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Many watches have been named for athletes, explorers, and artists, mostly to boost an air of sportiness, robustness, or sophistication. Still, it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate arena for a wristwatch than the field science as a whole; British brand Bremont agrees, and to celebrate one of the most famous and culturally pervasive scientists of the past two centuries, they have created the Supernova Hawking Limited Edition, named for preeminent thinker, Professor Stephen Hawking.
Known more for their mil-spec pieces, Bremont may seem like a strange choice for such a namesake watch, but given their status as a British brand of repute, it makes sense that they’d want to showcase a fellow English pioneer. The base of the Hawking is the Supernova, first launched in April of this year, and boasting a 41mm ultra black DLC-treated steel case with multilayered construction. The geometric aesthetic of the case, pushers, and crown, reflect Hawking’s work in the space engineering field—most notably his groundbreaking research into black holes. Black watches have had a bit of a renaissance as of late, and wear well with almost any other color, so the choice here makes sense from a source-of-inspiration standpoint, as well as an aesthetic one.
A black decahedral ceramic bezel surrounds the dial, which in turn features an interlocking, galvanic black grid motif with triangular pathways, inspired by the design of solar arrays. Two meteorite subdials adorn the dial, at 3 and 9 o’clock respectively, and give some balance and added layering. Triangular applied indexes give the face an aggressive look, dialing up the aggression of the design. Matching that angular look are the rhomboidal black gold hands, and both the indexes and said hands are filled with white Super-LumiNova.
On the back of the watch, the exhibition caseback is complicated delightfully with a swirling black hole that appears to float above the chronometer-rated BC77 movement. Promising a 62-hour power reserve and 100 meters of water resistance while powering the small seconds, 30-minute chronograph, and day-date functions, it’s a large part of what makes the Supernova Hawking a desirable timepiece. Final details include a domed anti-reflective and scratch-resistant sapphire crystal to protect the dial, a tachymeter on a black galvanic outer ring, the “Hawking” nameplate and black hole entropy equation above the day-date window at 6 o’clock, and the Bremont logo on the crown. What results is a watch that feels busy in design, and would have been too chaotic were it not for the smartly-conceived black-and-white color scheme, making all details and markers legible, and adding an air of deep space mystique. An available quick release integrated bracelet or rubber strap keep the colorway consistent and thankfully don’t draw attention to the more intriguing dial and caseback motifs.
While the Supernova Hawking doesn’t necessarily feel overly-attached to the namesake scientist, it does an effective job at visually representing a large bulk of his work and legacy by evoking black holes and the deep dark of outer space. What results is a watch that feels just as bound to mil-spec design ethos as the bulk of Bremont’s lineup, but with an added scientific flair that makes it more appealing to the more cerebral among us. Its subtle-yet-beefy looks should do well with the brand’s core audience, and even though it is limited to 600 pieces, it feels like a worthy addition to the burgeoning Supernova line.
The retail price of the Bremont Supernova Hawking is $8,850 on rubber and $9,150 on a bracelet. Bremont
