A few years ago, the biggest plane ever made in France took off. It was in New York that Saint-Exupery would write the notable children’s book. IWC Replica is tipping its proverbial hat to the transatlantic voyage that laid a solid foundation of Saint-Exupery’s success as not only a pilot, but also an author, with the release of the 80Y Timezoner Chronograph Edition.
The flight took 28 hours and 27 minutes, and crossed many time zones along the way. Eventually, the replica watch making great contributions to the Saint-Exupery is built on a Timezoner platform. It makes use of the automatic in-house Caliber 89760, with a 68-hour power reserve. The bezel is fashioned from ceramic in a shade of brown that matches the dial too. In the six o’clock register you’ll see the “A” from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s signature together another nod to his voyage: New York and Paris appear in red on the bezel. The fake watch’s size stands up to the larger-than-life legacy of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, with a 46mm wide and 16.8mm tall steel case.
There is a stylized Latecoère 521 in motion on the case-back. The piece is limited to 80 examples, and like the rest of The Little Prince watches that IWC has produced for many years, a portion of the proceeds of the replica watch will be channeled to the Antoine de Saint Exupery Youth Foundation.
In a communication with Christian Knoop, IWC’s creative director, I asked what the process looks like to take the features of something like a flying boat, specifically the Latecoère 521, and translate it into something as small as a watch. The industry has its old tricks, like using a piece of a plane in the construction of the watch, or lifting the typeface from a cockpit and using it on the dial. But how does a manufacturer avoid trite design decisions and take something so grand and distill it down to a visual language on a watch? Turns out I was thinking about it too literally.
He has a point. This fake watch has an interesting and impressive feature. The wearer can cross time zones by pressing the box and rotating. Every time you click on a city, the hour hand jumps. The date will turn over when the date line is crossed, as well. The bezel is coupled to the movement, and yet the watch still maintains a respectable water resistance of 6 bar. Advanced technology comes in waterproof boxes. Sounds like an airship, doesn’t it?

born together with another iwc big pilot, the replica big pilot watch in my hand originates from the same pilot watch aesthetic as the mark XVii, but it goes in a drastically different direction pretty quickly. it attracted my attention with the first look on the watch face- the perpetual calendar readouts make up three of the four sub dials, as well as an additional year register between 7 and 8 o’clock. the remaining sub dial houses a rather elaborate moon phase complication. of course, those other sub dials aren’t just simple readouts either – they’re hiding some other information.
with the sub dial at 9 o’clock, you have it indicating both the day of the week, and the small seconds. over at the 3 o’clock register, you have the day of the month indicated, as well as where you are in the 7-day power reserve that the calibre automatic movement affords. by comparison, the month indication down at 6 o’clock looks almost plain!
having so many complex various readouts, iwc asserts that these can all be easily adjusted via the large crown – and the perpetual calendar itself should require no intervention by a watchmaker until 2100, when the typical 4-year cycle of leap years is broken. 
this model also contains references to the book. for the first one, take a closer look at that moon-phase complication – you’ll notice a small figure standing on the moon. flip the watch over, and you’ll see a medallion featuring the little prince mounted on the automatic rotor. You may also want to keep your eyes on the lookout for the other niceties in this movement, such as the Glucydur balance and breguet spring.
Given the number of complications in the movement, and the fact that the watch is called the big pilot, it should be no surprise that the red gold case comes in at 46mm, and is 16mm thick. it does carry forth the same midnight blue dial color that we saw in the mark XVii, but here the numerals, indices, and hands are gold plated, which gives an outlined shadow effect once the lume has been applied.
both replica watches attractive in their own right, the big pilot has the most ingenious references included in it, these pieces appeal to those who have a fond remembrance of the book from their youth, and have a love of adventure, and what the books represent.

IWC is updating its Da Vinci family in 2017, including a return to the real round case which popularized this line back in the 1980s. The Da Vinci Tourbillon Retrograde Chronograph Watch is the flagship model for the redesigned collection, which combines a flying tourbillon with hacking mechanism, a chronograph and a retrograde date.
The designers in the factory set the tourbillon cage on the initial fourth wheel whilst the small seconds sub-dial was stepped into a central seconds. The flying tourbillon makes a complete rotation every minute, thus meaning the tourbillon bridge can function well as a seconds hand too. To unite these three complications for the very first time, the replica IWC redesigned the model. 
You could notice that a fully fledged tourbillon was integrated to replace the small seconds counter at the 6 o’clock position. The hour and minute chronograph indications stay on the top of the dial at the 12 o’clock position. The chronograph with a flyback function can record elapsed-time intervals up to 11 hours and 59 minutes. In addition, the central chronograph seconds hand can measure stopped times with high precision up to 1/4-second. The chronograph can be set via two golden push-pieces set on either side of the crown. There is a retrograde date indication as well which describes a gentle arc on the left-hand side of the dial. The date hand jumps back to 1 after the 31st of the month automatically.
The pallet and escape wheel are manufactured from diamond-coated silicon which offers a decent 68 hours of power reserve when fully charged. This quite hard material has a good sliding property which could help reduce friction. It operates at the rapid frequency of 28,800 alternations per hour (4 Hz).
The fake IWC Da Vinci Tourbillon Retrograde Chronograph with this model is styled and sized to make a great impression on potential customers. The 18-carat red gold case measures 44mm in diameter and 17mm in thickness. The gorgeous case is shielded with sapphire crystals and constructed to offer water proof up to 30 meters (100 feet).
There is an arched sapphire glass from the front side, together with antireflective coating on both sides, while form the rear there is see-through sapphire-glass back which offers a look at the impeccable IWC-manufactured caliber with its solid red gold rotor.
The new Da Vinci Tourbillon Retrograde Chronograph replica watch comes with the movable horns which ensure that the Santoni alligator leather band fits perfectly on the wrist. The dark brown leather strap is secured with a red gold folding clasp.