A few years back, you could ask any watch enthusiast who Breitling makes watches for, and the answer would have been “men”. It launched rugged pilot’s watches, deep-sea diving ones. It even has one that could get you rescued from the top of a mountain – a watch so blokey it appeared on the man-fest that was Top Gear. However, in recent years, there’s been a shift. There are Navitimers in smaller sizes, Superoceans in baby blue, and the brand even collaborated with Victoria Beckham. Now, Breitling has entered fashion airspace once again with its tiniest Chronomat ever – just 28mm and with beautiful mother-of-pearl dials.

We’ve consistently seen watch dials shrinking over recent years, moving away from the 45mm wrist weights that were the timepieces du jour of the Noughties. This may have something to do with the vintage reissue trend. Brands couldn’t go full retro with a 34mm case – it would have been too much of a sartorial shock. So 38mm became the norm. Then brands surreptitiously slid a 34mm into the collection when everyone had fully adjusted. It is also rather fashionable now, across the gender divide, to wear a small watch, stacked like a bracelet with other bits of arm candy. Granted Breitling still has some substantial pieces in its back catalogue, but its past few collections all dabbled with the diminutive, which brings us to the new Chronomat.

The Chronomat first arrived in 1942 and was intended for pilots. It was quickly usurped by the Navitimer, thanks to the inclusion of a slide rule, and languished in obscurity until 2020 when it was relaunched as a line that covered everything from dainty 32mm three-handers to muscular 44mm chronographs. A 28mm has now been added to its fleet. It definitely has a glamorous ’80s vibe to it. You could imagine one on the wrist of Kelly McGillis’s character Charlie, an astrophysicist and flight instructor who wipes the grin off Tom Cruise’s face in 1986’s Top Gun. Despite its size, this isn’t a “pretty” watch, thanks to the iciness of a stainless-steel case and Rouleaux bracelet. This contrasts wonderfully with the softness of the mother-of-pearl dials, which come in pink, blue, black or white, the latter of which with the option of an 18k red-gold bicolour bracelet and bezel. Both the black and the white come with a bezel set with lab-grown diamonds.

As per its Origins initiative, which launched in 2022 and outlined Breitling’s continued commitment to reassess where it obtains its raw materials, these will be the only type of diamonds it uses from this year onwards across the bedazzled board. It also only sources gold from artisanal mines approved by the Swiss Better Gold Association and has partnered with transparency expert Sourcemap to verify every part of its supply chain from beginning to end, considering each party’s social and environmental performance.

The Chronomat 28 is powered by Breitling’s SuperQuartz Calibre 72 chronometer, which is COSC certified and 10 times more accurate than regular quartz movements.

‘The Chronomat is a Breitling classic, a watch that signals a spirit of adventure and a certain confidence,’ says Breitling CEO Georges Kern. ‘It’s versatile and all-purpose yet elegant, a true timepiece that looks great, wears well, and says “style” all at once.’

Taking a classic pilot watch and, in essence, shrinking it and pinking it is usually a sign of a brand without ideas. However, here it feels as if the essence of the Chronomat hasn’t changed; it’s just lost a few pounds and bought a rather fetching new wardrobe. You could even go so far as to say, given today’s watch-wearing fluidity, it shouldn’t even carry the moniker “women’s watch”. Looks as though this previously most masculine of brands isn’t just for men after all.

Blue or pink mother-of-pearl dial without diamond-set bezel, £3,800; black mother-of-pearl with diamond-set bezel, £5,750; white mother-of-pearl dial, diamond-set bezel and 18k red-gold bicolour bracelet, £8,400; breitling.com