Depancel Taps Into Enthusiast Community With New Serie-A Allure Chronograph

There are many reasons why I have a true appreciation for the microbrand space. Microbrands have opened up a whole new world for watch enthusiasts to experience unique designs at approachable prices. There’s also the accessibility part of it. For the most part, it’s pretty normal to speak directly to the people behind the brand, whether it’s about an upcoming release, an issue with a particular watch or you just feel the need to send them some praise. More often than not, you’ll get a response back with the same enthusiasm that we all share for these small mechanical things.

New to the pages of Worn & Wound is a French based watch brand named Depancel. The folks over at Depancel have built a business around listening to enthusiasts for inputs on a watch to be released. Basically, this is how the process works. Depancel sends out a questionnaire to those intrigued about their idea for the next release. They call this first step “Co-Creation” and it allows the community to put in their own input on what they would like to see from their next offering based on the options that Depancel provides. I myself ran through the questionnaire and they offer options to choose what type of case design, dial layout, movement and bracelet you would like, which ultimately impacts how the watch will look and what it will cost. The team takes the information, gathers the popular answers from the questionnaire and applies that input towards the design and final production of the watch. Their most recent release is the end result of this process and is their very first chronograph called the Serie-A Allure.

The Serie A-Allure, like all the watches in their line up including the Serie-R and Serie-P, are  unquestionably automotive inspired. There’s a lot going on with the dial, so let’s start to unpack there. The Serie-A Allure sports a dial with contrasting textures. A honeycomb pattern which Depancel says “echoes a radiator grille” takes form at the center of the dial and surrounding the outer portion is a brushed circular ring that houses the hour markers. The chronograph seconds subdial is located at nine o’clock and directly across the way at three is the minute counter subdial, which uses a contrasting orange hand and a rpm gauge color scheme. Continuing with the automotive cues, the ceramic bezel displays a kilometers per hour tachymeter scale, and similar to the minute counter subdial, displays a touch of orange starting at the 250 marker and transitions to red towards the 500 marker.

The steel case spans 43 mm and stands 15 mm tall. The combination of brushed finishing and the polished facet on the lugs seems to be well executed. Crown and pushers are where you expect them to be and on the opposite flank, a plaque engraved with the Serie-A name along with the number of your allocation out of the 500 pieces made.

As a result of the Co-Creation process for the Serie-A Allure, Depancel found there was demand for an industrial automatic Swiss movement. Depancel answered the demand by powering the Serie-A Allure’s time keeping and chronograph function with the ETA 7753. Specifications for the ETA 7753 meet the standard for what you would expect in a reliable daily driver equipped with 27 jewels, 28,800 vph and 48 hours of power reserve.

The Serie-A Allure comes in three different color options of which include Jet Black, Silver Panda and the one I’d lean towards, Ion Blue. The Serie-A Allure has a lot going on between the contrasting dial textures, differentiating hour markers and the touches of red and orange throughout, and the Ion Blue doubles down on the eccentricity of it all. The Serie-A Allure comes with a plethora of strap options ranging from black and brown rally and driving straps, as well as an option for a steel bracelet if that’s more of your speed.

The Serie-A Allure is available for pre-order in June for $1,695 and will fully retail at $1,995. In the landscape of watches, there are no shortage of automotive inspired chronographs, or just automotive inspired watches in general. Just to give an idea of where the Depancel Serie-A Allure fits into all of this, an Autodromo Prototipo uses a Seiko VK63 Meca-Quartz movement and retails at $750, a Nezumi Voiture VM1S can be had for $1,524 and uses a Sellita SW510 manual wound movement or a little further up market, a Sinn EZM 13.1, with subtler racing cues uses a modified Valjoux 7750 movement and retails for $3,270. Those are just a few examples but what differentiates Depancel from the brands above is that they provide a direct platform for the community to be involved in the design process. The Co-Creation idea is great and is most certainly something I’d like to see from more brands, big and small. Depancel