To celebrate its 250th anniversary, Breguet has revived one of Abraham-Louis Breguet’s most quietly revolutionary ideas: the Souscription watch. First launched in 1797 with a brilliant marketing twist (customers paid a quarter in advance, enabling serial production), the single-hand timepiece was deceptively simple on the outside, and mechanically robust within. Now, that same spirit re-emerges in the Classique Souscription 2025 — a watch that strips away the excess and puts the brand’s philosophy front and centre.
“We wanted to surprise people,” says CEO Gregory Kissling, “by presenting not a grand complication, as some might have expected, but a single-hand watch.” It may look minimal, but the execution is anything but. The dial is a slab of pristine white grand feu enamel, accented with black petit feu numerals, a flame-blued Breguet hand curved by artisans, and a hidden secret signature etched the old-fashioned way — using a diamond-point pantograph, a technique Breguet has revived using a tool once owned by George Daniels.
The entire aesthetic is a direct callback to the original No. 246, No. 324, and No. 383 pocket watches, all preserved today in the brand’s own museum. “This is the first time we’ve taken a pocket watch and adapted it to a wristwatch format,” Kissling explains. “We’ve reduced the diameter from 60 mm to 40 mm, while maintaining a display accuracy of around one to two minutes — remarkable for a single hand.”
The case — a new 40mm design in proprietary “Breguet gold” — does away with the maison’s trademark fluting in favour of satin brushing, and uses curved lugs for better wrist ergonomics. The reverse is just as considered: a domed sapphire caseback shows off the new VS00 calibre, its golden bridges engraved with A.-L. Breguet’s own words and decorated with a flowing, asymmetrical guilloché motif called “Quai de l’Horloge” — named after the brand’s original workshop address in Paris. “We added a great deal of richness to this apparently simple watch, particularly in the architecture of its movement,” Kissling says. “It’s inspired by that of the tact watch.” That balance — between simplicity and nuance, between old and new — is what gives this piece its gravity. The VS00 beats at 3Hz and offers a four-day power reserve with a Nivachron™ balance spring, while the display remains as clean and grounded as it was over two centuries ago.
There’s a poetry to this revival. It doesn’t lean on ostentation or gimmickry, but on clarity of thought. The same could be said for the custom red leather presentation box, which pays homage to the protective Moroccan cases Breguet used in the 18th century. The timepiece is stored vertically, like a pocket watch, nestled in navy fabric with a gold-plated push-button clasp and an escutcheon underneath — the brand’s earliest “logo”. “Much more than just a watch box,” as the brand puts it, “it is a collector’s item, a symbol of timeless heritage.” It’s easy to imagine lesser brands botching this kind of anniversary release, overwhelmed by the temptation to show off. But Breguet, in an uncharacteristically bold move, chose to whisper. The Classique Souscription 2025 may have only one hand, but it has centuries of story to tell.
