Airain
Montres Airain was founded in 1934 by the Dodane family, and by the 1950s and 60s had become one of the select manufacturers — alongside Breguet and Dodane — chosen to build the Type 20, a pilot's chronograph specification issued directly by the French Ministry of Defense. The house's historic catalogue also includes the Sous-Marine dive watch and the Airain '77, both still sought after by collectors today.
The brand is now owned by CDMLEC, sister company to Lebois & Co, also featured in this catalogue. Having already relaunched Lebois & Co in 2014, CDMLEC's founders later acquired Airain from an independent French entrepreneur and reunited the two houses as they had been in 1934. Airain itself relaunched in 2020, beginning with the reintroduction of its historic Type 20 flyback chronograph. The military connection is not purely historical, either: Airain currently partners with EHRA 3, the third Reconnaissance and Attack Helicopter Squadron of French Army Aviation (ALAT), founded in 1968. For the unit's 55th anniversary in 2023, Airain issued 25 customised watches carrying the squadron's own fonts and colours, each individually engraved on the back with its recipient pilot's flight licence number.
The current flagship, the Type 20 70 ANS, marks the model's 70th anniversary with a Horizon Blue grained dial and a transparent caseback revealing the Swiss-made Calibre AM2 from Manufacture AMT — a manual-wound, column-wheel flyback chronograph with 63 hours of reserve across 23 jewels. Housed in a 39mm brushed-and-polished steel case with a double-domed sapphire crystal and worn on a beige leather strap lined in Horizon Blue, its first batch sold out at 3,850 euros; a further production run is now underway for delivery from June 2026.
The Sous-Marine collection re-editions the brand's original 1962 dive watch, rebuilt around its historic 'Parmentier Crown' — a protective-cap-and-seal system invented that same year by Jean-René Parmentier and officially patented as 'Capuchon et Joint sur Remontoir.' Its custom roulette-style date disc, with alternating red and black numerals, was designed by Matthieu Allègre, and its seconds hand comes in two styles, Lollipop or DNA Strand, chosen through a community 'CoLAB' design project; the Re-Edition is priced at 2,050 euros, alongside four further CoLAB-designed limited colourways rated to 200 metres, each shipped with a reproduction of an original 1960s Airain retailer poster found in the brand's own archives.