Worn & Wound
The Roger W. Smith Series 6 is a Reminder of Why I Love Traditional Watchmaking
I love Roger Smith’s watches. If I won the lottery tomorrow (or had I won it this past weekend, when the Powerball reached a high of $1.7 billion), my first call wouldn’t be to a banker, or a lawyer, or even to my family. There’s a very real chance my first call would be to Roger Smith to beg for a spot on his very long waitlist - I might not even wait to cash the check to start dialing. I tell you this not because this is an article about how my watch collecting would change were I to come into an inconceivable amount of money overnight (though that might be a fun game to play at some point), but because Roger Smith has just announced the Series 6, his first new model since 2019, and the watch I am undoubtedly most excited about this year, even if it may be some time before I get to see one. The Series 6, like all Smith’s watches, is clear in its origin, building on the vocabulary steadily developed by Smith over the last few decades. In execution, the watch is most closely linked to the Series 4, a triple calendar with moon phase wrist watch introduced in 2015 that set itself apart not only in craftsmanship (a given for Smith) but in layout. That watch introduced a floating central dial with a radial date display, complete with “traveling aperture.” This evolution of the pointer date made the Series 4 incredibly legible, and strikingly modern, despite the classical styling. With the Series 6, Smith has brought the “traveling aperture” to a comparatively...
