“Panerai is a disease.” This is a comment that frequently appears on the forum paneristi.com, where Panerai enthusiasts discuss their watches, and buy and sell them. It is run independently of the brand Panerai, and, founded in September 2000 by English Panerai fan Guy Verbist, it has reached its 15th anniversary. The brand is perhaps…
The Tudor North Flag was big news at Baselworld: a watch with the first in-house Tudor movement, the MT5612 that also appears in the Pelagos. Tudor, founded by the father of Rolex Hans Wilsdorf to provide lower-priced watches that Rolex dealers could sell, traditionally used ETA movements. This in-house movement shows that they are preparing…
Tudor retains its approach to marketing that hallmarked it at its origins: technical and reliable watches. While not everyone can be an underwater adventurer or explorer, Tudor taps into these theme with the Pelagos, a lifestyle watch that also has impressive diver’s watch performance. Most importantly, Pelagos shares (with North Flag) the big Tudor news…
Company profile: In the straightforward version, Hans Wilsdorf, founder of Rolex, founded Tudor on 6 March 1946, to create products with the reliability of the Rolex but with a lower price. This was a far-sighted move: he was, in effect, creating his own in-house competition, a fighter brand, for his principal marque. In a 1946…
Romain Jerome does steampunk exceptionally well. The idea of steam-age machines that have gone far into the future, retaining all their romantic smoke, rust and brass produced an entire genre in art and movies, and in a way, mechanical watches are already steampunk in themselves, anachronistic survivors of a mechanical age in an electronic…
The three watches in this new collection by Romain Jerome have the looks of the Steampunk collection, but there is no Titanic steel in the case, which helps bring the price point down. They can be considered the entry-level Romain Jerome Steampunk pieces, with prices starting at 8,950 Swiss francs. Each of the three…
Romain Jerome’s first skeleton piece Skylab was launched in 2014, a piece with horizontal bridges inspired by the space station (MB&F’s watch HM6 Space Pirate, on the other hand, was inspired by an imaginary Japanese manga space station). This year, it is presented in a larger 48 mm version, but with a slimmer case. The…
Company profile: Romain Jerome makes watches that are fun. Everything about the brand is fresh and entertaining, such as their booth at Baselworld 2015. While most brands are all about display cases and multi-media displays, Romain Jerome’s star attraction was freshly-popped popcorn and a ball pit. To entice the jacket-and-tie visitors to step in, the…
Clock radios are very much something of my generation. One of these objects woke me up every day during school and university in the 1970s, and that sort of design is very much part of that decade. It was quite surprising to see the new Romain Jerome Subcraft at Baselworld 2015, a mechanical watch…
Company profile: The story goes that Harry Winston’s career (he was born in 1896) began when he was twelve. He already had some experience with precious stones, because his father had a small jewellery store in New York. One day he scanned a tray of junk jewellery in a pawn shop with the label “Take…
This new Harry Winston watch has something of the brand’s design DNA, with the three rectangular elements at the crown that are a reference to the historic boutique on Fifth Avenue in New York. In two versions, rose gold and white gold, the watch is 42 mm in diameter, 10.2 mm thick, and has a…
Company profile: Graham was founded in 1995 by Eric Loth, who was born in Bienne in about 1959, grew up in Swiss watch town Le Locle, and studied engineering in Neuchâtel. This was followed by post-graduate studies in metallurgy, and then in business administration. He worked for many companies, including ABB, Rado, and then the…
At SIHH in January, Richard Mille announced that at that show they would be presenting just two watches, with others arriving later, so as to ensure the appropriate amount of media attention for each piece. True to their word, they are now providing a first look at the RM 27-02 tourbillon made in cooperation with…
This is a new edition of a historic Longines chronograph present in the brand’s museum and dating back to the first half of the 20th century, with a steel case housing a column-wheel chronograph with a single pusher within the crown, and with a tachymetric scale on the dial. It is available in two versions,…
A brief digression on a watch that took me by surprise, that was presented in 2013 as a limited edition, that is a type that I think we will see more of over the next few years. Eric Loth founded his company Graham in 1995, and though I can’t help being a bit suspicious of…
After its role in Interstellar, Hamilton is back in cinemas, appearing in the film The Martin directed by Ridley Scott. Usually, Hamilton doesn’t pay to appear in films, and their watches, whether production models or specially-made, have appeared in about 450 movies, by virtue of their long-standing relationship with Hollywood as exemplified by Elvis Presley and…
This large, military-style watch is made by Graham, a company based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Swiss watchmaking town par excellence, and founded in 1995 by Eric Loth. The name comes from English clockmaker George Graham (1673-1751), who made several improvements to the pendulum clock and introduced the so-called Graham escapement, in actual fact invented in about…
In this watch, Ulysse Nardin does a lot of new stuff and presents it with a remarkable degree of understatement. Each of the watches is encircled by baguette diamonds, or coloured sapphires, but the particular setting technique and the fact that the stainless steel case, 45.8 mm in diameter, is coated in matt black rubber…
In Switzerland they’re good at making watches, but they can also fly, with the Patrouille Suisse performing tight-formation aerobatics since its foundation in 1964 (exactly 50 years after the foundation of the Swiss Air Force, 1914). In 2013, the Swiss defence minister announced that the squadron would be disbanded by early 2016, but it seems…
The Marine Chronometer series by Ulysse Nardin comprises mostly men’s models, but the two new pieces for this year are limited editions for women. A comparison between the men’s piece closest to these two new watches shows that they are very similar (see photo below), with the same 43 mm diameter case, the same dial…