25,099 articles · 204 videos found · page 451 of 844
Monochrome
Stainless steel, whether 316L or 904L, is now the most common metal for modern watch cases and bracelets. There’s a good reason for this: it’s robust, highly corrosion-resistant, easy to machine and polish, and very affordable. By and large, it’s the perfect watch case material. Gold and platinum are the go-to precious metals for cases […]
Teddy Baldassarre
When you think of Rolex, the first colors your mind usually conjures up are green and gold, long the emblematic colors of the Swiss power brand and its world-famous “crown” logo. (Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf is said to have settled on these colors because they symbolized wealth and success.) Blue, on the other hand, is not a color that most watch aficionados readily associate with Rolex, though many will associate it with other watch brands, like Breguet, Breitling, and Rolex’s own little brother, Tudor. However, when Rolex does decide to do blue - whether it’s for dials, bezels, or some combination of both - it does so in a way that really speaks to the brand’s avid fan base. Over the years, some blue-dialed Rolex watches, in fact, are not only popular but have become recognized as classics. Here are seven Rolexes with blue dials - some discontinued and collectible, others still available in the current collection - that have demanded enthusiast attention. (Price estimates for the discontinued models on the list are courtesy of WatchCharts.) Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust 41, Ref. 126334 ($11,100) Rolex released the Datejust in 1945, and the model is today regarded as one of the world’s most classically elegant dress watches. The Datejust brought two now-familiar elements to the world of watch design, one of which can be found throughout the watch industry, the other being still closely associated with Rolex. The first was the addition of a date disp...
Worn & Wound
“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear. NEO: The Humanoid Robot Earlier this week, 1X announced the NEO, a $20,000 humanoid robot designed to transform your life at home. “Neo is a humanoid companion designed to transform your life at home. It combines AI and advanced hardware to help with daily chores and bring intelligence into your everyday life,” said Dar Sleeper, 1X’s VP of product and design in a recent USA Today article. While intended to become a fully autonomous household assistant, the NEO will only support a limited number of actions at its launch, and will be able to “learn”as time goes on. Weighing in at 66 pounds and standing just over five feet, the NEO can lift over 150 pounds and actively carry over 50 pounds. While there’s an expected learning curve for new technology, a recent video from Marques Brownlee dives into just how much (or how little) the NEO can currently do, and what to expect moving forward. With this technology just around the corner, will you be adding a humanoid robot into your household? Nutrition Tracking in Your Smart Watch Since their introduction, Smartwatches have continued to gain capabilities and become more useful if you integrate them properly....
Fratello
So far, we’ve introduced you to Abraham-Louis Breguet, who set up shop 250 years ago, and the “Breguet of the 20th Century,” English watchmaker and inventor of the Co-Axial escapement, George Daniels. In the spirit of independent watchmaking and the brand’s 30th anniversary, Fratello now invites you to get acquainted with Monsieur Roger Dubuis (1938–2017), […] Visit Who Was Roger Dubuis? - The Life And Work Of The Master Watchmaker With A Taste For The Extravagant to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
Ah, the moon. Romantic, mysterious, and the subject of many Creative Writing 101 poems, our closest celestial body has also wormed its way onto many a watch face over the years. Moonphase watches evoke a sense of sophistication and elegance, and tend to decorate watchmakers’ dressier lines, despite their somewhat subversive practicality. Farer’s moonphase collection is no exception; first launched in 2023, it took one of watchmaking’s oldest complications and applied it to the British brand’s own design ethos. Here in 2025, we have two new references to pad out that lineup: The Stratton and Burbidge Eastern Arabic Editions. Taking the same basic design of the rest of the line, the new Moonphase models are wrapped in a 38.5mm cushion case with curved sides that wear a “grain twist” texture. The case scallops in the 43.8mm between the lugs to make the strap sit flush, and a rounded crown with a solid bronze cap finishes the vintage-adjacent case look. Inside, both Moonphase models are powered by a Sellita SW288-1 M Elabore Grade movement, with blued screws and a Farer-embossed bridge. The Sellita movement allows for a 45-hour power reserve, and hour, minute, seconds, date, and of course, moonphase functions. Where the models differ is in their case material and dial design. The Stratton Edition-named for Frederick Stratton, a WWI veteran, mathematician, and astronomer who would eventually serve as Director of the Solar Physics Observatory, among many other ...
