Design At DeBethune: Two Decades Of Evolution And Revolution

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of <a href="../watches/de-bethune/">De Bethune</a>, and in that time, the company has evolved at an unprecedented pace. In general, watchmaking does not proceed and progress in dramatic steps but rather follows well-established rules of design and technical progress. While there are occasional periods of revolutionary changes in the design vocabulary of watchmaking, these are relatively rare and usually coincide with larger movements in design and even the fine arts overall.
One notable example is the incredible variety of case designs produced by various companies during the Art Deco area, perhaps most dramatically exemplified by Cartier. On a very different level is the huge range of digital watch designs produced during the advent of inexpensive quartz LCD watches in the 1970s. In general, however, watch design is a conservative area in which the basic elements are, more often than not, generally the same from one year and even one decade to the next.
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The evolution of watch design at De Bethune, on the other hand, has followed a very different path. Watch companies, especially those with iconic designs that become identified with the brand as a whole, follow the rule, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The classic example is the Royal Oak at Audemars Piguet, which though it has come in a bewildering variety of models, retains the same basic identifying elements in every version since 1972.
The reason for this is that they, and their clients, want the identity of the brand and even the specific model to be as instantly recognizable as possible. De Bethune, on the other hand, has consistently and steadily modified and updated its design language, and the result is a range of watches whose variety is unparalleled over the two decades the company has been in existence.
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This is not to say that De Bethune’s design language shows no connection from one year to the next — on the contrary, the aesthetic through-lines are crystal clear when the company’s collections are viewed in retrospect. It’s this combination of rapid diversification of design, with continued clarity of design codes, that makes design at De Bethune unique. The approach necessarily means a relatively small number of watches produced, but it also means that each watch has its own particular character — a fascinating world to explore for collectors, certainly, and for anyone interested in the evolution of mechanical horology as both an art and a science.
The company was founded by David Zanetta and Denis Flageolet in 2002, by which time both founders had amassed, between them, decades of experience in the larger world of fine watches, watchmaking, and watch collecting — Zanetta as a brand and collector consultant, and Flageolet as a watchmaker who had, among other things, founded the complications specialist house THA (Techniques Horlogères Appliquées S.A) with F. P. Journe, where independent watchmaker Vianney Halter also worked.
In 2003, the new company, based in the village of Sainte-Croix, introduced its first collection at the Baselworld trade show, although this was preceded by a private show in 2002 in Italy. If you have gotten to know De Bethune in recent years, you might be surprised at their first collection, which from a design standpoint seemed almost willfully anachronistic (though an argument could be made that in 2003, “willfully anachronistic” was exactly what enthusiasts were looking for).
The 2002 presentation consisted of five watches, which were, logically enough, the DB1 through DB5 models:
<ul>
<li>DB1 – Monopusher chronograph with center chronograph seconds register and 30 minute register</li>
<li>DB2 – A simple time-only watch with no seconds hand</li>
<li>DB3 – GMT with power reserve indication, with 7 day power reserve</li>
<li>DB4 – Minute repeater</li>
<li>DB5 – Time only with center seconds</li>
</ul>
These watches were all on the larger size by the standards of the time. Although in 2002, there were already signs of a trend towards larger and even deliberately oversized watches (the IWC Big Pilot’s Watch is just one example). At the same time, many of the design elements would not have looked out of place on an 18th century pocket watch.
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Take the monopusher chronograph DB1, for example. The DB1 is not only anachronistic in terms of the chronograph movement (the monopusher chronograph was invented decades before Willy Breitling patented the first modern two-pusher chronograph design in 1934) but also in terms of virtually all the design details. The Breguet-style hands, guilloché dial, chemin-de-fer (railroad) style minute and seconds track, and Roman numerals are all features that would not look out of place and can be found on any number of wristwatches and pocket watches from preceding decades and even centuries.
At the same time, there were already indications that De Bethune was not interested in only playing the greatest hits from classic watch design. The size of the watches is one indication — at 42mm these are already not standard high-grade dress watches just on the criteria of size alone; 42mm is larger than a gentleman’s size 12 (39.79mm) dress pocket watch and nearly the size of an American railroad grade pocket watch. Deliberately choosing to create such relatively large wristwatches in 2002-3 was then, and to some extent still would be today, an expression of overt fascination with watches as design objects and with an extroverted celebration of mechanical horology — both past and future. (There is also the interestingly perverse decision to make the power reserve indication on the DB3 look like a moonphase display — a choice seemingly intended to trip up hasty watch writers for decades to come).
