IWC launches its Pilot's Watch dedicated to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The watch is 18ct rose gold, has a tobacco-coloured dial and calf skin strap with quilted stitching, while the back has an engraving depicting the last aircraft Saint-Exupéry every flew – a Lightning P-38, which Saint-Exupéry took on a reconnaissance mission over occupied France on July 31 1944. He never returned and in 2003 the wreckage from his Lightning was salvaged from the Mediterranean Sea near Marseille.

In 2006, fragments of the aircraft, together with other exhibits were displayed for the first time as part of a project organised jointly by IWC Schaffhausen and the Succession Antoine de Saint-Exupéry-d’Agay at the Musée de l’Air at de L’Espace in Le Bourget, near Paris.

“With our long tradition of manufacturing Pilot’s Watches, we feel that there are strong bonds that bind us to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,” said Georges Kern, CEO of IWC. “We were inspired by a man who was also a passionate designer and who obtained his first aeronautical patent in 1936, the very year that IWC, with the same obsession for engineering, built its first Pilot’s Watch.”

The watch will be limited to 500 pieces

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