In less than five years since its founding, independent brand Furlan Marri has become a favorite among enthusiasts and industry insiders for its vintage Patek-inspired styling, affordable price points, and nigh-on fanatical attention to detail. This combination of attributes has allowed the brand to climb higher than many of its better-established competitors in a remarkably short time, making high-profile showings at the GPHG and Only Watch alongside some of the most prestigious names in the industry. With this in mind, expectations for the brand’s second time-only mechanical watch collection are decidedly high. Rather than playing it safe, however, Furlan Marri uses its newest product line as an opportunity to revive one of the most distinctive vintage dress watch styles — the disco volante. Italian for “flying saucer,” disco volante watches were a striking visual statement in innumerable brand catalogs from the ‘30s to the ‘70s, and the round, fully lugless case design that defines the style makes them just as unique and visually arresting today. The new Furlan Marri Disco Volante takes its cues from early prewar disco volante designs, and in true Furlan Marri fashion, adds a wealth of visual detail, carefully considered proportions, and both movement and finishing quality that outstrips nearly everything at this price point.

The Furlan Marri Disco Volante’s stainless steel case wears its Art Deco-era inspirations on its sleeve. While its 38mm wide dimensions may seem mid-sized by today’s standards, this unusual form ensures the wearing experience is light, elegant, and extremely compact. With vestigial lugs tucked underneath the main case body, the lug-to-lug wearing experience feels far smaller than 38mm, considering a traditional 38mm case’s elongated footprint on the wrist. Even the broad-toothed crown is tucked in flush to the case side at 3 o’clock, making the case outline a perfect circle when viewed from above. This makes the Disco Volante a challenging proposition for larger wrists, but for the smaller-wristed, it exudes offbeat vintage charm. Turn your gaze to the side, though, and the complexity of this design reveals itself. Both the bezel and the main case body appear to have the exact same shape at a glance: rounded, mirror-polished upper surfaces paired with extra-slim brushed vertical sides. Look closer, and the details reveal themselves. The bezel is concave, while the main case surface is convex, adding an unexpected complexity to the way this design plays with the light. Despite the tiered case structure, the Disco Volante is handsomely slim, measuring only 8.9mm thick overall. Furlan Marri fits the watch with a sapphire display caseback to showcase the extensively-finished handwound movement within, and rates the watch for a fragile 50 meters of water resistance.

Like most of the brand’s previous designs, Furlan Marri equips the Disco Volante with a visually complex sector dial. In addition, the brand plays heavily with visual texture, graphic design, and layering here, creating a layout that manages to be both intricate and refined. Our review sample arrived in the “Havana Disco” colorway, blending a matte salmon base dial with scales in a deep, radially brushed root beer brown. The crisp, slightly raised printing for the minutes, hours, and 6 o’clock seconds track matches the salmon tone, creating a cohesive, warm, and deeply characterful look that demands attention on the wrist. As with the rest of the watch, the magic really is in the details here, such as the soft, gently rounded typeface used for the hour numerals, the carefully considered line weights of the open outer minutes scale, and the narrow grooves in between each layer of the dial surface. Each of these grooves is filled with “Old Radium” Super-LumiNova, giving the Disco Volante a weak but unorthodox glow in low light. The dial hardware receives a similar level of care to the rest of the layout here, with sharp, distinctive fountain pen-style polished hands featuring gently curved surfaces. Rather than the abrupt transition between reflection and shadow that faceted hands have, this rounded approach allows for a softer, more gradual visual transition in changing light, while still creating natural highlights and lowlights. Furlan Marri only applies three rectangular indices to the Disco Volante’s dial at 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, and 9 o’clock. While they visually counterbalance the polished running seconds hand at 6 o’clock, the scarcity of other polished elements can make these indices feel slightly out of place from certain angles.

Furlan Marri powers the Disco Volante with the classic Peseux 7001 hand-wound movement. The 7001 has been a staple of slim, traditional watches for decades, but its presentation here is far from off-the-shelf. Each of the bridges has been fully redesigned by Furlan Marri, and each is topped with crisp Côtes de Genève, hand-polished anglage for the edges, jewel sinks, screw surrounds, black-polished screws, and gilt-filled engraved text. The balance cock receives similar treatment, and the mainspring barrel receives contrasting sunburst brushing. All told, it’s a deeply impressive level of finishing for a watch in this price bracket, and its rearranged layout helps preserve the elegant late-‘30s feel the brand aims for here. However, despite all these aesthetic updates, the Peseux 7001 performs in line with its off-the-shelf counterparts, with an average 42-hour power reserve at a 21,600 bph beat rate, and does not feature hacking seconds.

As one can imagine, the tiny, hidden lugs of the Furlan Marri Disco Volante make strap pairings difficult. That makes the standard strap pairing an important one, and the included saddle brown leather strap largely doesn’t disappoint. It’s light, suitably thin, and impressively supple, with an even hue but a subtle, detailed visible texture. That said, finding an alternative strap that would fit these lugs would be a struggle.

Furlan Marri has rapidly become one of the timepiece community’s indie darlings for its reasonable pricing, sumptuous vintage-inspired style, and impressive showings at some of the luxury watch industry’s most prestigious events. Following up on this track record should be a difficult proposition, but the new Furlan Marri Disco Volante builds on the brand’s foundations with a unique, richly detailed design, a brilliantly finished historic movement, and refined details that stretch beyond any of its previous mass-market offerings. The Furlan Marri Disco Volante is available now through authorized dealers. MSRP for this watch stands at $2,780 USD as of press time. For more information, please visit the brand’s website.