News: Two sides, Two Personalities – The De Bethune DB Kind of Two Tourbillon
Denis Flageollet—head of design and master watchmaker at De Bethune—has been beavering away recently, with his team of just thirty, to create this: The De Bethune DB Kind of Two Tourbillon—a watch that demonstrates both watchmaking of the past and of the future.
De Bethune was founded in 2002, La Chaux, Switzerland by David Zanetta and Denis Flageollet
Two sides, two personalities—this watch, if you haven’t already seen it in photos, is flippable, with two faces. Let’s start with watchmaking of the past. This time-only side has a three-layer dial design and boasts blued titanium, Breguet-style hands. The aforementioned three layers of the dial are made up of a hand-crafted guilloché inner, a middle with Arabic numerals, and finally an outer, which is home to precision seconds. Combined, the layers embody traditional Swiss watchmaking.
Jump in the DeLorean, and we head to the future of watchmaking—if you don’t have a 70s inspired time machine, well then, this can be done by rotating the face via the horizontal mechanism seen at 3 and 9 on the floating lugs. A 30-second tourbillon, accompanied by a simple two-hand design, which seemingly sits upon the radiator of the crashed spaceship it came to Earth on. While it’s easy to be distracted by the tourbillon, this side is littered with features. The blue spherical dot hour markers, the twin barrels of the movement—visible at 11 and 3—and the curved bridge that holds the tourbillon—along with the brand’s signature delta-shaped bridge, this all creates a harmonious, futuristic design that is very De Bethune.
De Bethune is made up of around 30 employees
Within the DB Kind of Two Tourbillon’s 42.8mm case is the 256-part Calibre DB2579. Just as impressive as the watch itself, the DB2579—thanks to twin barrels—has a power supply of 120 hours. Pretty significant, given that the movement runs at a faster than average 36,000vph and houses a—what I expect is a pretty hungry—titanium 30-second tourbillon.
Maybe one day you’re feeling traditional, the next, you’re after something a little more futuristic, avant-garde even—the DB Kind of Two Tourbillon says: why not have a watch that can do both?
The De Bethune DB Kind of Two Tourbillon costs CHF 215,000
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