Kross Studio Makes Watches Fit for the Mother of Dragons

A Kross Studio watch doesn’t feel like merchandise. It feels closer to an artifact. Something that belongs inside a universe rather than merely referencing it. The difference is subtle but important. These pieces aren’t designed to remind you of Star Wars or Batman. They’re designed as if those worlds had watchmakers of their own.

That mindset starts with how the brand works. Founded in 2020 in Gland, Switzerland, by Marco Tedeschi and much of the former RJ Watches team, Kross Studio began life not as a watch brand but as a vertically integrated design and manufacturing studio. The timing was awkward. 

The pandemic had just hit, production pipelines were frozen, and small independent brands were the first to be squeezed. So instead of outsourcing, Kross Studio built inward. Cases, movements, components, and even presentation objects were developed under one roof.

That structure explains why their most famous pieces feel unusually complete. The Star Wars Death Star Tourbillon isn’t just themed. Its movement architecture mirrors the station itself, with a raised central tourbillon that appears to hover under a domed sapphire crystal. The watch is delivered inside a glowing kyber crystal container designed and fabricated by the same studio that made the watch. Nothing is decorative after the fact. The object, the mechanics, and the world it belongs to are designed together.

What’s easy to miss is that Kross Studio didn’t stop at collector sets. Over the past few years, they’ve also been quietly building a family of standalone watches that prove the mechanics can live without the mythology. The KS 05 Central Floating Tourbillon introduced the brand’s patented raised tourbillon architecture in a purer form. More recently, the Marco Tedeschi MT1 Chronomètre Tourbillon 7 Jours stripped things back even further.

The MT1 is the tell. A 44mm Grade 5 titanium case with no lugs, a fully skeletonized in-house caliber (KS 7010 MT), a seven-day power reserve from a single barrel, and no traditional crown. Winding and setting are handled via a rear-mounted wheel, a decision driven by torque requirements rather than visual theater. It’s the kind of solution you arrive at when engineering leads and aesthetics follow.

This duality defines Kross Studio. On one side, they build watches that feel like physical extensions of pop-cultural universes. On the other, they produce movements and cases that stand up to scrutiny from collectors who don’t care about franchises at all. Tedeschi has spoken openly about customers who bought a Star Wars tourbillon as their first mechanical watch, only to later ask his opinion on Greubel Forsey or other high independent makers.

That arc matters. Kross Studio isn’t trying to replace traditional horology or parody it. They’re widening the front door. The watches meet people where their imagination already lives, then quietly teach them what good watchmaking feels like on the wrist.

In an industry that often treats cultural seriousness and technical seriousness as mutually exclusive, Kross Studio has figured out how to let one smuggle the other inside.