SIAR 2014 Highlights: De Bethune

Haute Time is currently in Mexico, to cover the Salon Internacional Alta Relojeria (SIAR) 2014. The prestigious watch fair is one of the most exciting on the calendar, as Central and South America emerge as markets with great potential in the luxury goods sector. Independent watch brands in particular are in demand in this region of the world. Today, we visited De Bethune’s booth, to see some of our favorite watches from the DB28 collection:

First up, we’ve got the De Bethune DB28 Maxichrono. Its design, with five central hands, aims to make it easier to read the chronograph indications by doing away with the small subdials of the conventional chronograph. According to the brand, this has been done to encourage watch wearers to once again use a complication that was once considered the most important. But the brand hasn’t compromised function over form, going into great details, such as designing the hands according to the different shapes and curves of the silver-toned dial. An alternative, and beautiful chronograph.

The Digitale features hours, minutes, and a spherical moon-phase within a single crescent at the top of its guilloché dial. It’s an interesting design, based on simplicity and symmetry, two pillars of the watch industry. The eye is drawn towards the center of the dial and the moon-phase surrounded by a sky of stars. This is the real draw, mechanically speaking, of the watch. It can track the phases of the moon with a degree of precision corresponding to a difference of just one lunar day every 1,112 years. The case is ultra-light polished titanium. The DB28 Digitale houses the DB 2144 caliber, with innovations such as a self-regulating twin barrel, a circular balance wheel made of white gold and silicon, and a balance-spring with a flat end curve.

In a family with many avant-garde designs, the most poetic remains the DB28 Skybridge. Contrary to the Maxichrono, the Skybridge does away with as many hands as possible, It features hours and minutes but has no seconds hand and no date. Instead, the watch’s focus is very much its star-studded sky dial, created in blued mirror-polished grade 5 titanium, and encrusted with white gold and diamond stars. At  6 o’clock it is topped off with a delicate moon phase display. Inside, it houses the manufacture-made DB2105 . The DB28 Skybridge shows how diverse one line can be in the hands of a creative brand such as De Bethune.

Photo Credit: Haute Time. For more information, please visit the official De Bethune website 

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