A Small Brand Takes a Big Swing: the Retter Mistral

Retter is a microbrand founded by New York native Deep Ghosh, and they’ve just released their second watch, the Mistral. The first Retter watch, the 22, was a sub $1,000 integrated bracelet sports watch. The Mistral represents a bigger swing, and could be a sign of the brand growing into itself a little, something you’d hope any brand on their second collection would be doing. 

The Mistral is described by Retter as a “dress-casual” watch, which I think in most scenarios is actually just a “watch.” It’s unfortunate, in my opinion, that we need to put labels like this onto new designs, but that’s just where we are at the moment I guess. The Mistral has a genuinely distinct visual identity that doesn’t really fit into a particular category. It’s ironic that the brand would use a somewhat toothless descriptor like “dress-casual” to describe something that in practice isn’t nearly as generic as the term would imply. 

What we have here is a 38mm watch with horn lugs and a thin profile of just 7.4mm (crystal included). Retter is able to accomplish this thanks to a case construction they call “shell-style.” You have a to dig a bit through their press materials to get a handle on what this actually means (it’s not explained in detail on their website), but it’s essentially a clever method of building the case in such a way that it suggests old-fashioned soldered lugs without actually doing the work of soldering them. The lugs are part of an integrated mid-plate that is then covered by a thin “shell” designed to fit perfectly over the mid-plate, eliminating the appearance of seams for a clean look. Retter claims that this design was developed after attempts to solder lugs yielded aesthetic and functional imperfections they weren’t happy with. Soldering lugs to the case individually is of course a labor intensive process requiring a great deal of skill, and it’s also quite expensive to make a watch this way at scale, so all credit to Retter here for developing a suitable cheat code to get this look. 

Three dial variants are available at launch, all designed to give the appearance of as much depth as possible to what is effectively an ultra-thin watch. There are three distinct layers to each dial and a variety of textures. The dominant visual trait is certainly the long vertical grooves in the dial’s innermost sector. The silver and gold variants have a thin layer of these metals fused to the surface of the grooves (the green dial has a PVD finish). 

The Mistral is powered by the ETA 7001 (rebadged as the Calibre 2105 by Retter), a tried and true manually wound caliber prized for its thinness, small size, and simple construction. Retter has given the industrially finished movement a significant makeover, including reworked bridges, bead-blasted finishing, and heat blued screws. It gives the caliber a contemporary aesthetic that matches the look of the watch itself. It’s regulated by Retter to within 10 seconds per day. 

The Mistral strikes me as a particularly ambitious watch coming on the heels of the 22, which frankly did not suggest a brand with the inclination to attempt something like this. There are a lot of clever touches here (the case construction and modified ETA movement, primarily) that suggest something considerably more expensive or complex, and that will surely excite a lot of collectors interested in design forward watches that give you a small whiff of haute horlogerie. 

The retail price of the Mistral is $1,595, and 300 examples will be made across the three dial variants. The watch is available for pre-order now with delivery expected in November. Retter