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The second indication is the design of the lugs, variously referred to as “bullet” or “ogival.” (An ogive arch, in architecture, is a pointed arch, often found in Gothic architecture). This design element is probably the single most distinctive feature in De Bethune’s case designs, and it’s found in almost every De Bethune watch to some degree, although in more recent models, they are sometimes so reduced as to be essentially vestigial. In the watches from 2002-3, however, they are very pronounced. In addition to making the watches instantly recognizable as De Bethune watches, they also help to make the lugs visually assertive enough to balance the oversized cases. Given the 42mm diameter, the early DB watches require lugs set close to the case to make them optimally wearable. The ogival profile keeps the lugs from being overwhelmed by the case (De Bethune also used curved springbars to bring the attachment point of the straps as close to the case as possible — again, to enhance wearability).
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While the first De Bethune watches made use of supplied calibers and components, the company began, almost immediately, to innovate technically as well. Beginning in 2004 with, among other things, a very exotic reinterpretation of the standard watch balance and a spherical moonphase complication. Over the next several years, as new technical features rolled out and De Bethune transitioned to in-house calibers, the designs of the watches began to take on an even more idiosyncratic identity. The size of the company’s watches, at 42mm/43mm, plus the ogival lugs, had from the beginning given De Bethune’s timepieces a slight steampunk feel (steampunk science fiction takes place in an imaginary world where steam-powered technology is taken to an extreme conclusion, often including steam-powered computers of enormous size and power).
The beginning of this new phase in De Bethune’s designs is the DB15, from 2004. The DB15 is a perpetual calendar watch, quite large at 42.3mm, and with apertures for the day of the week and the month; the date is shown in a traditional way in a sundial at 6:00. Classically, that’s where you would also find the moonphase indication (a moonphase is very frequently although not invariably combined with the perpetual calendar complication), but in the DB15, you find a spherical moonphase display, along with the Leap Year indication, at 12:00. The watch is a fascinating study in contrasts — on the one hand, like its predecessors it has at least one foot (maybe even one and a half) firmly in the past, but the spherical moonphase, extroverted size, and prominent ogival lugs give it an almost Jules Verne feel as well.
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It is certainly not a coincidence that in addition to being De Bethune’s most unusual watch from a design perspective up to that point, it was also the platform for four new innovations: the spherical moonphase, a new antishock system, a redesigned balance wheel, and a specially optimized balance spring designed to give some of the benefits of a Breguet overcoil, without the additional height a traditional overcoil spring requires.
<h2>From Evolution To Revolution</h2>
The DB15 was the first hint that it was not going to be tweaks on business-as-usual in design forever at De Bethune. Any doubts that anyone might have had that De Bethune would be as bold in exploring design per se as it was in exploring technical experiments, innovations, and improvements would have been instantly and dramatically dispelled by a watch that debuted in 2005.
That watch was the DBS. The DBS, at first glance, is so different from anything De Bethune had produced so far as to seem to come almost from another watch company, although the longer you look at it, the more the relationship to earlier work seems clear. The most dramatic difference between the DBS and its predecessors is the dial — in the DBS, there isn’t one.
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Instead, there is an elegantly assertive outer chapter ring with blue hemispheres at the hours, which leaves the movement mainplate and top bridge open to view, as well as the in-house balance wheel and horizontal balance bridge. There is a spherical moonphase display at 6:00. The case construction is a major departure for De Bethune as well. It’s shaped something like a horseshoe, with De Bethune’s ogival lugs at the bottom and an articulated lug at the top, which brings the upper attachment for the strap inside the diameter of the case. The upshot of this construction is that despite the fact that this is a large watch, at almost 43mm in diameter, it wears well on smaller wrists as well as larger ones. With the crown at 12:00, the DBS is a bit reminiscent of the converted pocket watches, which made up the first generation of wristwatches in the very late 19th and early 20th centuries.
