Mark Zuckerberg’s $225,000 De Bethune Blue watch may have a 'blindness reason'

Mark Zuckerberg has historically steered clear of conventional ultra-wealth aesthetics, sticking to muted colour t-shirts as his signature look. In recent years, though, he has emerged as one of the more stylish figures in the tech world.

He owns a $300 million, 387-foot superyacht named Launchpad, and has a growing collection of jewellery but the thing people talk about most is how Zuckerberg has turned into a genuine luxury watch enthusiast. Recently, the Meta CEO was speaking about the company’s autonomous AI system Muse, and people noticed the Facebook founder sporting a $225,000 De Bethune DB28xs Kind of Blue Tourbillon. For him, the striking design of the wrist watch carries deep personal history: blue is the single shade he perceives with total clarity.

The Red-Green colour-blindness connection

Zuckerberg experiences red-green colour-blindness, a trait that directly dictated the visual design of his corporate empire from day one. Facebook and Meta – both have blue coloured logos. In a 2010 profile published by The New Yorker, the tech founder explained why blue became the foundational palette for Facebook, noting: “Blue is the richest colour for me, I can see all of blue.”Swiss independent manufacturer De Bethune has similarly adopted heat-blued metal as a calling card, relying on thermal oxidation rather than cosmetic surface plating.

And probably this is why De Bethune DB28xs Kind of Blue Tourbillon may be the watch ‘made for Mark Zuckerberg’. Resembling metal bathed in liquid cobalt (a vivid, deep shade of blue), the timepiece avoids basic chemical lacquers; instead, its dial elements, buckle, lugs and case achieve their vivid colour through heat treatment of grade 5 titanium.

Crafting colour at 700 degrees celsius

The exterior of the DB28xs Kind of Blue Tourbillon begins with mirror-polished grade 5 titanium exposed to precise thermal oxidation.

This heats the alloy until an ultra-thin oxide layer forms, bending light to create a rich, metallic hue that flows between electric cobalt and midnight navy depending on ambient lighting. The artisanal process is tough because if a single screw deviates slightly from the target shade, watchmakers discard it.Denis Flageollet, the technical pioneer and co-founder behind De Bethune, reportedly uncovered the vibrant blue reaction while experimenting with titanium balance assemblies heated beyond 700 degrees Celsius.Beyond its color, the timepiece houses high-grade mechanical architecture. Powering the watch is the hand-wound DB2009V7 movement, featuring technical milestones designed for efficiency and compact scale.It has a 63-piece tourbillon cage that weighs 0.18 grams and rotates every 30 seconds, which is twice the operational speed of standard one-minute tourbillon carriages. Operating at a high-frequency 5Hz, the movement maintains a five-day power reserve fueled by dual self-regulating mainspring barrels. De Bethune compressed the entire high-beat tourbillon system into a 38.7mm case measuring a mere 8mm in thickness, marking the first time the brand integrated a tourbillon inside the slim DB28xs footprint.The resulting $225,000 creation serves as a fitting match for Zuckerberg, who already owns a list of high-end timepieces. But reportedly, this is probably his first all-blue watch.