The 170th Anniversary Limited Edition Classico Manufacture by Ulysse Nardin has a dial layout that reflects the earliest pocket watches, with subdial at 6 o’clock. Blue is still very much the watch fashion colour and so the hands and strap are a bright mid-sea blue. The date is carefully camouflaged in the continuous seconds subdial…
Every year, Frédérique Constant presents a nautical-inspired watch inspired by Riva runabout boats, the small craft in wood and chrome that have been cruising luxury playgrounds like Portofino and Montecarlo since the 1920s. The watch brand has a partnership with the Riva Historical Society whose mission is the preservation of Riva boats. The Runabout watch…
Aiglon Grande Taille by Eberhard & Co. is a 41 mm watch in steel, with a number of versions. The main factor in determining price is the case and bracelet finish, with lower-priced models in steel, and more expensive versions with 18k 5N gold plating. The watch is water-resistant to 50 metres, in part by…
The Le Locle Regulateur by Tissot is a classical watch in every way. The “regulateur” was a clock installed in workshops in the 18th and 19th centuries to check the accuracy of the pocket watches that were being made. The regulator typically had a single minute hand referencing a chapter ring around the outside of…
The Tissot Heritage 1936 has a beautiful movement, the ETA Unitas 6498, but it takes some effort to see it. This watch is a new version of a 1936 Tissot (scroll down to see an advert illustrating the watch 80 years ago), and so it has some elements of those pioneering days of wristwatches. At that…
At Baselworld, Philippe Delhotal, Creative Director of La Montre Hermès, said that 2016 is all about the consolidation of the Slim collection launched commercially in 2015. The Slim d’Hermès Email grand feu is a development of the Slim d’Hermès, and it is a 100-piece limited edition designed for collectors. Its dial design has the same…
The True Open Heart by Rado combines light high-tech ceramic, used for the case and bracelet, with a dial made from a wafer-thin – 0.6mm – layer of mother-of-pearl, revealing a glimpse of the movement as well as the ever-changing colours produced by this natural material. This year the trend identified for Rado by future…
In 2014, Bruno Belamich, creative director at Bell & Ross, designed the B-Rocket motorbike, something like a cross between a bike and an aircraft. It was actually built, in cooperation with the Shaw Harley-Davidson Speed & Custom company. This year, 2016, the brand presented a Bell & Ross car, the AeroGT concept car. This in turn was…
Nostalgic watches are ever successful, as proven by the unending demand for pilot’s watches recalling the pieces supplied to the Luftwaffe in the 1940s. In those days, Alpina was one of the suppliers for the German Kriegsmarine (hence the name KM-710), not surprisingly because the company’s German subsidiary had been transformed into an independent German…
When you look at the Bell & Ross BR 03-92 Desert Type automatic, you can’t help thinking of Panerai. The dial is made in three layers, a beige top surface, with cut-out numerals revealing the black luminescent coating at the core of the sandwich construction. During the day, the black luminescent paint contrasts effectively with…
Watches by Mido often have an architectural inspiration, at times quite obvious, at times difficult to perceive. In this piece, there are a lot of details from London’s famous clock tower. It was born from a competition between three designers, Eric Giroud, Lorenzo Vallone and Sébastien Perret, commissioned to design a watch on the Big…
The Rolex Explorer continues the long tradition of tough timepieces that began in the 1930s, when several Himalayan expeditions used Rolex Oyster watches. They accompanied the 1953 Everest expedition as well, and it was in that year that Rolex launched the Explorer, with all the rugged characteristics that had been developed up until then. In…
The Yacht-Master by Rolex, first introduced in 1992, has always been a luxury watch as opposed to a tool watch. The bi-directional rotating bezel can be used for timing events very approximately, in other words, to the nearest minute for events lasting 15 minutes or less (if you’re interested in this sort of functionality, there…
The Rolex Datejust 41 is a classic, and the 2016 models have been slightly revisited in design. Six versions provide a choice between the gold colour, yellow or Everose pink, the bracelet design, dial colours and hour markers. With their dual gold and steel colour scheme, they are showy watches, unmistakable: you can choose between…
As I’m allergic to date windows that break up the symmetry of the dial, are too small to be practical, or that are included just because a third-party movement includes the date function, this watch can only make me happy. With Cellini, Rolex lets you choose whether to have a date indication on your watch…
Sinn trace their inspiration for this watch to naval deck watches or B-Uhr watches. This pattern is more familiar as B-Uhr pilot’s watches , in this case the type B pilot’s watch with separate scales for minute and hour hands. The Sinn 856 B-Uhr has beige SuperLuminova on minute hand, hour indices and the triangle…
Like the Sinn 556 Anniversary, the 556 I M by Sinn is a sports watch with a 38.5 mm stainless steel case, 20 bar water resistance, and an ETA 2824-2 self-winding movement. Unlike the 556, this piece with Moka-coloured sunburst dial is not a limited edition. The ETA 2824-2 has basic finish and a Sinn…
The 556 is Sinn’s entry-level watch, a sports watch with stainless steel case and an ETA 2824-2 self-winding movement. For the brand’s 55th anniversary, it has presented three models with different dial finishes, and this particular version is a limited edition of 1,000 pieces. It inherits some aspects of Sinn’s traditions in pilot’s watches, with…
Sometimes you see a watch and you think, wow! Now that is really something special. That’s what I thought when I first saw the Perrelet Lab, a new watch that will reach boutiques in November 2016. What’s so special about Lab? Well, Perrelet have taken their hallmark motif, the dial-side rotor, and made it…
Glashütte is a small German town with a large number of watch manufacturers working independently one from another, but bound together by the town’s turbulent history. Their shared DNA can often be seen in certain design characteristics that go beyond just the words “Glashütte” and “Made in Germany,” and lots of umlauts. The Robert Mühle…