For a relatively young company, Bell & Ross with its aviation-inspired aesthetic has steadily climbed into the rarefied air of ?brands you recognize at a glance from across the room.? The watchmaker founded in 1992 by longtime friends Bruno (?Bell?) Belamich and Carlos (?Ross?) Rosillo has laid claim to the amalgam of massive, matte-black square case, with big, legible dashboard dial, as its identifying style in much the same way that Richard Mille has seemingly appropriated the classic tonneau case-with-skeleton-dial combo as its signature visual element.
Bell & Ross BR 05 Automatic Blue Steel (Ref. BR05A-BLU-ST/SST)
Watch brands rarely achieve success as one-trick ponies in the market today, however. Bell & Ross has wisely expanded from its cornerstone model, the BR-01, and the Instrument collection it spawned, populating its Vintage collection with more traditional, and more historically evocative, round-cased watches. But the quadrangle case, round bezel, and four visible screws remain the maison?s most recognizable hallmarks. Even when Bell & Ross ventured into making a professional-grade divers? watch, though it started out with a round case ? which, of course, could be made water-resistant with fewer technical challenges than could a square one ? it ultimately achieved its goal with the square-cased BR 03-92, whose only major departure from the mainline BR 03 models are in its rotating dive-scale bezel and its non-numerical hour markers. Thus, when Be...