Premier

Breitling’s Premier is the quieter side of a brand better known for cockpit instruments: dress-minded watches with chronographs at the heart of the family, but not its limits. The name dates to 1943, and today it spans vintage pieces, straightforward automatics, and modern chronographs whose movements and dial layouts make them quite different watches to wear.

The modern family returned in 2018, pairing restrained cases with details such as grooves along the case sides. The 42mm Premier B01 Chronograph uses the automatic B01, with two subdials and a date; the hand-wound Premier B09 Chronograph 40 brings the diameter down to 40mm and dispenses with the date. Its Arabic numerals also give it a different character from the baton-indexed B01 models introduced at the relaunch.

The Premier Automatic 40 and Premier Day-Date take the family beyond chronographs. At the more mechanically elaborate end, the Premier B15 Duograph 42 adds a split-seconds chronograph for timing two events simultaneously. The Premier B25 Datora 42 is recognizable by its busier dial: day and month windows, a pointer date, and a moonphase display sharing space with the chronograph registers.