Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula OneTM Team Ref. IW388121
WatchesSports

IWC Brings Singapore After Dark to Its New Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Watch

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Share via

Our team of editors and experts thoughtfully chooses each product. If you decide to buy through one of our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more. Want to know how we test products? Click here for more details.

  • The first purple dial ever featured in IWC’s Pilot’s Watch collection, inspired by Singapore’s Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid.
  • A lightweight 41mm Grade 5 titanium case pairs deep purple with signature PETRONAS green details.
  • The IWC-manufactured calibre 69385 delivers automatic chronograph functionality and a 46-hour power reserve.
  • The fourth official IWC team watch was created for the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team.
  • The IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team is priced at USD $9,200.

Purple isn’t exactly the colour you’d expect when IWC Schaffhausen unveils a new Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team watch. Black, titanium and the unmistakable PETRONAS green have largely defined the partnership, but for its latest release, IWC has taken the collection somewhere considerably more colourful. The new Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One™ Team pairs a deep purple dial with a matching rubber strap, creating one of the boldest watches to emerge from the collaboration since IWC became the team’s Official Engineering Partner in 2013.

The colour isn’t simply there to grab attention. IWC created the purple dial as a tribute to Singapore and its national flower, the Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid, ahead of the upcoming Singapore Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit. Against that saturated purple backdrop, the team’s signature PETRONAS green appears across the numerals and indices and as a luminescent coating on the hands. A matching purple rubber strap completes the look, creating a combination that feels particularly fitting for Formula One’s original night race.

Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula OneTM Team Ref. IW388121
IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One | Image: IWC

The 41mm case is crafted from Grade 5 titanium, a material that weighs roughly half as much as steel while offering an excellent strength-to-density ratio, heat resistance, and corrosion protection. Its connection to Formula One runs deeper than marketing, too. Titanium is used in high-performance engine components such as connecting rods and valves, while the Halo safety structure protecting drivers above the cockpit is also manufactured from a high-strength titanium alloy. IWC gives the case a brushed finish, bringing out a subdued silvery-grey appearance that sharply contrasts with the much louder purple dial and strap.

The dial itself retains the instrument-like layout associated with IWC’s Pilot’s Watch Chronographs. Chronograph minutes are displayed at 12 o’clock using the brand’s familiar vertical subdial configuration, a layout that has appeared on IWC Pilot’s Chronographs for more than four decades. A combined day-and-date display sits at 3 o’clock, bringing some everyday practicality to the otherwise performance-focused design. The PETRONAS green details are particularly effective here, cutting through the purple without covering the watch in obvious Formula One branding.

Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula OneTM Team Ref. IW388121
IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One | Image: IWC

Inside is the IWC-manufactured calibre 69385, a mechanical chronograph built around a classical column-wheel architecture and engineered with precision, reliability and robustness in mind. A bidirectional pawl winding system provides a 46-hour power reserve, while Geneva stripes and circular graining provide the decorative finishing. IWC leaves the movement visible through the transparent sapphire-glass caseback, adding another layer of interest once you turn the watch over. The purple rubber strap also features IWC’s EasX-CHANGE system, letting you swap it for another compatible strap at the touch of a button without tools.

This is also the fourth official team watch IWC has created for Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS. The series began at the 2022 Miami Grand Prix with a titanium Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41, followed by the Ceratanium Pilot’s Watch Performance Chronograph 41 at Las Vegas in 2023. In 2025, the partnership added the slimmer three-hand Pilot’s Watch Mark XX team edition. Like its predecessors, the new purple chronograph isn’t merely inspired by the team; mechanics, engineers, and other personnel will wear it trackside, as will staff at Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS headquarters in Brackley, England. Drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli also appear in IWC’s launch campaign wearing the new watch.

Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula OneTM Team
IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One | Image: IWC
Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula OneTM Team  Ref. IW388121
IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One | Image: IWC

The Singapore-inspired purple creates something genuinely different for the Pilot’s Watch collection, while the flashes of PETRONAS green provide just enough connection to the team. It’s a bold combination, but underneath it sits everything you’d expect from a serious IWC chronograph: lightweight titanium, a manufacture movement and a design built around legibility and functionality.

The IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One™ Team will be available through IWC boutiques for USD $9,200. Unlike some motorsport collaborations, IWC has not announced the watch as a numbered limited edition, meaning availability isn’t restricted to a stated production run. For anyone looking for the most colourful expression yet of the IWC and Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS partnership, purple might just have found its place alongside the team’s signature green.

Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula OneTM Team  Ref. IW388121
IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One | Image: IWC

IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team Specifications

  • Brand: IWC Schaffhausen
  • Model: Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One™ Team
  • Reference: IW388121
  • Diameter: 41 mm
  • Thickness: 14.5 mm
  • Material: Grade 5 Titanium
  • Dial: Deep Purple with PETRONAS Green Details
  • Strap: Purple Rubber with EasX-CHANGE® System
  • Calibre: IWC-Manufactured 69385 Automatic Chronograph
  • Power Reserve: 46 Hours
  • Water Resistance: 10 Bar (100 metres, 330 feet)
  • Price: USD $9,200

IWC SchaffhausenF1
About the Author

Related Articles

Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection
TechAudio

Hiroshi Fujiwara Brings Fragment Design’s ‘Liquid Black’ Treatment to Four Bang & Olufsen Icons

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Our team of editors and experts thoughtfully chooses each product. If you decide to buy through one of our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more. Want to know how we test products? Click here for more details.