Two Broke Watch Snobs
Yema brings mother-of-pearl to new territory with the Yema Navygraf Pearl, a watch featuring a bezel and dial crafted from the iridescent material.
Worn & Wound
I feel like I say it all the time around here, but one of my favorite things about working in the watch space, particularly in the micro/indie territory that we find ourselves in, is being surprised by a brand or a watch that comes at you completely unexpectedly. I had that experience recently with a new watch from Metrical, an entirely new brand that I can honestly say I had never heard of until a PR colleague dropped me an email about them. The renders in the press release had me immediately intrigued. This watch, which they call the Epiphany Origin, uses a non-traditional time telling display inspired, according to the brand, by the way humans first told the time: through changes in the sky. The party trick of the Epiphany Origin is relatively simple. The minute hand is self explanatory and just like a traditional minute hand on any other watch you’ve worn or seen. The hours, though, are read through an aperture in the upper half of the dial, with a numerical display that spans from 6:00 to 6:00. During the daylight hours you’ll find a graphic representation of the sun in that aperture, and in the evening you’ll see the moon, trailing right behind. It’s one of those things you sometimes experience with a watch that is initially a little bewildering, but then completely intuitive. It is, after all, just a different way to clock a twelve hour timespan on a dial, and is essentially an AM/PM indicator that’s blown up to full dial size. That “blowing up” as...
Monochrome
For our latest independent watchmaking discovery, we talk to Alex Goetschi, a young self-taught watchmaker from Switzerland with a very interesting story. Under the name of Manteio, which comes from the Greek word for Oracle, he finds inspiration in Greek mythology. And what better topic for your first watch than the ‘King of the Gods’ […]
Monochrome
Northern Watches, launched by the Norwegian-born and Swiss-based watchmaker Stian Lofstad, arrives with a clear message: show the whole day at a glance, keep the design clean, and build it in Switzerland with proven movement. The debut range splits into two references, the bronze-cased NW1 Bronze Age and the steel NW2 Northerner, but the concept […]
WatchAdvice
A forgotten 1970s prototype finally brought to life, the Chronomaster Original Triple Calendar Lapis Lazuli is Zenith at its poetic best. A celestial twist on a historic design, this is a watch that feels as timeless as the night sky it represents! What We Love The Lapis Lazuli stone dial is genuinely stunning. A vibrant, rich, and ever-changing under light, perfectly capturing Zenith’s celestial identity. The El Primero 3610 movement keeps the brand’s DNA alive with that iconic 36,000 vph beat and flawless integration of the triple calendar and moon-phase. Despite the dial’s visual complexity, the blue-and-white contrast and colour-matched calendar wheels keep everything clean, legible, and refined. What We Don’t The straight lugs don’t curve down enough, meaning the case can sit slightly proud on smaller wrists. At 14 mm, it’s not overly chunky, but some may find it a little tall, especially under tighter cuffs. As a complete calendar, it still requires five manual date changes a year, not a deal-breaker, but something to note for practicality. Overall Rating: 8.9/10 Value for money: 8.5/10 Wearability: 9/10 Design: 9/10 Build quality: 9/10 The story of the Zenith Chronomaster Original Triple Calendar is a fabled one, as it is about a timepiece that never made it to production, up until almost 54 years later, when Zenith went through their archives and found the original plans for this timepiece. While we can say that Zenith might’ve missed out on an incred...
Time+Tide
Cheers to no flipping!The post Integrity over profit: Studio Underd0g cancels a flipper’s US$16,000 Mim0sa order appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Fratello
Welcome to the second match in the Fratello Dress Watch Season contest, our effort to identify the best new dress watch of 2025. The series continues with a duo of proper heavy hitters. Match two in round one sees Jorg defending the Chopard L.U.C Qualité Fleurier 20th Anniversary Edition. Daan will make his case for […] Visit Fratello Dress Watch Season: Round 1, Match 2 - Chopard L.U.C Qualité Fleurier 20th Anniversary Edition Vs. Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Monoface Small Seconds to read the full article.
