De Bethune DB25 Perpetual Calendar

You wouldn’t guess it at a glance, but this is a perpetual calendar. It’s just a perpetual calendar in titanium with a spherical palladium/zirconium moonphase and day/month apertures in a place you might not expect. There’s an inherent paradox here. Denis Flageollet has had some pretty audacious cases and designs over the years. This isn’t one of them. The paradox is that the DB25, despite being totally unlike any prior perpetual calendar design, successfully lands a fairly classic and restrained dial design. It is conservative only by contrast to the rest of the catalogue, not objectively. And that’s landed it in this very likable zone of traditional, as imagined by an alien genius. The David Bowie of QPs.

The DB25 case is modelled after a drum barrel, which might not sound very sexy but that’s led to the most normal-adjacent wearing experience De Bethune have made since the early years. The calibre has lost none of DB’s technical edge, but it’s not quite as unusual looking either. There’s a 3/4 plate, but then you still get dual barrels, a veritable excess of unique shock absorption on the rotor mount and balance, and perhaps most impressively a unique hairspring. The DB hairspring is something really quite remarkable, two pieces clamped together for a thin profile of a flat hairspring but with perfect concentricity. A Breguet overcoil does add height, this is obsessive attention to details. The fundamental calendar works remain pretty standard, not every wheel needs reinventing.

The introduction was at 44mm in precious metal, then came this titanium, then a 40mm range with its own calibre. About 15 have been made per year. This green titanium is very close to a true British racing green, which goes have a hint of teal in direct sunlight (just ask Marek of Aston Martin). The guilloché of the dial main very well shows off the two tones at all times, which does a lot for me. The vertical dimensionality of the dial is lovely, and if you loupe the hands you’ll find they’re individually hand formed to an arc to clear the raised subdial tracks and land above the raised Roman numerals. The tightness of those tolerances is delicious. It’s more traditional, but obviously still from a mind of extraterrestrial genius. It’s the perfect QP for an alien trying to blend in as a refined, well-heeled human. Zuckerberg, in other words.

This example is said to be unworn, but obviously has at least been worn once going on images. Other than my petty gripes, it looks absolutely perfect. It comes with its full set from a well-regarded Genevan retailer.