Teddy Baldassarre
Bring This Watch Back: Breitling Chronoliner
Breitling is known historically for two specialties: chronographs and pilot’s watches. Despite the very real popularity of its Superocean dive watches, the legendary status of high-tech “smart” models like the analog-digital Emergency, and the renewed dress-watch cred attained by the elegant Premier collection, it is the models most closely associated with both flying and timing — the Chronomat and Navitimer — that continue to best embody Breitling’s DNA, at least to most savvy enthusiasts. However, both the Chronomat and the Navitimer possess distinctive features that might be, for lack of a better descriptor, polarizing. The former has those angular rider tabs around the bezel and that big, bulbous crown; the latter sports that emblematic, circular slide-rule scale that dominates the dial, which looks cool yet busy and which few wearers actually know how to use. Both are luxurious, impeccably designed watches with sporty, tool-oriented origins rooted in aviation and navigation, but neither is really a gent’s dress chronograph in the traditional sense of the phrase. To be fair, Breitling does make a chronograph family that strives for both utility and elegance — that would be the previously mentioned Premier — but as it’s not aviation-minded in its aesthetic, it’s not “quintessential Breitling” for many folks. For a short while, however — from 2015 to around 2020 or so — Breitling made such a watch, even positioning it in the market as it...
