Description
De Bethune has extended its smaller DB25xs line with the Sand Winds, a 40 mm grade-5 titanium watch whose entire character lives in its dial. The maison takes a titanium plate, works it with its exclusive random guilloché, then applies a natural oxidative heat treatment to coax out a shimmering golden-yellow surface — a metallurgical landscape meant to evoke wind rippling across desert sand.
Priced at CHF 70,000 before tax (around USD 85,000), the Sand Winds is a characteristically De Bethune object: a piece of serious independent watchmaking where the headline feature is not a complication but a finishing technique no one else can quite replicate. It is aimed at the collector who already understands De Bethune's heat-treated titanium and wants a warmer, sunlit counterpoint to the brand's famous blued skies.
Design
The case is the slim, round DB25xs: 40 mm across and just 8.8 mm thick, hand-polished grade-5 titanium with the brand's signature hollowed, tapered lugs that float the watch on the wrist. Sapphire crystals with anti-glare coating sit front and back. The dial is the event — random guilloché caught under oxidative heat treatment produces a hypnotic golden shimmer that shifts with the light, reading like sunlight skating across a dune field. A brown alligator strap and matching polished titanium pin buckle keep the presentation warm and restrained.
Specifications
- Case diameter: 40 mm
- Case thickness: 8.8 mm
- Case material: grade 5 titanium, hand-polished; hollowed tapered lugs
- Crystal: sapphire with anti-glare coating, both sides
- Dial: titanium with random guilloché and natural oxidative heat treatment (golden-yellow "sand" shimmer)
- Movement: Calibre DB2005, manual-winding
- Balance: titanium balance wheel with white-gold inserts; flat-terminal-curve balance spring; silicon escape wheel; triple pare-chute shock absorption
- Frequency: 28,800 vph (4 Hz)
- Power reserve: 6 days (self-regulating twin barrel)
- Strap: brown alligator leather with polished titanium pin buckle
- Price: CHF 70,000 (excl. tax) / approx. USD 85,000
What's Exciting
De Bethune's heat-blued titanium dials are among the most recognisable surfaces in modern watchmaking — but turning the same oxidative process toward a warm golden "sand" tone is a genuinely new visual register for the brand. It proves the technique is a palette rather than a single trick. Doing it on the more wearable 8.8 mm DB25xs case matters too: this is one of independent watchmaking's most technically serious dials in a form you could actually wear daily, atop a calibre with a silicon escape wheel, triple pare-chute protection and a constant six-day reserve. That is a lot of frontier engineering for a watch that, by De Bethune standards, is quietly understated.
History
De Bethune was founded in 2002 by David Zanetta and watchmaker Denis Flageollet, and quickly became one of the most technically inventive independents in Switzerland — pioneering work in titanium balance wheels, silicon, the triple pare-chute shock system and its floating-lug case architecture. The DB25 has long been the maison's round, classically proportioned dress platform; the smaller-format DB25xs brought those ideas into a more wearable case. The Sand Winds joins a family of artisanal-dial DB25xs pieces — alongside the Starry Varius and other heat-treated-titanium editions — extending De Bethune's signature metallurgy into warmer, desert-toned territory.
