Chanel has been moving women's watches in 33mm and 38mm cases for years. For the men's audience it had more or less vacated the middle of the collection, leaning either on small sizes or on the 42mm unisex dial closer to the back of the range. At Watches and Wonders 2026 the brand returned with two pieces that, as aBlogtoWatch notes, are being positioned specifically as men's watches for the first time in years. They are 42mm wide, 12.5mm thick, and both run on the Calibre 12.1.
The two references are the Golden Black and the Superleggera. Both cases are matte black ceramic. Both are water-resistant to 200 metres. Both movements are COSC-certified. Both use a Kenissi calibre that is shared, by ownership structure, with Tudor. The difference between them is most of what the wearer sees.
Golden Black
The Golden Black is the softer of the two. The case, bezel, and bracelet are all matte black ceramic, which Chanel treats as its house material. The applied Arabic numerals, hour indices, minute track, hands, and the CHANEL word-mark on the dial are finished in a pale yellow-gold tone, a detail that aBlogtoWatch reads as a deliberate echo of the polished-ceramic H2129 and matte-ceramic H2128 from the early J12 era. There is a small date window at 4 o'clock, a J12 AUTOMATIC signature below centre, and a unidirectional rotating bezel with gold indices set into the ceramic. The bracelet is the classic articulated black ceramic J12 design with a polished gold Chanel logo on the crown.
Superleggera
The Superleggera is the same case architecture with a different set of design decisions. The bezel is brushed steel rather than ceramic, and it is hardened and satin-finished on top with a blackened inner surface to keep the visual weight low. The dial is black with red accents: a red printed minute scale from 5 to 15, a red Superleggera cursive below the CHANEL logo, a red arrow in the sub-second ring, and a red-tipped pointer at the date window at 4 o'clock. The racing-chronograph allusion is direct, though there is no chronograph underneath. The bracelet pairs matte ceramic centre links with brushed-steel side links, which is a lighter handfeel than the full-ceramic Golden Black. aBlogtoWatch describes this piece as the more driver-coded of the two.
Calibre 12.1
Both watches run the self-winding Kenissi Calibre 12.1. It is a 4 Hz movement with a stated 70 hours of power reserve, and every example is COSC-certified. Kenissi is a manufacture in Le Locle that is now co-owned by Chanel and Tudor, and the 12.1 shares architecture with the Tudor calibre MT5612, which powers the Black Bay 41. That shared lineage is, increasingly, the quiet reason Chanel's men's watches are interesting on specifications: a COSC-certified 70-hour movement in a ceramic case with 200 metres of water resistance is not a specification the earlier J12, which ran ETA bases, ever hit. The sapphire caseback shows the rotor, a CHANEL CALIBRE 12.1 signature, a 28-jewel count, and a Swiss Made engraving.
Price and position
According to aBlogtoWatch, the Golden Black retails at $12,150 USD and the Superleggera at $13,750 USD. Both are described by the publication as limited editions, though Chanel has not announced a production volume for either. Wristreview reports the Superleggera at £11,000 in the United Kingdom market.
Twelve thousand dollars is a meaningful number for a ceramic sports watch. It places the Golden Black above the Tudor Black Bay Ceramic One and below the Zenith Defy Skyline in black ceramic, and it pushes the J12 past its historical price band. What Chanel is quietly offering in exchange is a movement that, on paper, matches anything in the category, delivered in a case that almost no one else in the category can make at Chanel's polish. That is the return-of-the-men's-J12 brief, written more clearly than the brand has written it in years.
Sources: aBlogtoWatch on the Golden Black and Superleggera; Wristreview's Watches & Wonders 2026 coverage of the pair; Revolution Watch on Chanel at Watches and Wonders 2026; Watchonista profile of the J12 collection; Chanel official J12 collection page.
