Haute horlogerie marque De Bethune has unveiled DB28xs Starry Seas, highlighting the very fragile beauty of a watch, while also integrating creativity with innovation in its new invention – random guilloché, a world’s first
In DB28xs Starry Seas, De Bethune is placing innovation at the heart of the process. Integrating creativity and pushing innovation, the DB28xs Starry Seas is not just an aesthetically smaller watch. It is one that starts a new chapter for De Bethune. A model that will go down in the history of the brand, as it represents a further step in the initiation story that Denis Flageollet Master Watchmaker and Founder of the Manu facture De Bethune has been telling for the past 20 years.
While the DB28 is an emblematic De Bethune watch, this new version is all the more remarkable for the particular meaning it enshrines. Featuring a significantly smaller diameter than previous models (39 mm), while retaining De Bethune’ s unique and characteristic design, the DB28xs Starry Seas is a miniature miracle in terms of combining technology and exceptionally fine craftsmanship to offer an unprecedented aesthetic creation.
The Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi is comparable to the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection propagated in Western civilisation. The DB28xs Starry Seas is the aesthetic conjugation of the beauty of simple and modest things. Three principles of the Wabi Sabi concept emanate naturally from the DB28xs Starry Seas: With its random guilloché pattern (which is a world’s first) creating a dial featuring a blued titanium wave reflecting a starry sky, the DB28xs Starry Seas offers us one of the three principles of Wabi Sabi – the beauty of imperfect things that are impermanent and incomplete.
Through its small size and the sobriety of its silver toned chapter ring and movement, the second principle of Wabi Sabi pervading it is the beauty of modest and simple things. Or at least apparently simple, for in the ultra-technical world of miniaturisation, this watch is a technical feat notably involving the extreme miniaturisation of the DB28’s patented floating lugs system. Finally, the result is a different, singular watch embodying the third definition of Wabi Sabi: the beauty of atypical things.
While it was necessary to adapt chronometric precision to a wide range of extreme wearing conditions, resistance to shocks, accelerations and magnetic fields are very contemporary issues that require specialised research that also relates to the smaller size of this watch. Calibre DB2005 has been adapted to this miniaturisation without losing its chronometric quality. Better still, the increased lightness of the watch endows it with better efficiency in case of impacts and acceleration.
Aesthetically speaking , while the colour blue was not chosen solely for its visual attributes, on the one hand its symbolic reference to skies and seas as well as to its entire universe of wisdom and serenity echoes the Wabi Sabi concept that guided its creation and on the other hand its presence among De Bethune mechanisms has genuine technical legitimacy. It was in fact during an initial attempt to resolve technical problems of stability and chronometry when developing the new De Bethune balances that Denis Flageollet created a new, unprecedented oscillator, combining the soft white metallic shade of palladium with the vibrant blue of titanium.
Since then, the inherently natural blue colour has become one of the b rand’s signatures, as its shimmering reflections on different materials and their finishes enables an infinite and refined play on nuances.
