We’re but a quarter of the way through, yet already, 2023 is shaping up to be an important year for Bell & Ross. Earlier this week, the Parisian brand made its debut appearance at Watches & Wonders, signaling an ambitious new era for design-led sporty chic watchmaking.
Marking its inaugural outing at the big watch shows with three 2023 novelties that are all unified by the ‘circle in a square’ design language, it’s a commercially strong and coherent effort from an underrated brand, the constituent parts of which we’re going to get into below.
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BR05 Green Gold
A threequel to two other solid gold watches Bell & Ross have previously released, the BR 05 ‘Green Gold’ is the brand’s new take on that most crowd-pleasing of colour combos: the one that evokes images of Socceroos, Lotus F1 livery and other delightful visual stimuli.
Acutely aware of gold’s innately mesmerising appeal, all this BR 05’s other features are kept extremely straightfotward. There’s the customary date window at 3 o’clock; Superluminova baton indices; and a self-winding movement (the BR-CAL. 321) that is topped off with a 360° rotor made from 18K gold.
Obviously, you’ll find the main attraction on the dial: proving that the whole ‘every watch is green’ trend has more staying power than we first suspected. First painted with multiple coats of tinted varnish and then radially brushed, the green of this BR 05 shifts between “an almost fluorescent shade” and the mottled appearance of glass Sprite bottles.
PRICE: $51,200 (on bracelet) / $34,100 (on leather strap)
BR 03-92 Diver In White Bronze
Inspired by “the first underwater explorations” of the early 20th century, the BR 03-92 pairs a vintage diving aesthetic with the very latest in modern submersible technology. Part of a 999-piece limited edition, Bell & Ross have developed this release from the ground up as a professional diving tool.
As a result of that, the BR 03-92 satisfies all of the essential ISO requirements needed for a range of recreational diving activities. The 300m water resistance is pivotal in this regard: made possible by the watch’s composite construction (including a riveted steel caseback) and unidirectional bezel, graduated for 60 minutes in keeping with the traditional duration of most scuba dives.
At 42mm, the BR 03-92 also has a lot of presence on the wrist, with the distinctive Bell & Ross design language becoming even more apparent once envisioned in bronze. When it comes to the atmosphere-sensitive alloy, every brand will have its own recipe; and in the case of Bell & Ross, the brand’s engineers settled on a 92% copper to 8% tin ratio. Going for soft blonde tones, this specific formulation works well with the BR 03-92’s chosen finish: heavy on satin polishing, with a few polished bevels in aid of visual tension.
PRICE: $6,900
BR 03-93 GMT Blue
Less Pepsi and more P-51 Mustang cockpit, the new BR 03-93 plays in Bell & Ross well-kempt sandbox of mechanical watches which are ispired by flight instrumentation. Part of the brand’s broader GMT family, it is yet another excellent all-rounder for commercial pilots, frequent fliers, and even just those enthusiasts with a penchant for tracking multiple timezones.
The case is cast in a perfect 1:1 ratio, and at 42mm works well for those fans of the conspicuous tool watch aesthetic. In the best tradition of vintage GMT watches, the bi-colour bezel (which may be wound in either direction) uses its grey segment to indicate the daylight hours and a blue segment to indicate nighttime hours in a secondary timezone.
PRICE: $6,300
Powering this new addition to the BR 03-93 lineup is the BR-CAL. 303 – a workhorse of a movement equipped with self-winding rotor and a very serviceable 42-hour power reserve.
