Miles Davis Wore This Breitling Watch in the ’60s. Now It’s Back (and Sure to Sell Out).

2 min readMiles Davis had an knack for more than music. Alongside the sharp tailoring and ludicrous cars, the jazz musician was regularly seen sporting a Breitling Navitimer ref. 806 Mk5—an unusual choice in an era when pilot's watches were typically worn by people whose day jobs involved, you know, flying airplanes.Breitling.Now, to mark the centenary of Davis’s birth, Breitling has created a watch based on his own. The appropriately named Navitimer B09 Chronograph 41 “Tribute to Miles Davis” ($8,900) is limited to 500 pieces and borrows faithfully from that mid-1960s reference he wore.The Navitimer itself dates to 1952, when Breitling developed it for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Early models were genuine cockpit instruments, their distinctive circular slide-rule bezels allowing pilots to make calculations in flight. The “civilian” versions that followed carried Breitling’s "Twin Jet" emblem—and Davis’s ref. 806 Mk5 was the first to combine that logo with the handsome reverse-panda dial seen here.Davis was one of several figures who helped popularize the Navitimer beyond aviation. Racing drivers Jim Clark and Graham Hill wore them in the 1960s; Serge Gainsbourg followed later. But Davis’s combination of tailoring, music, and no-fucks-given attitude gave the watch a particularly strong cultural currency. Bob Dylan famously described Davis as his “definition of cool.”Breitling.The new stainless-steel case measures 41mm across, the same diameter as Davis’s original, while the black reverse-panda dial gets cream-colored Super-LumiNova and that period-correct "Twin Jet" logo. Inside is the hand-wound manufacture calibre B09, a COSC-certified column-wheel chronograph that packs approximately 70 hours of power reserve.As befits a jazz legend, there's more than one way to wear it: on a gradient brown calf-leather strap or on Breitling’s very cool revived Air Racer bracelet, a vented steel design first introduced in the 1960s and later associated with Gainsbourg. The transparent caseback carries “One of 500” and “Miles Davis Centennial” engravings.Breitling has gone further for the most committed collectors, too.A separate 50-piece “Lifetime Club Member Set” groups steel, yellow-gold, and platinum versions in a "trumpet-style" presentation case, complete with a miniature red trumpet and a blue lining referencing Kind of Blue. Buyers also receive two-year membership to Breitling’s Social Club, which is planned to open in Williamsburg, New York, in late 2027.Niiiiice.