The MONOCHROME Montre de Souscription 1

Say what? A MONOCHROME Limited Edition? Well, sort of… For some time (read years), we’ve been playing with the idea of a MONOCHROME limited edition. But we wanted to do things differently. So for starters, our limited edition will be offered as a subscription watch, a Montre de Souscription using the same procedure dreamt up by Mr Breguet to create affordable watches for his clients. For our first one, we turned to one of our favourite indie watchmakers, Habring². 

Habring² is an independent Austrian watchmaking atelier created by Maria and Richard Habring in 2004. After setting up shop, they slowly but gradually built their collection, their expertise and their own style of watches and complications. Nowadays, Habring² offers some very nice three-handers like Felix or his sibling Erwin with dead-beat seconds (seconde morte) and the Felix Foudroyante, combining the foudroyante and dead-beat seconds set against a gorgeous salmon-coloured backdrop. There are also chronographs with two pushers, one pusher and even one with a crown operated system. And then there’s Richard Habring’s best-known complication, the Rattrapante or Double Split chronograph based on a Valjoux 7750 calibre, a system he developed for IWC, making the double split more affordable for clients.

The Habring2 Perpetual-Doppel next to its “cousin”, the Doppel Felix

Side by side, the base movements of the Habring2 Perpetual-Doppel and the Doppel Felix are similar

Maybe you’re familiar with our yearly Rolex predictions we publish before the brand officially unveils its novelties. The ‘mock-ups’ of our “dreamt up” new Rolex models are created in Photoshop by our managing editor Brice. But, as you can imagine, before he starts with Photoshop, there are always many discussions as we try to convince one another of this or that model. For the Montre de Souscription, things were not different; what was different was how fast we agreed.

Although Brice and I love vintage watches, we rarely buy vintage. We often think that our favourite watches from the past are too fragile, too delicate and maybe not ideally suited for beating around on a daily basis. Hence, we dreamt up our favourite vintage chronograph with a lot of 1940s ingredients. I can’t say more right now.

To learn more about the watch itself, you will have to wait until Thursday, but let me explain briefly how our Montre de Souscription idea works. The idea comes from none other than Mr Breguet, whose montres de souscription are well known! You could even consider this more of a ‘group buy’ than a classic limited edition, a fun project for us to share with you. The watch will be available from Thursday 24^th at 3PM (C.E.T.) and can be pre-ordered for two weeks or until the limitation is reached.

We ask for a EUR 2,000 down payment, and the balance will be paid when the watch is ready to be shipped. The MONOCHROME Montre de Souscription 1 (which indicates there will be more, and yes, I can confirm this) will be priced at EUR 5,950 before taxes. It will come on a nice taupe nubuck strap from our shop with an additional 7-row beads-of-rice bracelet for an added vintage look.

When the subscription period ends, and we know how many watches have been ordered, our dear friends at Habring² will start to manufacture the watches. We expect the first deliveries to commence in September 2021.

The MONOCHROME Montre de Souscription 1 will be unveiled this coming Thursday at 3PM Central European Time (GMT+1) / 9AM New York time / 9PM Singapore time and will be available in the MONOCHROME Shop. 

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