The collaboration watch is a crowded genre, and most of them stop at a co-signed dial. Bell & Ross and S.T. Dupont have taken the idea further than usual. The watch is a BR-05 Chrono dressed in the colours of a fine cigar, and it arrives in a box that is itself a working humidor, with one of Dupont's lighters and a cigar cutter set into the tray beside it.
S.T. Dupont is the Parisian maison founded in 1872, best known to collectors for the Ligne 2 lighter and its association with cigar culture rather than for watches. The pairing is less arbitrary than it first sounds. Both houses trade on a particular idea of Parisian luxury, and the cigar theme gives the watch a clear visual brief, which is more than many partnerships manage.
A dial dressed as a cigar
The case is the BR-05, Bell & Ross's integrated-bracelet sports watch, here at 42mm across and 14.25mm thick. It is built in steel with 18-karat rose gold, polished and satin-brushed, with a screw-down crown and crown guard. The two-tone treatment continues into the bracelet, where rose gold centre links sit between brushed steel.
The dial is where the theme lands. It is a rich brown with a sunray finish, graded darker toward the edges in a way that reads as tobacco, with rose-gold applied numerals, indexes and hands. The S.T. Dupont logo sits at six o'clock, the Bell & Ross signature at nine, and the date is tucked between four and five. Two sub-dials handle the small seconds and the chronograph. The luminous material is a beige Super-LumiNova that glows green, chosen to sit quietly against the warm dial rather than stand out.
The movement and the box
Driving it is the BR-CAL.326, Bell & Ross's name for a chronograph movement built on the Sellita SW510 base. It is automatic, beats at 28,800 vibrations per hour, holds 60 hours of power reserve and shows hours, minutes, small seconds, date and the chronograph. A sapphire caseback exposes a 360-degree oscillating weight finished for the occasion.
Then there is the packaging, which is unusually a part of the product rather than an afterthought. The box is lacquered Macassar ebony lined with cedar, designed as a genuine humidor, and it holds an S.T. Dupont Ligne 2 lighter and a cigar cutter alongside the watch. For a piece pitched at this theme, building the lighter and cutter into the set is the logical end of the idea.
Price and availability
The BR-05 Chrono S.T. Dupont is limited to 150 pieces. It is offered two ways: on a brown leather strap at EUR 14,900, or USD 15,200, and on the steel and rose gold bracelet at EUR 19,200, or USD 19,800. The reference is BR05C-STD-STPG, with the suffix changing by strap or bracelet.
Whether the humidor justifies the premium is a personal call, and the two-tone, brown-dial direction is a clear departure from the stark black-and-white tool look Bell & Ross is known for. But as collaborations go, this one commits to its concept rather than gesturing at it, and the watch underneath is a known quantity.