If the steampunk vibe was definite, but in the background in preceding De Bethune watches, here it’s the main theme. The triangular bridge is, at least to a dyed-in-the-wool science fiction fan, irresistibly reminiscent of the iconic Starfleet emblem seen on the uniforms of crew and officers in the original Star Trek series from the 1960s. Despite the fact that the DBS is not, technically, very far removed from earlier De Bethune watches, it is light years away from them in terms of style. The shape of the hands, which resemble rocket ships, further drives home the sci-fi feel.
By contrast, the back of the watch is rather sober — the movement has essentially been inverted in the case in order to bring the mainplate and balance into view from the dial side, and the caseback is solid except for a cut-out for the power reserve display.
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The effect of the DBS on early fans of De Bethune must have been electrifying. The mirror-bright reflective surfaces on the dial side of the watch and the frankly illustrative design elements (as opposed to the suggestive design cues on earlier watches) still have the power to surprise and even shock today, nearly two decades later. De Bethune is not the only watchmaker to have mined the rich veins of science fiction, cyberpunk, and steampunk for design cues — MB&F and Vianney Halter come to mind immediately as well — but that world has seldom been evoked so strongly and so well as in the DBS. It was, truly, a watch that boldly went where no watch had gone before.
<h2>Unconventionally Conventional: The DB20 And The Maxichrono</h2>
In 2006, even more fresh designs came rolling out of the cornucopia at De Bethune. This was the year in which De Bethune introduced what it called its first sports watches. It says something about the company that even in this generally very predictable category, it produced some very unpredictable designs. De Bethune’s watches had hitherto been unquestionably, if not dressy, at least very much on the formal side — the DB1 and DBS were only distant cousins from a design perspective, but neither was a watch you’d wear for, say, cleaning out the gutters on a blustery October afternoon.
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You probably wouldn’t strap on the DB20 for such a mundane chore either, but it wouldn’t be out of the question, or at least it would seem less obviously absurd in such a circumstance than De Bethune’s earlier watches. From a watchmaking perspective, the DB20 brought a couple of new features to De Bethune’s movement making. The caliber DB2024 was the first automatic movement from De Bethune. It featured an antishock system for the winding rotor — and, per the usual for De Bethune movements, it has a fairly long power reserve (5 days).
Now, there are sports watches, and there are sports watches, and while the DB20 might have been, nominally, a bit more of an everyday wear candidate than some of De Bethune’s earlier watches, it would still under no circumstances be mistaken for anything like an ordinary watch. For one thing, there was the size — 45mm x 11mm (at least, pleasantly flat for such a dinner plate of a timepiece). The prominent bezel with its signature blue hemispheres at the hours, complex hands — a sort of mashup of Breguet and syringe-style hands via Isaac Asimov — and figure-8 surround for the center of the dial and the date display were none of them from a standard sports-watch playbook either. You could get the DB20 in titanium, but it was also made in white gold and palladium. It was also the first De Bethune watch to have non-ogival lugs, and the concept would be revisited again – next, in 2007, with the DB22.
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The second major launch from De Bethune in 2006 was arguably even more important for the future of the company, both from a technical and a design standpoint. That watch was the DB21 Maxichrono. The DB21 was a monopusher chronograph but a most complex and highly unusual one. Virtually all chronographs have three hands on the center axis of the dial: the minute and hour hands, and the chronograph seconds hand. The chronograph minute and hour registers are in two separate subdials and the running seconds hand has its own sundial as well.
The DB21, on the other hand, put five hands on the central axis — the hour and minute hands, as well as the chronograph seconds, minutes, and hour hands, which were read off on concentric tracks. It was an outrageously ambitious watch technically — the company had originally intended it to be, on top of everything else, a high beat (10Hz) movement as well but eventually settled on a more standard frequency of 28,800 vph. The challenge with placing all of the hands on the same axis, from a design standpoint, was, of course, that clearly distinguishing the individual chronograph hands from both each other and the hour and minute hands, is a challenge, to put it mildly. Yet De Bethune managed to create a reasonably legible dial through an intelligent use of color coding and hand shapes. Still, the DB21 was for 2006, something of A Watch Too Far — it proved too technically difficult to put into series production at the time, though the Maxichrono would eventually go into full production in 2014.
