Beneath the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower earlier this year, Sylvain Dolla, CEO of Swiss watchmaker Tissot, sat down to dinner with Fausto Pinarello, chairman of the Italian cycling dynasty that bears his family’s name.
The following morning, the prestigious Treviso-based bicycle brand led a group of ambassadors and journalists, including myself, on a ride through the streets and parks of Paris, along routes that felt, on a Pinarello, considerably more glamorous than the average commute. It was a fitting way to launch a collaboration between two industry giants that have both spent decades at the heart of professional cycling.
The reason for the ride was the debut of the new Tissot x Pinarello Special Edition watch – the first timepiece to emerge from a partnership that Dolla says took 18 months to develop from first meeting to the finished design.
The two companies came together, he explains, not to simply put one brand’s logo on the other’s product, but to build something that genuinely reflected the rich history of both brands.
“I felt that they were interested in a real partnership, an exchange of ideas, an exchange of values and creating something unique that pays tribute to both worlds,” says Dolla. “It was really a joint work at the design level.”
Tissot has been the official timekeeper of the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling’s global governing body, for more than 30 years, and the official timekeeper of major races including the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, an annual three-week road cycling race held in Spain. Tissot is, as Dolla puts it, “the reference watch in the world of cycling.”
Pinarello, founded in 1952 in the Italian city of Treviso, close to Venice, by Giovanni Pinarello, has a claim to an equally influential status in the sport. The brand has accumulated a staggering 15 Tour de France victories and 30 Grand Tour wins (more than any other manufacturer in cycling history) and its frames, recognisable for their distinctive asymmetric shapes and exciting colourways, are among the most recognisable in the sport.
It was that remarkable legacy that first attracted Dolla to the partnership. “If you dream of doing one collaboration in the world of cycling with a bike manufacturer, you will immediately think about Pinarello,” he says, “because they are the reference in making something super aesthetical.” The challenge, he adds, was translating that aesthetic from a six-kilogram racing frame onto something considerably smaller. “It was a fun exercise, and they really did put in the effort – their designers came not just to say they wanted a logo on the watch.”
The result is a 42mm timepiece cased in forged carbon, the same lightweight material used in Pinarello’s high-performance frames. The crown sits at 10 o’clock rather than the conventional 3, an hommage to Pinarello’s ForkFlap design – an aerodynamic shaping on its bike forks designed to smooth airflow around the front brake – that gives the case its playful asymmetric silhouette.
The grey dial, meanwhile, is textured like asphalt with a fine, granular finish.
And the second hand is shaped like Pinarello’s ‘P’ monogram and finished in Borealis blue – the specific shade that has come to define the brand’s visual identity.
Getting that colour right, Dolla says, was one of the more challenging aspects of the project. “They gave us their paint and challenged us on the exact rendering of the colour – it needed to translate precisely into a finished watch. That’s how we did it.”
The dial also features a double inner ring that transitions from a convex curve to a concave interior, framing the precision minute track in a detail that is easy to miss but rewards closer inspection.
Beating inside is Tissot’s Powermatic 80 movement with a Nivachron balance spring (an alloy designed to resist magnetism and temperature changes), offering 80 hours of power reserve and a hefty 100-metre water resistance.
The watch also comes in a collector’s box, with a sleeve printed with Pinarello’s original engineering drawings, plus two straps – a technical performance strap and a handcrafted Italian leather option, the latter a nod to the artisanal tradition that sits alongside Pinarello’s engineering heritage in the Treviso region.
For Dolla, what distinguishes this collaboration from Tissot’s past cycling partnerships is its position within the sport. The brand’s existing relationships – with the Tour de France, the UCI, the major Grand Tours – place it on the timing side of race day: the photo-finish equipment and the split-second measurements that determine winners, for instance. Pinarello occupies a different position entirely. “Usually we collaborate on the race side,” Dolla explains. “Now we collaborate with the supplier of the equipment that makes the race so thrilling, so emotional. The bike and the timekeeper together.”
Accompanying the watch is a limited-edition Pinarello bike, available as an exclusive collector’s package together with the timepiece. It’s basef on the Pinarello Dogma F (2026 edition) designed for the Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team.
Fausto Pinarello described the watch as bringing “our design philosophy onto the wrist – the materials, the lines, the character – in a way that is true to our roots and connected to the bikes we create.”
For Tissot, a Swiss brand founded in Le Locle in 1853 and long associated with accessible, well-crafted watches across multiple sports, the Pinarello collaboration represents something of a departure as a limited-edition timepiece aimed squarely at the collector end of the market rather than the broad base the brand typically addresses. “You never know when you meet people,” Dolla says of the first conversation with the Pinarello team 18 months ago. “But we knew immediately this could be something very interesting.”
See more at tissot.com
