The XX factor: New military-inspired watches from Breguet
After five years, Breguet has finally relaunched its iconic pilot’s watch, the Type 20/XX, sure to instantly reopen connoisseurs’ wallets.
Two new versions – the military-inspired ‘20’, and a dapper ‘XX’ more suited to civvy street – are each powered by a brand-new flyback chronograph movement, which Breguet has been working on for the past four years.
No watchmaker has such storied ties to aviation as Abraham-Louis Breguet’s Parisian brand, now based in Switzerland at the top of the Swatch Group’s tree. When the French Aéronavale (or naval air arm, as British MoD would have it) unveiled its specs in tendering a new pilot’s chronograph in 1953, Breguet was already a major force in French aviation, Louis Charles Breguet having founded the Société des Ateliers d’Avaition in 1911, which supplied 55,000 aircraft and 110,000 engines to the military during WWI.
The French MoD’s criteria included instant ‘flyback’ or ‘retour en vol’ to zero, on demand, during its stopwatch function’s operation; timekeeping deviation of no more than eight seconds over 24 hours; reliable stop/start function for at least 300 operations, and a 35-hour-plus power reserve.
Breguet was not the only brand to make Type 20s, but it has become the name most associated with this marque. Over three generations it has refined and experimented with the design and for 2023, it reintroduces the flyback function, but in higher-end technological guise than ever.
As you’d expect from one of Swatch’s most active exponents of silicon componentry, the new calibre adds in a balance spring, escape wheel, and pallet lever horns all etched from the miracle material, friction-free and antimagnetic.
The less-cluttered of the two dials is the military Type 20, with two subdials, ‘syringe’ hands, green luminescence, a retro ‘onion’ crown and fluted bezel. The civilian XX, by contrast, has three subdials, creamy coloured lume, spear-like hands, numerals on the bezel, and an oversized crown.
They both possess a date at 4.30, which caused plenty of murmurs during the lavish launch in Paris last week – absent from the original and always the sort of thing to get forum users frothing.
But this tiny detail aside, these next-gen models are gorgeous reminders of how Breguet manages to reference its past but still keeping an eagle eye on watchmaking’s horizon.
- The Breguet Type XX 2067 and Type 20 2057 are available now in stainless steel, each at £16,400, breguet.com