You want the best. And heck, you deserve the best. But there's a lot of choice out there, and sometimes the best is hard to find. Fortunately, we know where to find it. Every week, the Esquire editors reveal their favourite brands, from under-the-radar steals to luxury loves, so you can invest in the best clothes, watches and accessories that money can buy.
This week, the original fly-boy accessory: the pilot's watch.
Breitling
Charlie Teasdale, Style Director
"Despite the recent broadening of its product line – which is now separated into Land, Sea and Air and features esoteric collaborations with Bentley cars, Norton motorcycles and Kelly Slater’s sustainable surf wear brand, Outerknown – Breitling is still best-known as a maker of pilot’s watches and continues to keep aeronautical technology at the forefront of the brand.
"Take the new Red Arrows limited-edition of the Avenger Automatic GMT. A tribute to the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, the watch is designed to be easily operated if you’re wearing gloves. And there’s the Avi Ref. 765 1953 Re-Edition, a faithful recreation of one of midcentury aviation’s most rugged timepieces.
"And once again, despite Breitling’s recent design wins – such as the Premier collection and the refreshing of the Chonomat range – the Navitimer is still the marque’s calling card. First released in 1952, the oversized (46mm), perfectly proportioned dial and navigational capability of the watch made it an instant classic, and the Navitimer has grown to become one of the pillars of watchmaking. The read out, featuring the adjustable slide-rule just inside the bezel, allows the wearer to calculate air speed, fuel consumption, climb rate, elapsed time and much, more. Not just a handsome timepiece, but an example of super functional, engineering excellence."
Breitling Navitimer Automatic 41
Breitling Avenger Automatic 45 GMT Red Arrows Limited Edition
Hamilton
Finlay Renwick, Deputy Style Editor
"The original name in red, white and blue watchmaking, Hamilton might have moved to Switzerland in the Eighties, but that's only burnished its watchmaking might. Inventors of the first digital watch in the Pulsar, as well as making a name in Hollywood, where Hamiltons have appeared on Elvis's wrist in Blue Hawaii, in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (plus loads of others).
"Rounding off that global influence is Hamilton’s pilot watch offering. There’s the Khaki Aviation Pilot Day Date Auto, a giant 46mm stainless steel piece, and the Air Zermatt, which is slightly more elegant, with a black leather strap, black face and striking blue accents, or the Aviation Chrono, a chunky bit of kit with heavy pushers and a dial that reads like a pilot’s console.
"My personal favourite, though, is the Pilot Pioneer Mechanical, a sky-bound take on Hamilton’s inimitable Khaki Field mechanical fabric strap military watch. It’s inspired by old RAF watches from the Seventies. The kind of watch you’d want to pass down, even if your most daring aerial feat is surviving a long-haul flight next to someone who takes their shoes off as soon as the plane leaves the tarmac."
Hamilton Khaki Aviation Pilot Schott NYC Limited Edition
Oris
Johnny Davis, Deputy Editor
"Oris makes great watches that offer real value for money. They range in style from retro-influenced pilot’s watches to high-performance diving watches, typically for a couple of thousand pounds. It has been pushing what-it-calls ‘casual luxury’ for the last few years. 'Exclusive luxury doesn’t work any more,' co-CEO Rolf Studer told Esquire’s standalone watch publication The Big Watch Book in 2019. 'Exclusive is a word that sounds so good but it excludes people. Luxury is now more inclusive, where you want to be part of something and share it. That’s where we come into the game.'
"Its pilot watches are a good place to start. Oris has been making them since the 1910s – the birth of aviation, basically. Oris Big Crown is its signature pilot’s collection, launched in 1938 and part of the brand’s DNA ever since. Cool, clean and classic, with clear dials and bold hands that recall an aeroplane dashboard, they’re lovely looking watches, and always executed with style."
Oris Aviation 40mm
Bell & Ross
Nick Pope, Deputy Digital
"French brand Bell & Ross began life as a university project between two friends, Bruno Belamich and Carlos A Rosillo, back in 1992. The fact that they managed to get their business off the ground during uni is impressive enough (my main project? Seeing how long I could subsist on a single bag of Uncle Ben’s pilau rice) but it’s the duo’s continued devotion to old-school aviation design that wins my respect.
"Case in point: the BR 01. Released in 2005, the modern classic was inspired by antique dashboard clocks from military aeroplanes. The watch’s utilitarian structure falls squarely within Belamich and Rosillo’s strict maxim: that "function shapes form”. It’s been reimagined many times since then, but it’s never strayed from that ethos."
IWC Schaffhausen
Tom Banham, Digital Editor
"The International Watch Company entered the aviation fray in the Thirties, providing accurate and robust timekeepers for the cockpits of a new breed of all-metal, high-speed flying machines. By the Forties, it had became a watchmaker for the MoD, crafting the iconic Mark 11, which was worn by RAF navigators to calculate latitude and longitude.
"IWC has since become synonymous with pilot watches, thanks to a string of technical and aesthetic innovations, like shatterproof crystal, antimagnetic movements and luminous hands. Today, it boasts a number of pilot watch collections, including the sporty Top Gun, vintage-styled Spitfire and more refined Classic, all of which have been proven in cockpits around the world.
"For me, the IWC Big Pilot is still the quintessential aviation watch, with its bulbous crown (the better for manipulating in flying gauntlets) and a dial that somehow manages to deliver all kinds of pilot-friendly information without ever feeling crowded. However, 46mm is a lot of dial for a man with wrists as skinny as mine, so I opt for its little brother, which comes in at a much subtler 40mm. It's more Goose than Maverick, and I'm fine with that."
IWC Schaffhausen Pilot Collection 39mm
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