Charles Berret
Charles Berret is a London-born microbrand, designed in Britain around Swiss movements and launched in 2023 as what it calls an attempt to reinvent vintage horology with modern craft and technology. Its debut Darth Collection takes Gérald Genta's first design as its starting point, gives it a science-fiction aesthetic, and refines it with modern engineering; one reviewer called the result an affordable alternative to the Polerouter. The collection began as a limited run of 100 pieces presented as three interpretations: Asteria, Darth, and Arrow.
Darth and Arrow share a polished case whose caved-in sides echo the spaceships of science fiction, an onyx-black porcelain dial, and a Swiss-made automatic movement with a solid tungsten rotor, visible through a display caseback, that delivers 68 hours of power reserve. They differ in their hands, sword-style on the Darth and broad-arrow on the Arrow, and are shown on a steel bracelet, a khaki leather strap, and a rubber strap. Asteria swaps the porcelain for a genuine meteorite dial, each one carrying its own Widmanstätten pattern of nickel-iron crystals, and can be customised with engraving.
The line has since widened beyond the original three. Helios sits alongside Darth and Arrow, with all three currently available at $1,488 to $1,588, while the limited-edition Nebula, listed with a gold-coloured, hand-finished Swiss movement and a black mother-of-pearl dial at $2,960, and the pre-order Aurora at $3,599 have both sold out, as have the original Asteria and an Asteria Special Edition.
The Titan collection takes a different route: a titanium case set with a porcelain dial and highly polished metal markers, with the contrast between the two pitched as its modern look. Models include Aubier, Mars, Prelude, Ebony, Robin with a blue porcelain dial, Kaze in Desert Gold, and Bumblebee editions carrying the Chewie_Co name, priced from $888 to $1,598, with several now sold out. One reviewer described it as more than a dress watch, a highly capable everyday piece.