News · Baume & Mercier

Baume & Mercier puts an ice blue guilloche dial on the Clifton Baumatic, and on its perpetual calendar

Two limited editions for a 1 September launch: a 39 mm date model and a 40 mm perpetual calendar, both on the five day Baumatic and both rated to 50 metres.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 17 August 2026

• Baume & Mercier has announced two limited edition Clifton Baumatic models with ice blue guilloche dials, a 39 mm date version and a 40 mm perpetual calendar.
• Both use the manufacture Baumatic movement with a five day power reserve, the calendar version adding a Dubois-Depraz module for day, date, month, leap year and moon phase.
• The pair launch officially on 1 September 2026 as references M0A10870 and M0A10872, with no prices published by the brand in any currency.

The dial colour Baume & Mercier has been circling for years

In 2018 Baume & Mercier put a five-day movement with a silicon escape wheel into a watch that cost less than the Swiss industry thought that combination was worth. If you were paying attention, you filed the brand under "worth watching" and then, like most of us, got distracted by something louder. The Baumatic has quietly kept getting better since. Now it arrives in the colour that has taken over half the display cabinets in Geneva, in two limited editions announced for a 1 September launch: the Clifton Baumatic 39 mm, reference M0A10870, and the Clifton Baumatic Perpetual Calendar 40 mm, reference M0A10872.

Ice blue is a difficult colour to get right, because it sits one shade away from looking like a hospital corridor. Baume & Mercier has kept it out of trouble by putting texture underneath it. The dial is guilloché, a fine repeating pattern that catches light in bands as the wrist turns. The blue reads almost white where the light hits it, and deepens elsewhere to something closer to a swimming pool in shade. It is the difference between a colour and a surface.

On the 39 mm the layout is spare in a way the 1950s would recognise. A black crosshair crosses the centre, a snailed minute track runs around the outside, and the markers are riveted, rhodium-plated and slightly elongated, with a single Arabic 12 at the top for orientation. The date sits at six in a tone-on-tone window, which is the polite version of a date: readable when you look for it, invisible when you are not. Alpha hands, faceted, finish the job.

Two watches, one movement family, a millimetre and a half apart

The case is the one the Clifton collection was given in its 2025 redesign, and the proportions do a lot of work here. The 39 mm measures 11.22 mm thick, with polished and satin-finished surfaces. The crown follows the line of the case instead of jutting out of it. The domed sapphire is coated on both faces, and the caseback is open sapphire held by four screws, engraved as a limited edition and left blank enough that you can have something added.

The perpetual calendar version grows to 40 mm and 12.9 mm, which is remarkably little to pay for a calendar that knows about February. It carries hours, minutes, seconds, day, date, month, leap year and moon phase, with Arabic numerals at two, four, eight and ten to make room for the counters, a red pointer on the leap year disc and a blue moon disc carrying a polished rhodium moon. Both watches are rated to 50 metres, which is a dress watch rating and should be read as such.

Inside the 39 mm is the BM13-1975 A, the manufacture Baumatic with 21 jewels running at 4 Hz and a power reserve of five days. The perpetual calendar uses the BM13-1975 AC2, the same base under a Dubois-Dépraz calendar module, which adds 1.6 mm to the movement height and takes the whole watch to 13¼ lignes. A five-day reserve on a calendar watch is worth more than it is on a time-only piece, because a perpetual calendar that stops is a fifteen-minute setting job rather than a twist of the crown.

What five days buys, and what it costs to look at

Turn either watch over and the finishing is more considered than the price positioning of this brand would suggest: circular graining on the bridges, a sandblasted and snailed plate, and an openworked rotor carrying Côtes de Genève, gilded on the perpetual calendar and left in steel colour on the 39 mm. None of this is haute horlogerie and Baume & Mercier is not pretending otherwise, but it is decoration you can actually see through the glass, which is the only kind that matters on a watch you own rather than photograph.

The bracelet is the part I keep going back and forth on. The 39 mm comes on an integrated three-row bracelet in polished and satin steel with a triple folding buckle and security push-pieces, and Baume & Mercier has fitted the tool-free interchangeable bar system, so a strap change is a fingernail job. Integrated bracelets look wonderful and reduce your options to whatever the brand sells you, and the counter-argument here is that the quick-change system gives most of those options back. The perpetual calendar sidesteps the whole question by arriving on a blue square-scaled alligator strap with tone-on-tone stitching and a pin buckle.

Clifton Baumatic Ice Blue editions pricing and availability

Both watches are limited editions and Baume & Mercier has set official product launch for 1 September 2026. The brand has not published prices for either reference, in any currency, and there is no Australian figure on its own storefront yet, so a local buyer is currently in the position of knowing exactly what the watch is and nothing about what it costs. Australian availability has not been announced separately. The Clifton Baumatic 39 mm is reference M0A10870 on the steel bracelet, and the Clifton Baumatic Perpetual Calendar 40 mm is reference M0A10872 on the alligator strap.

What makes this pair interesting is not the colour, which every brand in Geneva is doing, but where the calendar sits. A manufacture perpetual calendar at 40 mm and 12.9 mm from a brand most people file under "entry point" is a genuinely awkward thing for the rest of the industry, and the 39 mm is the version most of us would actually wear. I would like to tell you which one is the better buy. Ask me on 1 September, when somebody finally prints a number.