Massachusetts-based retailer EsperLuxe represents many leading names in independent watchmaking, and has just collaborated with De Bethune to create the DB27 Night Hawk. Based on the Titan Hawk V2, the Night Hawk is a 10-piece limited edition with matte-finished blued titanium lugs and a secret meaning expressed in its star-studded titanium dial.

Initial thoughts

De Bethune is quite unlike other contemporary independent watchmakers. Majority owned by The 1916 Company since 2021, De Bethune nonetheless appears to operate much as it did prior to the acquisition, serving as a vehicle for co-founder Denis Flageollet’s prodigious creative output.

The Night Hawk exemplifies De Bethune’s unique perspective, which fuses in-house technical watchmaking with a science fiction-inspired aesthetic. It’s a difficult balancing act, but the brand has amassed a devoted following by staying outside industry norms for design and decoration.

A creature of the night

The Night Hawk is a variant of the DB27 Titan Hawk V2, which debuted in 2018 as the brand’s ‘entry level’ model. Naturally, that term is somewhat out of place in the world of low-volume watchmaking, but it nonetheless brings many of the brand’s signatures within reach of a wider segment of collectors.

One of those signatures is heat-blued (or purpled) case elements, including the Night Hawk’s blued titanium lugs, which are part of a hinged exterior case frame that articulates from a spring-loaded hinge on each side of the case.

This allows the lightweight grade 5 titanium case to quite literally ‘hug’ the wrist, regardless of wrist size. The ergonomic fit is accentuated by the shortness of the lugs, which give the Night Hawk a compact lug-to-lug length only slightly longer than its 43 mm case diameter.

In other words, it’s big enough to express itself but on most wrists should wear no larger than many 40 mm watches with ordinary lugs. It’s also quite slim as such things go at just 9 mm thick.

But in the Night Hawk, the lugs’ finish is more interesting than their functionality. While many watchmakers bend over backwards for movement finishing, few have the vision or the resources to create differentiated exterior finishes like De Bethune.

Naturally, the lugs of the Night Hawk are heat-blued titanium, but unlike prior models that offered a polished finish, they have been given a pearlescent matte finish. This is the first time that the brand’s ‘short’ lug format has been finished this way in a production watch.

The textural contrast between the highly polished case itself and the blued matte lug frame is striking, and a good reminder that fine watchmaking is about much more than just movements.

The starry dial is another De Bethune motif. Though the positions of the stars may seem random, they depict the positions of the major stars in the night sky as they appeared on the day that De Bethune first partnered with EsperLuxe. The night sky itself is blued titanium, underscoring the coherence between case, dial, and movement.

Technical watchmaking

Inside, the Night Hawk is powered by the AUTOV2 movement, a relatively straightforward in-house automatic calibre with central seconds, a stable 4 Hz rate, and a 60-hour power reserve.

And because it’s a De Bethune calibre, the hairspring sports the brand’s proprietary flat terminal curve, which was granted a design patent. The shape of the hairspring is intended to improve the spring’s concentricity, much like an overcoil, but with a lower profile design.

The hairspring supports a large blued titanium balance wheel with inset 18k white gold weights. The weights increase the moment of inertia of the balance, but they are not adjustable — the rate is adjusted via the brand’s own proprietary regulator, which is a clamp-like apparatus underneath the balance bridge functionally similar to a curb-pin regulator.

The entire assembly is mounted to a full balance bridge to optimise rigidity, but the positioning of the AUTOV2 within the portfolio means it misses out on De Bethune’s Triple Pare-Chute anti-shock system. That said, the Incabloc shock absorber that supports the balance staff should be more than sufficient in real-world use.

In terms of finish, the movement is solarised on the large surfaces, save for four large blued elements which have been machined with an industrial-looking grooved texture. In short, the Night Hawk opts for a relatively austere look for the movement, possibly to focus attention on the brand’s wide-ranging specialties, which include design and exterior finishing.

Diameter: 43 mm
Height: 9 mm
Material: Titanium
Crystal: Sapphire
Water resistance: 30 m

Movement: AUTOV2
Functions: Hours, minutes and seconds
Winding: Automatic
Frequency: 28,800 beats per hour (4 Hz)
Power reserve: 60 hours

Strap: textile strap with titanium pin buckle and additional leather strap

Limited edition: Yes, 10 pieces and 1 prototype
Availability: Now from EsperLuxe
Price: US$70,000 excluding taxes

For more, visit Debethune.ch.