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Sun, Dec 07, 2025 | Jumada al-Thani 16, 1447 | Fajr 05:29 | DXB 
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Maximilian Büsser & Friends' new LM101 EVO is definitely a watch to look out for
Marking 20 years of creative disruption, MB&F’s new watch refines the Legacy Machine’s signature balance of art and engineering — built to be lived with, not just admired
Two decades ago, Maximilian Büsser decided that the world of watchmaking had grown far too comfortable. After years steering traditional maisons, he imagined something daring — not a brand, but a laboratory of ideas. Thus began MB&F: Maximilian Büsser & Friends, a collective of artists, engineers, and dreamers committed to bending time into kinetic sculpture. From the space-age audacity of the Horological Machines to the 19th-century romance of the Legacy Machines, Büsser’s creations have always been about emotion made mechanical, and horology as craft, rebellion, poetry, and play.
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The Legacy Machine line, born in 2011, marked MB&F’s return to the roots of classical watchmaking — though “classical” is perhaps too modest a word for what it achieved. With its great balance wheel suspended like a celestial body above the dial, it paid tribute to watchmaking’s past while daring it into new dimensions. The LM101, unveiled in 2014, distilled that philosophy to its purest form. It presented the visual heartbeat of time — hours and minutes, power reserve, and that hypnotic 14mm flying balance — with an almost theatrical restraint. It was also the first movement entirely imagined by MB&F’s in-house team, with finishing standards guided by the incomparable Kari Voutilainen.
Now, two decades since MB&F first disrupted the landscape, the LM101 returns as the EVO. And what a fitting name — evolution, not reinvention. The EVO treatment, first seen in 2020, gave MB&F’s art a more human purpose: to be worn, lived with, maybe even scuffed by daily life. These were watches built to live, not just to be admired. The LM101 EVO carries that DNA, with 80 metres of water resistance, a screw-down crown, an integrated rubber strap, and, hidden within, the brand’s proprietary FlexRing shock absorber that cushions the watch’s heart against the jolts of modern life. It is engineering that does not dull the artistry but amplifies it.
Crafted in titanium, the new LM101 EVO feels like a weightless sculpture that seems to breathe. Two dial colours — a sunlit salmon or a peacock green, each created using Chemical Vapour Deposition technology — shimmer beneath the domed sapphire crystal. Their colours are alive, constantly shifting with the light. Floating above, the two black subdials — one for time, one for power reserve — are framed in subtle silver rings, adding structure to the dreamscape. Beneath the balance, twin arches of mirror-polished metal rise like bridges of light, reimagined with softer curves.
The hand-wound calibre within runs for 60 hours now — a tangible nod to endurance. Peer through the sapphire caseback and the darkened bridges reveal a play of light and shadow across Geneva waves, polished bevels, gold chatons, and countersunk blued screws — the hallmarks of Voutilainen’s school of finishing, yet executed with MB&F’s modern rhythm.
It’s tempting to see the LM101 EVO as merely a 20th anniversary tribute, but it feels more personal than that. It is more an affirmation of Büsser’s vision — that time, when reimagined, can move us as art does. It feels like the beginning of a new conversation between tradition and audacity. Beneath the domed sapphire, that suspended balance wheel beats with something uncannily human. And in that slow, steady beat, one can hear the pulse of MB&F itself.
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