Watches and Wonders 2026 was, by most accounts, a careful show. The big names refined rather than reinvented, anniversaries were marked with modest updates, and the independent watchmakers largely stayed within their established territories. Then Hautlence flipped open the Retrovision ’64 and reminded everyone what a genuinely original idea looks like.
The premise is exactly as audacious as it sounds. The watch is modeled after the communicator Captain Kirk used to hail the Enterprise – flip-top grille, crown at noon with a green ring accent, and a shape that reads unmistakably as a prop from a 1960s science-fiction set. The difference, of course, is what lives inside.
The Retrovision ’64 is the third entry in Hautlence’s ongoing Concepts series, which takes pop-culture artifacts from specific decades and rebuilds them as functioning mechanical timepieces. The ’47 drew from transistor radios in 2024; the ’85 channeled the visual language of Japanese robotics in 2025. With the ’64, the reference point is the space-obsessed optimism of 1960s television, and the execution is remarkably faithful. The case measures 61.2 x 41.8 x 15.6mm in Grade 5 titanium, sandblasted and finished in brown PVD with red gold PVD trim on the hinged flip cover. That cover is perforated in a grid of tiny holes mimicking a speaker grille – a detail so specific it could only have been deliberate.
Open it and the watch splits into two completely separate displays under two separate sapphire crystals. The upper, round crystal covers a minutes dial finished in orange, green, and white lacquer with Globolight numerals tracked by a skeletonized orange hand. Below it, a rectangular crystal covers a linear hour track built directly into the case, with orange-lacquered numerals and an arrow indicator that travels the length of the track before snapping back to the beginning. That mechanism – a retrograde jump executed on a linear rather than arc-shaped track – is the kind of engineering challenge that gets quietly discussed in workshops for years before it looks this effortless on a wrist.
The center of the minutes dial is cut away entirely, exposing a one-minute flying tourbillon with a double hairspring spinning in full view. In almost any other watch at this price, the tourbillon would be the headline. Here it shares billing with a communicator gag, which either says something about the audacity of the concept or the sheer density of complications packed into a single piece.
The D50 self-winding movement was developed in collaboration with Agenhor, the Geneva-based specialists Hautlence has worked with since introducing this linear jumping-hour mechanism on its Linear line back in 2022. At 239 components, 39 jewels, 21,600 vibrations per hour, and a minimum 72-hour power reserve, the technical credentials are entirely serious regardless of what the case looks like from across a room.
Priced at CHF 129,700 before tax – roughly $165,000 – and limited to just three examples worldwide, the Retrovision ’64 occupies a category of object that is less product and more statement. Hautlence is a small brand making a deliberate argument that watchmaking can still be playful, technically ambitious, and genuinely strange all at once. On the evidence of this piece, the argument holds. Also be sute to checkour article about watch investments.
