The tobacco brown dial, gold-plated hands, and brown calfskin strap match handsomely to the case and are meant to recall the pilot suits from the days when Antoine de Saint-Exupéry took to the skies and wrote about his aerial adventures in classics such as The Little Prince and Night Flight. A stylized “A” underneath the Annual Calendar indicator offers a nice nod to the French pilot and author’s initial.
The seven-day power reserve comes courtesy of the IWC in-house Caliber 52850 that includes a Pellaton winding system with parts made from long-lasting ceramic. But the real selling point for horological enthusiasts and fans of Le Petit Prince? A rotor constructed from 18k rose gold and crafted into the shape of a Lightning P-38, the same airplane model that Saint Exupéry took off in on that fateful Mediterranean summer night in 1944 — and never returned from.