  • Bang & Olufsen has partnered with Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Fragment Design on a four-piece limited-edition audio collection.
  • The collaboration covers the Beoplay H100, Beosound A1, Beosound Shape and Beosystem 9000c.
  • Specialized anodizing and hand polishing create the collection’s liquid-like black aluminium finish.
  • The Beoplay H100, Beosound A1 and Beosound Shape launched internationally on June 3, 2026.
  • The USD $69,650 Beosystem 9000c is made to order and sold exclusively in Japan.

Bang & Olufsen has teamed up with Hiroshi Fujiwara’s Fragment Design to rework four of its most recognizable audio products. Rather than introduce an entirely new speaker or pair of headphones, the collaboration takes familiar Bang & Olufsen hardware and gives it the monochrome treatment that has become inseparable from the Japanese design studio.

Fujiwara comes to the partnership as a longtime customer rather than a designer who discovered the brand last week. Bang & Olufsen says he has spent around 35 years listening to its products, making the collaboration feel more considered than the usual limited edition built around a new colour and an extra logo.

Everything has gone black—although not just any black.

The collection stretches from personal audio to a full home-listening system, with each product receiving its own interpretation of Fragment’s stripped-back visual style. Some of the changes are subtle, while others turn already distinctive Bang & Olufsen designs into serious collector pieces. Either way, there is considerably more happening here than simply reaching for a can of black paint.

Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen

Four Bang & Olufsen Icons Get the Fragment Treatment

The four products may come from very different corners of Bang & Olufsen’s catalogue, but the thinking behind them is consistent. Fragment Design has not attempted to disguise the original forms or make them look like entirely new devices. Instead, the collaboration builds on the Danish brand’s century-long approach to precision, longevity and recognizable industrial design, then filters it through Hiroshi Fujiwara’s considerably darker visual language.

Fujiwara’s connection with Bang & Olufsen stretches back more than three decades, beginning with the Beocenter 2300 and eventually becoming serious enough for him to design his home around the company’s integrated audio system.

As Hiroshi Fujiwara explains it — “This collaboration has been a long-time dream of mine. Since building my home around Bang & Olufsen’s integrated home sound system in the 1990s, the brand has been my first choice for audio. This collaboration feels like a meaningful continuation for our journey together,” says Hiroshi Fujiwara, founder of Fragment Design.

The finish is where the collection becomes more interesting than four existing products painted black. Bang & Olufsen developed a specialized anodization process for selected aluminum surfaces before polishing them by hand, producing a deep, reflective appearance that looks almost liquid under the light. It remains unmistakably Fragment, but the way it has been applied relies heavily on Bang & Olufsen’s experience working with precision-milled aluminum.

“We applied a highly artisanal anodization and polishing process for the first time on our portable products as part of the Fragment Design collaboration,” says Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre, Bang & Olufsen’s senior director of design. “This meticulous approach brings Fragment’s signature black to life through a finish only achievable by hand.”

Fragment’s double-lightning symbol and wordmark appear throughout the collection, although the branding has been kept restrained enough to let the original designs remain recognizable. The result is one shade of black expressed across four very different objects, ranging from something you can carry in one hand to a home-audio system that may require considerably more space—and an equally substantial bank balance.

The Beoplay H100 Fragment Edition
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen

The Beoplay H100 Fragment Edition

  • Product type: Premium over-ear wireless headphones
  • Design details: High-gloss black anodized aluminum, black leather headband and cushions, & contrasting white logos
  • Fragment branding: Double-lightning emblem on the left ear cup and a co-branded leather pouch
  • Features:
    • Titanium drivers
    • Dolby Atmos
    • Spatial audio
    • Adaptive noise cancellation
    • 32 hours battery life
  • Availability: Globally, available from June 3, 2026
  • Price: USD $2,400 (Limited Edition)

Starting with the Beoplay H100 Fragment Edition, Bang & Olufsen’s flagship headphones trade their usual mix of colours and exposed metal for high-gloss black anodized surfaces, contrasting white logos and black leather across the headband and ear cushions. They remain unmistakably H100s, only now wrapped almost entirely in Fragment’s signature monochrome aesthetic.

The headphones retain their glass touch surfaces, physical control dials and automatic wear detection, while the magnetically attached ear cushions and inner headband can be removed and replaced when worn. That matters on a limited edition this expensive, because “collectible” sounds considerably better when the parts touching your head are not expected to last forever.