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The DB21 was significant for De Bethune for another reason — it was the first watch in which De Bethune used fully articulated lugs. The lugs essentially were the outer case, with both elements in pivots located on the horizontal case axis. The circular inner case floated freely inside, attached to the lugs only at the pivot points. This construction didn’t make the diameter of the watch exactly irrelevant, but it did mean that the watch overall could conform very closely to a wide range of wrist sizes — and it was mechanically and visually intriguing as well.
With the advent of the DB21, many of De Bethune’s most iconic design elements were now in place. These included the articulated lugs of the DB21, the ogival lugs, the triangular movement bridge first fully visible in the DBS, the spherical moonphase, and the use of a wide variety of unusually shaped hands, as well as the use of bright blued hemispheres on either the bezel or inner flange as hour markers. Increasingly, at this point, De Bethune was also using balances visible on the dial side, in order to show off the many experiments they were conducting in changes to the regulating organs (escapement, balance, and balance spring).
<h2>From Pocket To Wrist: The DBD Digitale</h2>
The pocket watch influences on De Bethune are reasonably apparent up to this point in the company’s history, but with the DBD Digitale — one of the most austerely beautiful timepieces the company had produced to date — they were squarely in the limelight. The DBD Digitale gets its name from its digital displays. The day of the week, date, and month are shown in one in-line window on the upper part of the dial (a bit of a misnomer here as there is no conventional dial). The minutes are shown in a semi-circular aperture below, and the jumping hours in a smaller window below the seconds. The dial is finished with vertical Geneva stripes and aside from the De Bethune nameplate above the date window, there are no other design elements on the dial, other than the three visible jewels for the pivots of the date and time wheels.
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The back of the watch offers a bit of a contrast with the pure machine-age restraint of the dial side — there is a spherical moonphase display, with the Moon sphere adrift in a case-spanning sea of deep blue flecked with gold stars. The sky disk is a miniature work of art — blued steel, with inset gold stars.
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The DBD Digitale’s dial-side layout is directly derived from a class of quite rare pocket watches made by Patek Philippe and a few others, in the Art Deco era. The display of the day, date, and month in-line could be done in a couple of ways — with the day of the week first (as in the DB8) or with the month first (for example, May 15 Mon) with the latter system used primarily for the American market. Pure jump hour watches with running minute displays were made both as pocket and wrist watches — probably the most famous example is the Cartier Tank Basculante. While the DBS is almost floridly baroque in its exposure and celebration of the inner workings of a watch, the DBD goes in a diametrically opposed direction — not a celebration of complexity, but rather, of the harmony and clarity of a few carefully chosen design elements.
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<h2>Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combinations</h2>
The next few years would see De Bethune begin to increasingly refine and diversify the basic design elements already in place, as well as introduce new — sometimes dramatically new — elements to its design vocabulary.
One of the most notable examples of the expansion and transformation of existing design elements can be found in the 2009 Dream Watch 1, or DW1. The Dream Watch series are somewhat in the nature of concept pieces. However, unlike concept cars, they are not one-offs produced as proof-of-concept or design exercises — they are instead series produced timepieces that have features, or combinations of features, not found in other De Bethune watches.
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The DW1 is an obvious immediate descendant of the DBS and shares a number of its basic features, including the horseshoe case, crown at 12:00, visible balance, spherical moonphase, lower lugs pivoting at the center of the case, and upper lug attached below the upper case rim. It’s also extremely brightly polished — mirror polished, in fact — on just about every visible surface, and the use of color is restricted to blue inserts for the hands and blue for the dark side of the Moon sphere.
The lower lugs are broad, almost wing-like — the overall shape of the case is so much like a science fiction spaceship you’re tempted to make whooshing noises, like a child playing with a (very expensive) toy, when you pick it up. Although the case of the DW1 has been compared to the Millenium Falcon, this is no scruffy, jury rigged smuggler’s ride — if you’re going to pick something from the Star Wars universe, I’d say it’s more akin to the glossy chrome of the Naboo royal yachts than anything you’d use to make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs.
