Eclectic Dreams: Six Recent Releases from Inventive Independent Watchmakers

The independent watchmaking scene is not a monolith. For every Brutalist-influenced wristwatch, there is an equally elegant but no less eye-catching model. But one thing the indies have in common is a willingness to take risks.

Today, we are taking a closer look at six very different brands that are exploring their individuality in exciting ways. Vive la différence!

Being an independent brand usually means being your own boss. This also gives you the freedom to follow your creative fancy. For instance, Kollokium’s founders Manuel Emch, Amr Sindi, and Barth Nussbaumer, are not trained watchmakers: Emch worked on the business side of companies such as Jaquet Droz, Louis Erard, Raketa, and Romain Jerome; Nussbaumer is a designer with projects for TAG Heuer and Petermann Bedat under his belt; and, of course, Sindi is a well-known collector famous for his Instagram account @thehorophile.

As a result, the brand’s timepieces tend to be less conservative and more design-forward than those of more established Maisons. This backstory is important to Kollokium’s latest release, the Projekt 02 FF&F Edition, because “FFF&F” is short for “Friends, Family, Fools, and Flippers.”
 

How does this relate to Kollokium being “less conservative” than other brands? Well, not only does this 39.5 mm stainless steel timepiece stand out for its groovy dial, but the marketing campaign plays off the name of the brand’s first model. More specifically, this 199-piece limited edition will first be offered to the original owners of the Projekt 01 F&F (“Family & Friends”). Any pieces left unsold after the initial offering will then be made available to the public.

Unlike the spiky dial of the original Projekt 01, the FFF&F edition features a nine-layer topographic face built up from 67 individual plates, each hand-painted with a white lacquer and Super-Luminova mixture. This mini map is cased in die-cast stainless steel with no bezel and an extremely tall, cylindrical sapphire crystal so you can observe these hills and valleys from above.
 

The watch is powered by the automatic La Joux-Perret calibre G101, with a power reserve of almost 70 hours and stop seconds. This workhorse movement is hidden under a solid caseback because, according to the brand’s press release, “Kollokium may be a lot of things (at least we like to think so), but a watchmaker on a bench isn’t one of them. Since Kollokium had nothing to do with the movement, it was decided to leave it completely unbranded and unadorned. It’s not like you can see it anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
 

The initial Kollokium Projekt 02 FFF&F Edition price is CHF 3,333.33. However, future “public” variants will be priced at CHF 3,666.66. For more information, check out the brand’s website.

Just because a brand is independent, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have supportive friends. Case in point: Kollokium’s Manuel Emch is also part of the Louis Erard team as a delegate of the Board of Directors. In this role, he is responsible for Maison’s strategy and brand identity. In fact, Emch is the force behind Louis Erard’s notable collaborations with brands, such as Alain Silberstein, Vianney Halter, and Konstantin Chaykin.
 

Founded in 1929, the new 2340 collection is meant to re-emphasize the fact that Louis Erard is a stand-alone brand. (Fun Fact: The name 2340 is the postal code of the manufacture’s home in Le Noirmont, Switzerland.) Design-wise, the 2340 begins a new chapter in the Louis Erard story.

As for the “firsts”: The 2340 is the brand’s first sports-chic timepiece with an integrated bracelet. Moreover, its 40mm-diameter case is a new hybrid for the brand, comprising a brushed titanium mid-case for lightness and hidden lugs, and a polished stainless steel bezel, crown, and caseback for structure. Even the Sellita SW300-1movement (which has been customized by the brand) is new to Louis Erard.
 

The most novel thing about the 2340 is the dial, which comes in mint green with an oblong “pill” pattern or in either slate gray or ocean blue with a lacquered dial and a horizontal wave pattern. All feature satin-finished “L.E.” signature plate at 3 o’clock, and rhodium-plated, diamond-cut indices enhanced with SLN-C1 blue-luminous coating.

The new 2340 models are non-limited and priced at CHF 2,990 each. For more information, visit the Louis Erard website.

We got a sneak peek of Bremont’s new Jumping Hour montres à guichet at Watches and Wonders 2025 in April. And while the idea of an old-school digital field watch was a bit of a shocker at the time, it makes sense to us now.
 

Bremont began revamping its collection of field watches with the first Terra Nova models in 2024, making them feel more contemporary with a unique, geometric cushion-shaped case, a low profile, and shortened lugs. These designs vibed with an Art Deco aesthetic, which led to the cupro-aluminum bronze limited edition that debuted in Geneva.

Now, this refined 38mm model uses steel to convey that same Art Deco elegance, but adds an air of military-grade toughness.
 

Precision is crucial for any field exercise, and this tool watch keeps time synchronized with the all-new Jumping Hour calibre BC634, developed exclusively with movement manufacturer Sellita.

The new Terra Nova Jumping Hour 904L Steel is priced at $4,800 on a chocolate box-stitch leather strap and $5,100 on a brushed and polished 904L steel Terra Nova bracelet. For more information, check out the Bremont website.

In the world of independent watch brands, there are iconic watches and there are iconoclastic watches. With its xs series (yes, the xs is lowercase on purpose), De Bethune manages to be both.