Beosound A1 3rd Gen Fragment Edition
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen

Beosound A1 3rd Gen Fragment Edition

  • Product type: Portable Bluetooth speaker
  • Design details: High-gloss black anodized aluminum, monochrome body & matching black carrying strap
  • Fragment branding: Double-lightning emblem integrated beneath the speaker grille
  • Features:
    • 360-degree sound
    • Upgraded bass performance
    • IP67 dust & water resistance
    • 24 hours of battery life
  • Availability: globally available from June 3, 2026
  • Price: USD $475 (Limited Edition)

Next is the Beosound A1 3rd Gen Fragment Edition, which brings the same high-gloss black treatment to Bang & Olufsen’s portable speaker. Fragment’s double-lightning emblem sits beneath the aluminum grille, giving the smallest piece in the collection a recognizable stamp without making it look like branded keychain merch. It remains practical enough for everyday use, with IP67 dust and water resistance, 360-degree sound and the ability to pair with another compatible A1 for stereo playback—although the reflective finish may encourage you to handle this limited edition rather more carefully than the average Bluetooth speaker.

Beosound Shape Fragment Configuration
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen

Beosound Shape Fragment Configuration

  • Beosound Shape Fragment Configuration
  • Product type: Modular wall-mounted speaker system
  • Design details: Seven-tile flower configuration with black & grey fabric covers
  • Fragment branding: Aluminium tag carrying the Bang & Olufsen and Fragment Design logos
  • Features:
    • Modular wall-mounted construction
    • Room-filling sound
    • Integrated acoustic-dampening tiles
    • Wireless music streaming
    • Bang & Olufsen app control
  • Availability: Globally available through selected Bang & Olufsen stores
  • Price: USD $7,100

Moving onto the most spatial piece in the collection, the Beosound Shape Fragment Configuration turns Bang & Olufsen’s modular wall-mounted speaker into something closer to installation art. After seeing Beosound Shape at the company’s headquarters in Struer, Hiroshi Fujiwara reportedly returned to his hotel room and sketched the seven-tile flower arrangement, which was later completed with monochrome black-and-grey fabric covers and a discreet aluminum logo tag. This comes with a combination of room-filling audio and acoustic treatment, with a design intended to become part of the wall, with a price tag of USD $7,100.

Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen

Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition

  • Product type: Made-to-order six-disc CD audio system
  • Included: Beosystem 9000c CD player, pair of Beolab 28 wireless speakers & Beoremote One
  • Design details: Matte-black anodized surfaces contrasted by glossy natural aluminium
  • Fragment branding: Co-branded CD clamper & Beolab 28 speaker stands
  • Features:
    • Vertical six-disc CD mechanism
    • Automatic disc changing & return system
    • High-resolution wireless stereo speakers
    • Adjustable Beolab 28 sound beams
    • Music streaming through the Beolab 28 speakers
  • Availability: Japan exclusive
  • Price: USD $69,650 (Limited Edition)

Finishing the collection is the Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition, a made-to-order setup pairing Bang & Olufsen’s restored six-disc CD player with two Beolab 28 wireless speakers and a Beoremote One. Fragment applies matte-black anodized surfaces across the system while retaining sections of glossy natural aluminum, with both brands represented on the CD clamper and speaker stands. It is the largest, rarest and comfortably most expensive piece in the collaboration—the sort of audio system that makes displaying six CDs feel like an architectural decision.

The original Beosound 9000 was designed by David Lewis and introduced in 1996, with a mechanism that rapidly moves between six vertically displayed discs before returning each one to its original position after playback. That mechanical theatre particularly appealed to Hiroshi Fujiwara, and it remains at the centre of this modernized version, now supported by the wireless capabilities and high-resolution sound of the Beolab 28 speakers. Limited to made-to-order purchases in Japan only and priced at USD $69,650, this is less an impulsive return to physical media and more a collector’s monument to the compact disc.

Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen

price & Availability

The Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design collection made its first appearance at a temporary Isetan Shinjuku installation in Tokyo, held from May 20–26, 2026. The Japanese release followed on May 27, with the Beoplay H100, Beosound A1 and Beosound Shape reaching selected international stores and online markets from June 3.

Prices begin at USD $475 for the portable Beosound A1, rising to USD $2,400 for the Beoplay H100 and USD $7,100 for the Beosound Shape. Sitting in an entirely different financial neighbourhood is the USD $69,650 Beosystem 9000c, a made-to-order setup reserved exclusively for customers in Japan.

Most of us will probably admire these pieces through a screen and leave our bank accounts undisturbed. Still, Bang & Olufsen and Fragment Design clearly understand their audience — collectors who see the material, finish and cultural story surrounding an audio product as part of its value—and who are unlikely to lose much sleep over the extra cost of making everything liquid black.

Beosound Shape Fragment Configuration
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen
Beosystem 9000c Fragment Edition
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen
The Beoplay H100 Fragment Edition, and Beosound A1 3rd Gen Fragment Edition
Bang & Olufsen x Fragment Design Collection | Image: Bang & Olufsen
CollaborationsSpeakersHeadphonesBang & Olufsen
About the Author
arrow_drop_up