As it does most years, IWC used its time in the watch trade-fair spotlight in 2021 to refresh one of its six major collections. At the recently concluded Watches & Wonders virtual event, the company expanded its ever-popular Big Pilot?s Watch series with the release of the first 43-mm, blue-dialed Big Pilot models as the clear headliner. Beyond that launch, however, IWC had other heavy hitters in the lineup, including a new, downsized 41-mm Pilot’s Chronograph, and on the highest end of horology, two distinctive perpetual calendars in two of it’s Pilot’s Watch sub-families.

One of these new models, the Big Pilot?s Watch Perpetual Calendar, joins the brand’s regular production and features a steel case and blue colorway; the other, a limited edition, brings this high complication to IWC?s military-aesthetic Big Pilot’s Watch Top Gun series, specifically in its eye-catching ?Mojave Desert? iteration.
Big Pilot?s Watch Perpetual Calendar Blue Dial

Probably the more attention-grabbing release of the duo is the blue-dialed, steel-cased Big Pilot?s Watch Perpetual Calendar. The watch is the first regular-production perpetual calendar in IWC’s flagship Big Pilot series in quite some time, and completely refreshes its classical design by staging its highly intricate but still rather legible calendar configuration on a deep blue field.

The watch is housed in the 46.2-mm brushed steel case common to the contemporary Big...