Teddy Baldassarre
Tudor North Flag Review: Discontinued But Worth a Comeback?
We recently took a deep dive into the Tudor Ranger, and today, I’m going to go boldly forth and explore what I consider to be the Ranger’s spiritual sibling, albeit a discontinued one: the Tudor North Flag. Both watches have similar roots in 20th-century polar exploration, but while the Ranger looks to the past for its design codes, the North Flag, at its time, had its sights set on the future. While it marked a huge leap forward in Rolex-owned Tudor’s contemporary legacy and ultimately, further set the stage for the brand to finally come out of the looming shadow of the Crown, the North Flag has already become a relic of Tudor’s not-so-distant past. Down below, I’ll be taking you through a brief history lesson on the watch at hand, detailing the key design codes and features, and exploring why some vocal enthusiasts out there are begging for the North Flag to make a comeback. Tudor North Flag History For most of the 20th century, Tudor leaned on its intrinsic connection to Rolex to boost its credibility, but by the 1990s, the brand’s reputation as Rolex’s “little brother” or “Rolex Lite” fell out of favor with the general watch-wearing public. Affordability as a guiding virtue was not, for lack of a better word, sexy anymore. Tudor had not differentiated itself enough from its more luxurious relative to stand effectively on its own, globally. The brand fled the U.S. market entirely in the late '90s, and it would spend over a decade working behind t...
