Worn & Wound
Zenith Expands the Defy Collection with the New Skyline Chronograph Skeleton
I’m long on the record as being an unabashed fan of the Zenith Defy. If you search this website or listen to old podcasts, you’ll find plenty of instances of me saying that the Defy is my all time favorite line of sports watches, period. For as long as the Defy has existed, it’s been a showcase for Zenith at their most adventurous, both technically and aesthetically, and a reflection of the larger watch landscape at the current moment, whatever that happens to be. I’ve often framed my discussions of the Defy around wishing for a resurgence of the collection, which through the years has too often been ignored in favor of other objectively more popular Zenith collections, but with the release of the new Defy Skyline Chronograph Skeleton, it occurs to me that we really do, finally, have a fully fleshed out Defy collection, and Zenith is doing anything but ignoring it. The Defy Skyline effectively replaced the Defy Classic, a much loved (by enthusiasts) line of medium sized and quite thin sports watches that were available in both steel and ceramic cases. Running on Zenith’s Elite movements, they were design oriented pieces, and the skeletonized versions in particular really spoke to me. Zenith introduced a skeletonized version of the Skyline in 2023 (also at LVMH Watch Week), and now we have the chrono version, something that wouldn’t have been possible in the Elite-based Defy Classic. Part of the appeal of the Skyline, even in the non-chronograph variants, is the...
