Description
Cigars are one of watchmaking's rarest muses, and Bell & Ross is just about the only brand that keeps coming back to them. Over the past two decades the French maker has built three cigar-themed special editions, and the fourth — the BR-05 Chrono S.T. Dupont — is the most committed yet. For this chapter Bell & Ross has teamed up with S.T. Dupont, the Parisian house famous for its luxury lighters and accessories, to turn its integrated steel sports-chronograph into a complete cigar-lounge object.
The recipe is warm metal and warmer tones: a bicolour case in satin-finished steel and 18K rose gold, a brown sunray dial, and a presentation box that doubles as a humidor. Limited to 150 pieces at EUR 19,200 on bracelet (EUR 14,900 on strap), it is unapologetically a luxury lifestyle statement rather than a value play — but the theme is executed with unusual coherence.
Design
The BR-05 case keeps its signature shape — a square with rounded edges and an integrated bracelet — measuring 42 mm across and 14.25 mm thick, combining polished and satin-finished steel with 18K rose gold. A screw-down crown with crown guards, a sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating and a sapphire caseback bring 100 m of water resistance. The brown sunray dial is the centrepiece: rose-gold-coloured applied numerals and indexes, skeletonised rose-gold hands filled with beige Super-LumiNova (a green glow at night), the S.T. Dupont logo at 6 o'clock, a date window between 4 and 5, and chronograph registers at 3 (30-minute) and 9 (running seconds).
Buyers choose a two-tone steel-and-rose-gold bracelet or a brown calfskin strap with a black patina and faux-alligator grain. The showpiece, though, is the box: a lacquered Macassar ebony case lined to hold up to 50 cigars, fitted with a matching S.T. Dupont Ligne 2 lighter and a cigar cutter, all finished in the same steel-and-gold, gradient-brown palette as the watch.
Specifications
- Reference: BR05C-STD-STPG/SSG (bracelet) / BR05C-STD-STPG/SCA (strap)
- Case diameter: 42 mm
- Case thickness: 14.25 mm
- Case material: satin-finished and polished steel with 18K rose gold
- Crown: screw-down with crown guards
- Crystal: sapphire with anti-reflective coating
- Caseback: sapphire (display)
- Water resistance: 100 m
- Dial: brown sunray; rose-gold-coloured applied numerals and indexes; S.T. Dupont logo at 6; date between 4 and 5
- Movement: Bell & Ross BR-CAL.326, automatic chronograph (based on Sellita SW510 / Valjoux 7750 architecture)
- Complications: chronograph (30-minute counter at 3, small seconds at 9), date
- Frequency: 28,800 vph (4 Hz)
- Winding: automatic
- Power reserve: 60 hours
- Strap/bracelet: two-tone steel-and-rose-gold bracelet or brown calfskin strap (black patina, faux-alligator); steel folding buckle
- Set: Macassar ebony humidor box (up to 50 cigars) with S.T. Dupont Ligne 2 lighter and cigar cutter
- Limited edition: 150 pieces
- Price: EUR 19,200 (bracelet) / EUR 14,900 (strap); US $19,800 / $15,200
- Availability: limited edition, 2026
What's Exciting
The honest tension here is the BR-CAL.326 — a Sellita SW510 at heart — sitting behind a near-EUR-20,000 price, and the comment sections are already pointed about it. But that misses what this object is. You are not buying a movement; you are buying a complete, well-thought-out cigar ritual: watch, lighter, cutter and a humidor that holds 50 sticks, all tied together by one steel-and-gold, gradient-brown design language. As thematic storytelling it is far more disciplined than most lifestyle collaborations, and the brown sunray dial with rose-gold furniture is, on its own, one of the most elegant BR-05 executions to date.
It also lands at the right moment — debuting in the first days of June around London Watch Week — and at just 150 pieces it is rare enough to feel special. If you want value-for-money in-house engineering, look elsewhere; if you want a complete, collectible cigar-lounge set with a properly handsome watch at its centre, this is the most fully realised one Bell & Ross has made.
History
Bell & Ross was founded in 1992 by Bruno Belamich and Carlos Rosillo, building its identity on legible, instrument-style tool watches — the square BR 01/03 cockpit-instrument line above all. The BR-05, launched in 2019, was the brand's pivot toward the integrated-bracelet luxury-sports genre, pairing that squared-off DNA with a more refined everyday-luxury package.
The cigar theme is a quieter through-line: across roughly twenty years Bell & Ross has returned to it three times before, each edition riffing on the rituals and objects of cigar culture. The BR-05 Chrono S.T. Dupont is the fourth, and the first to formally partner with S.T. Dupont — a French maison founded in 1872 and best known for its high-end lighters — making this as much a meeting of two luxury houses as a watch release.
