De Bethune Hits the Shrink Ray: Starry Varius & Kind of Blue Go XS
In watchmaking, “less” usually means “we took something out and charged you more.” But in De Bethune’s world, less means tighter, sharper, and arguably cooler. At Geneva Watch Days 2025, the indie brand known for shaping 21st-century horology decided to put a couple of its icons under the shrink ray. The result? Three compact heavy-hitters: two molten-hot takes on the DB25 Starry Varius, and one deep-space DB28 Kind of Blue Tourbillon.
They’re smaller, yes. But don’t mistake them for “diet” De Bethunes. These are full-fat, double-cream, fire-and-ice expressions of the brand’s core design DNA — just packaged for wrists that don’t want to feel like they’ve strapped a flying saucer to their arm.
The Fire: DB25xs Starry Varius
The Starry Varius has always been De Bethune’s canvas for cosmic romance. You get titanium dials polished to mirror perfection, hand-set white gold pins for stars, and an optional Milky Way traced in 24-carat gold leaf. For the new DB25xs Starry Varius, De Bethune turned the night sky volcanic. Literally.
Instead of its signature icy blue, the dial burns with a reddish glow, the result of a unique thermal oxidation process on titanium that turns the metal into molten shades. It’s as if the heavens above got a little too close to the core of the earth. Each micro-perforation, each golden pin, is placed by hand. And yes, as with every Starry Varius, you can still ask the brand to map the sky for your exact date and location — a poetic way to commemorate anything from your wedding night to the moment you bought your first G-Shock.
The case is the real story here. When the Starry Varius launched, it wore a 44 mm suit. Then, in 2018, De Bethune trimmed it down to 42 mm. Now it’s been fully tailored to 40 mm — a sweet spot that balances elegance, comfort, and that all-important “doesn’t look ridiculous on a normal wrist” factor. The lugs are slender, openworked, and curved for comfort. Rose gold hands glide across a silver chapter ring, keeping it grounded even as the dial screams celestial poetry.
Inside beats the DB2005 calibre, a hand-wound engine with all of De Bethune’s modern tricks: a silicon escape wheel, flat-terminal-curve balance spring, titanium/white gold balance wheel, and a five-day power reserve. In other words, it’s the kind of technical resume that says “art watch on the front, serious mechanics out back.”
Two versions are available: one in ultra-light titanium, the other in warmer rose gold. Collectors will inevitably debate which is “truer” to the volcanic theme, but either way you’re strapping on a star map that glows with tectonic energy.
The Ice: DB28xs Kind of Blue Tourbillon
If the Starry Varius is about passion and poetry, the DB28xs Kind of Blue Tourbillon is the cool, calculated counterweight. This is De Bethune in its favourite hue: deep, shimmering, thermal-oxidised blue. The DB28 has been the flagship for that identity ever since the brand released a fully blued version in 2018. Now, it’s back in 39 mm, making one of the most futuristic tourbillon wristwatches a whole lot more wearable.
Everything is drenched in shades of natural blue: bridges, case, dial details. The artisans in L’Auberson have mastered thermal oxidation to the point where steel and titanium become a painter’s palette. Depending on the angle of the light, the watch shifts through a spectrum of indigos, azures, and midnight blues. It’s like wearing an Yves Klein painting that also happens to tell time.
Of course, the technical showpiece here is the De Bethune tourbillon. Forget the slow, stately whirlpools you see on traditional Swiss dials. This one spins like it’s had three espressos: a rotation every 30 seconds, running at 36,000 vibrations per hour. Made of titanium, it weighs just 0.18 grams — with the lightest component tipping the scale at 0.0001 grams. It’s the kind of engineering flex that makes even hardened watch nerds whistle.
Power reserve? Five days. Comfort? Absolutely — thanks to the brand’s patented floating lugs, which adapt to your wrist like a mechanical hug. The case, entirely polished blued titanium, is feather-light despite packing enough tech to make Abraham-Louis Breguet blush.
Shrinking the Icons
Put these three watches together and you see the bigger picture: De Bethune isn’t just making smaller versions for the sake of it. They’re rebalancing their icons for a generation of collectors who crave high watchmaking without the UFO-sized wrist presence.
The DB25xs Starry Varius is for the romantics, the poets, the collectors who want a star map on their wrist that still slips under a cuff. The DB28xs Kind of Blue Tourbillon is for the techno-futurists, the ones who want to explain over dinner that their tourbillon rotates twice as fast as the neighbour’s Patek. Together, they represent fire and ice — De Bethune’s twin forces of expression.
And while the brand has always been about “shaping 21st-century watchmaking,” this XS generation feels particularly relevant. Wristwear is trending smaller, comfort is king, and collectors no longer see case diameter as a proxy for importance. With these compact icons, De Bethune proves that shrinking doesn’t mean compromising — if anything, it means distilling their ideas into purer form.
Three watches, two diameters, one unmistakable identity. De Bethune has once again shown why it occupies that rare space in independent watchmaking: wildly creative, technically uncompromising, and just a little bit otherworldly.
If you’ve ever dreamed of wearing the cosmos, a volcanic eruption, or a supersonic tourbillon on your wrist — but didn’t want to walk around with a 44 mm satellite dish strapped on — the XS collection is the sign you’ve been waiting for.