The DW1 has a technical feature that sets it apart from other De Bethune watches, as well — the owner can adjust the rate of the watch, faster or slower, with two buttons on the caseback (which also has an indication for the power reserve).
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The DW3 was launched in 2013, at the same time as DW1. DW3 is more or less identical to DW1 aesthetically, but technically it was an important milestone for De Bethune, as it was the launch platform for the company’s first tourbillon. The DW3 does not have the DIY regulation feature found in the DW1 (although it does have a caseback power reserve), but there is more than enough razzle-dazzle on the dial side that you don’t miss it.
De Bethune, at this point, had become increasingly known for complex cases, complex movements, and a really restless, even relentless, pursuit of experiments in fundamentals of precision, but all that is not to say that it couldn’t produce quite beautiful simpler watches — the spherical moonphase DB25, first introduced in 2010, is a case in point, with just the spherical moonphase complication, and hour and minute hands (openworked variations on Breguet/pomme style hands). In the same vein, the company released, in 2011, a re-edition of the original DB10 — but this time with an in-house self-winding movement. The company also produced traditional complicated watches with its own design elements in a more classic vein — one notable example is the 2013 DB16, with a perpetual calendar, jumping seconds, spherical moonphase display, indication of the age of the moon, and tourbillon (the latter is, strictly speaking, not a complication but rather, a regulating device, although it certainly adds to the complexity of the watch).
De Bethune still retained a fascination for the exotic, however. During this period, one of the most dramatic examples was the DB25 “Ninth Mayan Underworld” watch, which had a dial very elaborately engraved with elements of the Mayan calendar (the year 2012 was supposedly the year which the traditional Mayan calendar predicted would herald the end of the world, although if that is the case, it has been something of a long, slow burn).
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But for De Bethune enthusiasts, one of the most beautiful, harmoniously designed, and memorable watches of that period has got to be the <a href="../shop/De-Bethune-DB28-DB28DN.html">DB28 Digitale</a>. The DB28 is from the same basic playbook — at least in terms of underlying devotion to clarity, simplicity, and purity — as the DBD Digitale; there is nothing about the watch that is the least bit extraneous or ornamental, which means that taken as a whole, it is actually one of the most ornamental watches anyone has ever made. The dial side consists of just three basic elements: a sector displaying the minutes on a disk rotating past a fixed pointer, an aperture for the jumping hours, and at the very center, a spherical moonphase sitting in the middle of a perfectly proportioned circle of blue, like a single raindrop frozen in time as it drops into an unruffled pond.
There is a very fine pattern of engine-turning applied to the dial — just enough to give it an almost subliminal amount of depth and texture, which stops short of becoming distracting. Turn the watch over, and in contrast to many of De Bethune’s watches, which often have either a solid display back or, at most, a solid back with a minimal addition (like a power reserve display), you have a full view of the movement’s mainplate and upper bridge, as well as the gorgeous blued balance bridge, exotic silicon, and white gold balance, and, especially, the most unusual and elegant antishock springs flanking the balance bridge itself. In any short list of the most successful De Bethune watches, the DB28 would be at or near the top of the list.
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<h2>Starships For The Wrist: The Dream Watch 5</h2>
Many of De Bethune’s watches over the years have been variations on the themes laid down in the first decade or so since the brand’s founding, but if there is any one watch that really seems as much a break with the company’s design language as a bridge to it, it must be the Dream Watch 5, DW5. The DW5, of all De Bethune’s timepieces, is the one that most sharply sets itself apart not only from De Bethune’s previous efforts but, indeed, from most other watches across the entire five century history of watchmaking.
DW5 is not De Bethune’s most complex watch technically, but it is without question its most radical aesthetically. And, at least in its original form, the DW5 case is the De Bethune watch most powerfully directed towards the elevation of aesthetics. However, as in the most successful watch designs, mechanics cannot be teased apart from what the watch is capable of achieving aesthetically. The shape of the case seems very much part of some science fiction universe, but in this instance, a far future in which the divisions between classes, castes, and even civilizations have fallen before the relentless and gentle advance of good taste. The DW5 case is symmetrical along its horizontal axis and asymmetrical along its vertical axis. As you look at it, it can give rise to an almost unlimited number of associations — a falcon with its wings folded as it stoops towards its prey; a starship leaving orbit with a silent flare of engines; a Paleolithic arrowhead. The display is drastically simplified as well: a spherical moonphase, and apertures for the hours and minutes and, on the back, only a small window for the balance. It’s watchmaking that seems to wait for an optimistically foreseen future — one which has not yet arrived but for whose advent one might devoutly hope.
