Sans Arrêt Rewind Moonlight
In some ways, the Reverso meets the Cartier Guichet on the Sans Arrêt Rewind, albeit in quartz and at a fraction of the cost of either. There are no hands at all, with the hours jumping through a small, angled aperture in the upper half of the brushed dial while the minutes crawl along a curved window below, keeping the cut-corner square face almost entirely clean metal.
At 6.7mm thick it disappears under any cuff, and the party trick continues on the back, where the caseback is designed to hold a small photo, effectively turning the watch into a wearable locket, though with only renders to go on so far, the proof will be in how they look in the flesh. Swiss quartz keeps it slim and fuss-free, with 50m water resistance, a sapphire caseback and an interchangeable pebbled Italian calf leather strap, and at £273 ($359) it’s an affordable dose of genuine charm.
Price and Specs:
More details at Sans Arrêt.
Alexander Alboum Design RippL
The RippL takes its name from the concentric guilloché dial that spreads out from the centre like rings on still water, available in four colourways: Imperial Velvet, Electric Azure, Verde Hydra and Artisan Gold. It’s a striking design unlike anything else I’ve seen – visually the closest comparison I can think of is the orbital displays of Ressence but without the tech.
The case matches the dial for sculpture, with the full titanium middle cut into a run of polished vertical slats framed by smooth blade-like lugs, keeping the whole watch at just 10mm thick. Sapphire sits front and back, the markers and hands are lumed, and inside is the Hangzhou 5000A micro-rotor automatic on show through the exhibition caseback. Each colour is limited to 32 individually numbered pieces, 128 watches in total, with pre-orders at $875, exactly the kind of fun entry-level watch that shows why the microbrand scene is the most exciting corner of watchmaking right now.
Price and Specs:
More details at Alexander Alboum Design.
S. BYON Double Retrograde
The debut from Atlanta-based S. BYON puts a double retrograde display on a modified Miyota 9015. Both the hour and minute hands sweep across arcs that resemble a retro Geiger counter readout before snapping back to their starting positions. Plus there’s a conventional central seconds displayed via a disk. Retrogrades are more common than ever these days, but it’s nice to see one with a properly retro aesthetic, and there’s more than a hint of Otsuka Lotec about it.
The industrial look pairs with a bead-blasted 316L case lifted by polished accent edges, on an integrated wings-cut leather strap with a Fitwell micro-adjust buckle. The brand name carries the founder’s Korean heritage, with “S.” for Song and “BYON” from the family name. The first production run is 500 watches, but only around 400 will ever be sold, with the remainder deliberately held back for warranty service and replacement parts, and once the two launch dials (Eggshell White and Slate Black) sell out, they’re permanently retired. The Kickstarter carries early pricing around 30% below the sub-$2,000 retail target, with roughly 200 pieces allocated to the campaign.
Price and Specs:
More details at S. BYON.
Ercigoj Cornely
Fabric dials are one of the least common types of watch display but they’re quietly out there. Case in point, the new watch by Ercigoj, a Slovenian studio that has been embroidering since 1923, working its way up from church textiles and ceremonial banners to wall-sized photorealistic embroidery art. It says something about how big watches have become that a century-old embroidery studio is moving into them, but it’s genuinely good to see a new artisanal technique arrive in watchmaking.
The Cornely is the fifth-generation family firm’s first wristwatch, named after Ercole Cornely, the 19th-century pioneer of the chain stitch embroidery machine, with hands shaped like the hooked chenille needles that make the technique possible. Each dial is custom embroidered to order in a colour of your choosing at no extra cost, and the studio sends you photos of your dial being stitched as it’s made.
The 40mm polished and sandblasted steel case holds a top-grade Sellita SW200-1b regulated to +/-4 seconds per day, with decorated bridges, blued screws and a rotor laser-engraved with the watch’s edition number, all visible through the exhibition caseback.
Price and Specs:
More details at Ercigoj.
Apiar Gen1.1 White Meridian
The White Meridian is a watch built around a personal moment: each buyer chooses a date that matters to them, a wedding, a birth, a personal milestone, and Apiar creates a bespoke celestial artwork for the caseback, laser-annealed into the titanium with the coordinates, the moon phase from that date and a constellation from that night’s sky.
The case is made from the British brand’s signature additive manufacturing (3D-printed) Grade 23 titanium, created in Wales via laser powder bed fusion, the same process used for rockets and hypercars. It’s then CNC-machined, polished and assembled in England, with the whole watch coming in at an estimated 40 grams. The dial is 0.5mm of CNC-milled natural white mother-of-pearl, hand-polished for flashes of blue, pink and green, with the numerals pad-printed on the underside of the sapphire so they appear to float above it.
The rough finish of the 3D-printed titanium won’t be to everyone’s taste, especially against the crispness of that dial, but the level of engineering on show is seriously impressive. Inside is the Swiss La Joux-Perret G101 automatic with a 68-hour power reserve. It’s made to order and limited to fewer than 10 pieces, with a four-month build time per watch.
Price and Specs:
More details at Apiar.
Atowak Mars Age
Rather than traditional hands, the Mars Age tells time through what Atowak calls its orbital time system, a miniature solar system in constant motion across the dial. Taking centre stage is an 8mm titanium Mars disc, laser-melted and topographically shaped to reference the Valles Marineris canyon. It advances in 30-degree orbital increments to show the hours. Meanwhile, a rocket-shaped hand and a double-ended hand take turns relaying the minutes along a 180-degree scale, the whole central module completing a revolution every 120 minutes.
Travelling alongside is an Earth micro-engraved with the contours of the continents, and a Moon in the form of a 3mm hand-polished black jade sphere that lets just enough light through to cast a faint green halo. It’s a very busy design for sure, but if you want an orrery-style display for the wrist in a genuinely wearable case, this could be it.
The theme continues on the titanium caseback, where engravings of Earth and the Valles Marineris relief surround a 9mm sapphire window into the movement, an AK-08BA built on a Sellita SW200 base with Atowak’s in-house orbital module. They are produced in phased batches that sell out quickly.
Price and Specs:
More details at Atowak.
With the exception of the Apiar these movements are not worth the asking price. Questionable form over function.
The S. BYON Double Retrograde is a blatant ripoff of the Otsuka Lotec no.6.
100%. Considering Otsuka Lotec won the the Challenge award at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève for that particular watch, it’s even more distasteful that S. Byon is ripping them off. And that Oracle Time is showing that watch in this article shows that they have zero interest in the intellectual property of independent watch makers.
The resemblance is real, no argument there, it’s why I mentioned Otsuka Lotec in the write-up. Where I land slightly differently is on “ripoff”. Gauge-style dials and retrogrades both have long histories the No.6 was itself drawing on, and there are meaningful differences between designs, the Miyota base, a price that’s a fraction of a watch you realistically can’t buy anyway. Where’s the line for you between working in the same design language and copying? It’s something I go back and forth on with microbrands generally.
Ralph Christian? Stylish and cost is worth it?
Lucky us them lotec are JDM and go for 7 quid (£7000)+ on chrono24 and as for a rip off is justified but i think it deserves a pass coz a double retrograde at that price👍i havent seen it in person but looks good despite not being on the same level as lotec and oricle time is a watch magizine and the watch is not sold as counterfit dut a derived deign so its there duty to repot such watches if ye didnt know like and kessler at the helm say nothing beyond reproach am sure but dont quote me on this related to ken kessler who is peter robberts good good friend creator of concentric 5