hen Aera’s co-founders, watch industry veterans Jas Minhas and Olof Larsson, launched their brand in 2022, they decided that they would focus their efforts on creating a range of Swiss-made mechanical watches that are both enduringly useful and contemporary in appearance.

A chronograph is the latest illustration of that philosophy. It brings both a new complication to Aera’s family of watches and a further milestone in the brand’s mission to create a design language of its own. It’s no accident that there’s a strong family resemblance between all Aera watches: all share a compelling sense of design, featuring curved lugs and ergonomic, integrated, interchangeable straps and an elliptical case shape.

The chronograph seconds hand and sub dial hands are in a sky blue lacquer. The grey framed hour and minute sword hands are hand-filled with white Grade X1 Swiss Super-LumiNova. The chronograph seconds hand and pointers have crisp white Grade X1 Swiss Super-LumiNova tips, which glow green for night time clarity. The Aera logo, which is cut from solid white GlobolightTM, glows white in contrast to the strong green of the hands.

From the sweeping curve of the sapphire crystal and the purity of the one-piece dished dial to the reductive language of the dial displays, every Aera watch is about the effort to refine and simplify. Like its predecessors, the C-1 comes in 904L steel, a grade of stainless steel superior to the 316L surgical steel used by the vast majority of the watch industry. The circular counterbalance of the chronograph seconds hand is engineered to pass perfectly over its C-1 code and both the A’s of the Aera logo as it sweeps.

The beating mechanical heart of the C-1 is a Swiss-made Sellita SW510 Bi-compax Elabore grade automatic movement with a 56-hour power reserve. The C-1 Cloud comes with two integrated straps, in white FKM scuba rubber and in light grey Italian leather, with 904L buckles, both interchangeable thanks to a simple two-pin quick-release mechanism, and a handcrafted black pebble grain Italian leather watch pouch.

As in life, with Aera, it’s all about the details.

Price: USD 2,550

www.aera.co