Before tool watches were fashion statements, Miles Davis was already wearing one his own way. The jazz legend, whom Bob Dylan once called his “definition of cool,” paired sharp Italian suits with a Breitling Navitimer ref. 806 Mk5, turning a pilot’s instrument into a piece of personal style. For the centennial of Davis’s birth in 1926, Breitling has reissued that watch as the Navitimer B09 Chronograph 41 Tribute to Miles Davis, limited to 500 pieces.
The Breitling Navitimer B09 Chronograph 41 Tribute to Miles Davis is a 500-piece limited edition marking the jazz legend's 2026 centennial, reviving the 41mm reverse-panda Navitimer ref. 806 Mk5 he wore, powered by the hand-wound Manufacture Caliber B09.
The watch is a close reproduction of the mid-1960s Navitimer Davis wore, updated with modern manufacturing. It keeps the original’s 41mm steel case and its monochrome reverse-panda dial, black with white subdials, along with cream-toned Super-LumiNova and the era-appropriate “Twin Jet” logo. That logo carries its own history: the Navitimer was created in 1952 for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, whose watches wore a winged emblem, while civilian retail models later carried the Twin Jet. Davis’s 806 Mk5 was the first to pair that Twin Jet with a reverse-panda dial, which makes it a fitting reference to revive.
In a nod to the period, Breitling fitted the tribute with the hand-wound Manufacture Caliber B09, a column-wheel chronograph from an era before automatic chronographs existed, visible through an open caseback engraved “One of 500” and “Miles Davis Centennial.” Buyers choose between a hand-colored gradient brown leather strap and a revived Air Racer bracelet, the vented, rally-inspired steel design from the 1960s that Serge Gainsbourg later made his own in the ’80s.
Beyond the 500-piece edition, Breitling created something for the completist: a Lifetime Club Member Set, limited to 50, that gathers three 806 Mk5 tributes in steel, 18K yellow gold, and platinum (the platinum on a blue dial) inside a case shaped like a trumpet case, lined in blue as a nod to Kind of Blue, with a miniature red trumpet inside. The set’s name points to Breitling’s other move here: the first Breitling Social Club, a private members’ club opening in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in late 2027. Owners of the 500 tribute watches receive a two-year membership; the 50 set buyers get it for life.
What makes the tribute land is that Davis’s Navitimer wasn’t a placement or a prop. “Miles never separated style from self-expression,” the Miles Davis Estate said. “His Navitimer wasn’t a prop; it was something he chose because it spoke to him.” Davis belongs to a small group of mid-century originals, alongside racing drivers Jim Clark and Graham Hill, who took the Navitimer out of the cockpit and into culture. A century after his birth, Breitling is betting that the most powerful endorsement is still the one no one paid for.