The super science fiction-y collection debuted in 2023 with the DB28xs Starry Seas and continued with variations such as the Purple Rain, the Kind of Blue Tourbillon, and the DB25Vxs Monopusher Chronograph. None of these editions could be called “quiet luxury,” thanks to their extravagant architecture, but the DB28xs Yellow Tones somehow manages to feel even more dramatic than its predecessors. This is in part thanks to its heat-tempered yellow titanium case and movement.
 

Titanium is a tricky material to work with because it doesn’t conduct heat very well. But De Bethune has turned that challenge into an advantage, producing a palette of tones that range from a light buttercup to a deep, sun-bronzed shade. Each of these tones is either deepened or brightened through micro-engravings and a mirror-polish finish. The effect is quite powerful, lending a lot of wrist presence to the Yellow Tones reduced 38.7mm case.

The smaller case size required a redesigned mechanism, resulting in the hand-wound Calibre DB2115V14, which is comprised of 244 components and features twin barrels that can supply up to 6 days of power. The new mechanism has all of De Bethune’s signatures: a titanium balance with white gold inserts, a balance spring with flat terminal curve, a silicon escape wheel, and a triple pare-chute shock-absorbing system.

The DB28xs Yellow Tones is priced at CHF 115,000. For more details, please visit the De Bethune website.

Like Kollokium and De Bethune, Hautlence is revisiting one of its best-known creations – the Sphere Series – with the Sphere Series 3.

While this new version of the beloved mechanical sculpture features the same complication as its beloved predecessor, it now has a whole new rectangular silhouette. The titanium case features a more assertive architecture, as if it were carved from raw metal. On first inspection, it looks even more avant-garde, but its revised and reduced proportions make it feel much more comfortable on the wrist.
 

Visually, there’s still a lot going on. The dial is composed of skeletonized and rhodium-plated brass with a frosted finish. There’s an intermediate sapphire dial with applied minute numerals in glowing Globolight. And then there’s the main attraction: The hour sphere (made of polished grade 5 titanium with purple coating) featuring engraved hour numerals with white Super-LumiNova filling. Plus, the minute hand is satin-finished grade 5 titanium with a purple PVD treatment and white Super-LumiNova.

Of course, its smaller format also demanded a reworked movement. The Sphere Series 3 is powered by the manual-winding calibre A82, which is a reduced version of the original A80 movement. That said, it still exudes a lot of energy with spherical hours and retrograde minutes on a 180° sector, a 72-hour power reserve, and a heartbeat of 21,600 vibrations per hour. The whole contraption is set on an outrageous and outstanding purple suede strap.
 

The Sphere Series 3 is limited to 28 pieces and is priced at CHF 69,000. For more information, check out the Hautlence website.

While Urwerk’s new UR-10 Spacemeter falls into the “Special Projects” family (so one would have expected some experimentation), when the brand calls it a reinvention, it ain’t lying. Basically, the Spacemeter feels like a complete outlier.

First off, it has a dial, a round case, and a pair of hands in the center. Moreover, although the UR-10 features three sub-dials, it is not a regulator, nor a chronograph, nor any form of calendar.
 

So, the Spacemeter doesn’t look like any other Urwerk; however, it also doesn’t resemble any other watches. That’s because these subsidiary indications are not meant to measure the passing of time, but rather the distances our planet travels across the time-space continuum. A horological first!

We’re quoting the press release here because the display is just so unusual that we don’t want to get it wrong:

“At 2 o’clock, the counter marked EARTH measures every ten kilometers the Earth travels in its daily rotation, in increments of 500 meters. At 4 o’clock, the counter marked SUN advances in 20 km steps, registering every 1,000 km the Earth travels on its solar orbit. At 9 o’clock, the counter marked ORBIT combines both trajectories, thus inscribing every 1,000 kilometers of rotation and 64,000 kilometers of solar orbit on two synchronized scales. On the back of the case, a peripheral hand traces the hours on a 24-hour scale, mirroring a full rotation of the Earth.”
 

That’s a lot of math. But don’t worry, the watch is also pretty. The steel and titanium case is just 7.13mm in height, making it one of the thinnest watches ever made by Urwerk. Meanwhile, the titanium upper case and the steel caseback are fitted into one another with clean symmetry.

The movement is just plain beautiful: Urwerk has added a Double Flow Turbine to the brand’s one-way automatic mechanism. This patented turbine is made of two stacked propellers that rotate in opposite directions. When the self-winding system isn’t spinning in the winding direction, the rotor’s high speed exerts constraints that create air flow between the two sets of blades, which slows them down to preserve the cogs and gears. These blades also provide a mesmerizing visual illusion.
 

The caseback is engraved with indications of both “rotation” and “revolution.” The information feels almost like poetry, with the rotation reading clockwise and the revolution anticlockwise. These opposites reflect the Earth’s own counterclockwise revolution as it spins through space.

The Urwerk UR-10 Spacemeter is limited to 25 pieces and is priced at CHF 70,000. For more information, visit the brand’s website.