The design language of De Bethune allows, at this point in the company’s history, for an almost infinite number of permutations and variations, but there are two watches that I think exemplify the variety you can find in De Bethune’s watch designs, after two decades of evolution on fast-forward.
<h2>Days Of Future Past</h2>
The first is a recent variation on the DW5 case — the Dream Watch 5 Tourbillon Season 1. It is a watch that takes what seemed to be the whole fundamental premise of the DW5 design — the unseen is more important than what you can see; less is more; to suggest is better than to show — and turns it on its head.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1166183" src="https://watchbox-blog.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/19_12-16-2022-DreamWatch-1.jpg?max-w=1024&q=50&auto=format,compress&usm=10&usmrad=3" alt="" width="1400" height="821" />
Instead of the hermetic mystery of the original DW5, we have, instead, a version that is almost entirely transparent. The dial side has been opened up to show the clockwork universe behind the displays, and you can see the full disk for the minutes encircling the spherical moonphase display and the hour aperture, under the blue curves of the skeletonised case, which hover above the displays like the arches of some far-future cosmic cathedral. The view from the back is, if anything, even more compelling — the two offset mainspring barrels, central bridge, and slightly v-shaped tourbillon bridge give the impression of a robotic but benevolent intelligence, a billion years of slow wisdom behind its smile. It is a watch that represents less a spirit of restless invention, than of mature clarity in horological vision.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1166184" src="https://watchbox-blog.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/20_12-16-2022-StaryVarious.jpg?max-w=1024&q=50&auto=format,compress&usm=10&usmrad=3" alt="" width="1400" height="1116" />
The second of these is the <a href="../shop/De-Bethune-DB25-DB25VRS3.html">Starry Varius</a>. The Starry Varius is, on one level, a simple watch (as is, in fact, the DW5), but as with De Bethune’s other most successful designs, it represents the deployment of a few critical elements to very great effect. The dial, while not an astronomical complication per se, invites the same sort of calmness and sense of a transhuman perspective as a perpetual calendar or sidereal time complication — a vast sea of blue, with a splash of stars (which can be customized to the owner’s specification, if they should desire a more nostalgically geocentric perspective). On the movement side, there is once again a view of one of the most perfectly balanced, symmetrically asymmetrical movements ever to come down the pike. Caliber DB2005 is classic De Bethune — blue on white, with those wonderfully sinuous antishock springs for the balance bridge and the same benignly anthropomorphic expression as the movement side of the DW5 Tourbillon Season 1.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1166185" src="https://watchbox-blog.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/21_12-16-2022-DreamWatch-Tourbillon.jpg?max-w=1024&q=50&auto=format,compress&usm=10&usmrad=3" alt="" width="1400" height="1004" />
It has taken De Bethune two decades to arrive at its present design language. That language does not have an unusually large number of elements — in fact, you can probably count the most fundamental on the fingers of your own two hands. But it is in the refinement and combination of these elements that De Bethune has found its real voice — one which does not rely so much on repeating what it has invented, as in finding therein, new and unexpected harmonies.

De Bethune

Written By

Jack Forster

WatchBox Global Editorial Director Jack Forster has been fascinated by every aspect of watches, clocks, and watchmaking for his entire life. He began systematically studying and learning about watches over 20 years ago, and during the first explosion of watch enthusiast forums, he became a moderator on thepurists.com. Jack became a full-time watch writer in 2007, when he joined Revolution Magazine, first as group technical and features editor, and then as editor in chief of Revolution Magazine USA. He joined the enthusiast website Hodinkee in 2015 as managing editor and then as Editor in Chief. In 2022, Jack joined WatchBox as the Global Editorial Director. He is the author of Cartier Time Art: Mechanics of Passion, and has written about watches, and other subjects, for many other venues including CNN, American Express Departures, and Vanity Fair.

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