In 1943, with the war still ongoing, Willy Breitling began designing watches for after it. He had spent his career making precision tool watches for aircraft — functional objects built for the cockpit. But he wanted something else for peacetime: a chronograph that carried the same technical standards in a form that was undeniably elegant, something he described as bearing the unmistakable stamp of impeccable taste.
He called the result the Premier. Eighty years later, Breitling has added six new references to the Premier collection, all powered by the in-house self-winding Manufacture Calibre 01. The family resemblance to the original is deliberate and specific — smooth fixed bezel, twin-register dial, streamlined rectangular pushers, applied Arabic numerals.
At 42mm, the case is slightly larger than the existing B09 manual-wind models. The tone-on-tone subdials carry chronograph minutes at 3 o’clock and running seconds at 9 o’clock. New dial shades — salmon, blue, green, black, and cream for the steel models, classic cream for the 18K red gold version — give the collection a contemporary edge without breaking the visual language.
The Calibre 01 itself was redesigned in 2022 with a trimmer profile and a more compact oscillating weight, visible through the transparent sapphire caseback. Each movement achieves COSC certification for accuracy within -4 and +6 seconds per day. Three generations of the Breitling family shaped the modern chronograph.
Leon Breitling perfected the pocket-watch timekeeper. His son Gaston introduced the first wrist-worn models with an independent pusher. His grandson Willy added the second pusher at 4 o’clock, establishing the form the entire watchmaking industry has used ever since. The Premier is the collection in which Willy proved that precision and elegance are not opposing values.