister brand to Breitling and Universal Genève operating separately in the ultra-luxury segment of the watch market.