The French are rightly celebrated for bestowing Daft Punk, Balenciaga, and Timothée Chalamet’s name accent on the world, but when it comes to watchmaking, they don’t often get a lot of love. This does not mean, however, that no French-made watch deserves a place in your collection. Yema’s new Wristmaster Traveler, a 1970s-inspired sports watch with an internal movement and a price tag well below four digits, is exactly that.

If you’ve never heard of Yema before, don’t worry. Despite being the largest producer of watches in France in the 1960s, the brand was not very present on this side of the world until recently. Now, however, with a slew of other ‘zombie’ brands resurrected in recent years, Yema is back in the game and ready to show the world exactly how. really great French watches can be.

In fact, the more you learn about Yema, the more you’ll wonder why it took so long for the brand to get its due. In the 1960s, Yema created the Superman (unrelated to the DC Comics superhero), a diver’s watch whose legendary durability made it a standard for French Air Force pilots. A little over a decade after Omega’s Speedmaster took a spin on Apollo 11, Yema proved his mettle again with Spaceaut 1, who kept time on board the Salyut 7 space station in the early years. 1980.

These historical good faith aside, it doesn’t hurt that Yema watches are as stylish as they are rugged. In the case of the Wristmaster Traveler, this means an octagonal bezel and integrated bracelet, reminiscent of legends of the 70s like the Patek Philippe Nautilus and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, by far the two most fashionable watches in the world these days. , executed in high quality. 316L stainless steel. Other key features, like Superman hands, a lacquered dial, and indexes painted in Old Radium SuperLuminova (for that perfectly tropical “fussetina”), give it just the right amount of vintage detail.

In addition to its Grail-worthy exterior, the Wristmaster Traveler also keeps it inside, thanks to the YEMA2000 self-winding mechanical movement, designed and assembled at Yema’s headquarters in Morteau, France. In the hands of a big Swiss brand, a watch like the Wristmaster Traveler would easily cost a few thousand dollars, but Yema doesn’t play that game. Instead, they launch it on Kickstarter, where a pledge of € 499 ( about $ 570) will earn you a Wristmaster Traveler in time for the holidays. With nearly a million dollars in pre-orders to date, the Yema Wristmaster promises to be the freshest French export since Random access memories. Unlike everyone’s favorite headphone DJs, Yema is just getting started.