SJX Watches
While Aubert and Ramel is a new brand, and the Ouréa is a new watch, Thomas Aubert and Alexis Ramel-Sartori aren’t new to independent watchmaking, both having worked for a prominent name in the space. That experience is evident in a strong – and decidedly on-trend – debut that stands out even in a crowded market. Initial Thoughts It seems there are many finely decorated time-only watches on the market today; the two contributed to some of the better ones in their earlier careers. Now the pair strike out under their own name, and unsurprisingly, their first watch is quite good. Though the duo seem to know that already, as they have priced it close to, just a little below, leading independents. The Ouréa’s “scraped” dial brings to mind the wildly successful Chronomètre Artisans from Simon Brette. That probably isn’t coincidental, as the two both worked for Simon Brette. However, I perceive an even stronger, and more general, influence of Greubel Forsey in the Ouréa. It also calls back to Thomas Aubert’s Séléné, winner of last year’s F.P. Journe young talent competition. The scintillating teal accents, applied by atomic layer deposition, are a nice touch to set the watch apart, and the hands are incredibly well made. Interestingly, the filling in the hands is white lacquer rather than luminous material. That seems like a missed opportunity as the appearance would be nearly identical if it were lumed. It is also a shame that Mr Aubert’s recoiling sho...
Worn & Wound
It’s amazing the way some watches don’t make sense until they do. That was absolutely my experience of the Hanhart Aquasphere when it showed up on my desk a few weeks ago. I mean, I love dive watches, but the Aquasphere was something entirely outside my realm of comfort, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. At least, I wasn’t sure what to make of it until I realized something fundamental: I was thinking about the Aquasphere in entirely the wrong context. Sure, on paper, the Aquasphere is a strong addition to the stable of sub $2,000 dive watches on offer today, but in practice, the Aquasphere is nothing like the divers I tend to spend my time with. The Hanhart is a watch that’s big, over-designed, and not at all to my typical taste, but that just may be what I came to like so much about it. In a world where the prevailing trend in dive watches has been to look back into the twentieth century for design inspiration, there’s something fundamentally refreshing about a watch that isn’t meant to compete with the Black Bay even a little. Instead, the Aquasphere evokes a design language born in the ‘90s and perfected in the ‘00s, one that may not entirely appeal to many enthusiasts, but will hit square on for those collectors whose taste was formed by watch billboards of the era, and who find their minds drifting towards watches like the Breitling SuperAvenger or TAG Heuer Link. That does mean that this watch certainly won’t be for everyone, but for the...
SJX Watches
Rolex has just unveiled a fully branded line of accessories for office dwellers, featuring both cufflinks and a genuine Submariner desk clock. The move not only extends the brand’s product range, but reinforces its lifestyle dominance beyond its traditional domain. With its decades-long reputation for precision, quality and retail discipline, Rolex has planted a new flag: high-end accessories built with the same seriousness and iconic design language as its wristwatches. Initial thoughts Rolex has earned its dominant position in the Swiss watch industry in large part by taking everything it does very seriously. So it’s not surprising to see that the formal launch of a full line-up of accessories is treated with due seriousness. This is not the first time that Rolex has offered cufflinks; some references were exhibited at Watches & Wonders this year and have been quietly available for purchase at brand boutiques for some time. But the formal roll-out on the website is a decisive step, and reveals that Rolex wants to give its legions of fans another touchpoint with their favourite brand. On the other hand, the official desk clock is new and quite surprising in its execution, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. Rendered in a heavy 80 mm stainless steel body with a real Cerachrom ceramic bezel and sapphire crystal, it feels like a true Submariner (albeit one that is not water resistant). In terms of value, the accessories are expensive in an absolute sense but are priced rea...
Teddy Baldassarre
Luxury Sport watches are probably one of the most popular categories out there with no shortage of excellent options from the most mainstream to the most niche independent watch brands. While names like the Rolex Submariner and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak are seen as the staple watches in this category to aspire to, we asked our editorial team here to share their personal picks in this admittedly crowded category. So without further ado, let's take a look at our favorite luxury sport watches. Glashütte Original SeaQ Panorama Date There are dive watches that you wear to go diving and there are dive watches that you wear - well, maybe afterward, to the country club where you go to talk about diving. The Glashütte Original SeaQ is a prime example of a watch that can actually fill both roles. While it was established relatively recently, in 1994, Germany’s Glashütte Original can trace its lineage as far back as 1845, which also happens to be the year that watchmaking essentially arrived as an industry in Germany. As I cover in much greater detail in this article, a full century of horological tradition, centered in the town of Glashütte in the state of Saxony, came to an end with Germany’s defeat in World War II. It was replaced by a new era in which a state-owned conglomerate of once-independent heritage watch manufacturers, the Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe or GUB, shifted focus from artisanal techniques and luxuriously decorative timepieces to mass-produced tool watch...
Monochrome
Every brand from Apple to Zenith touts at least one watch that is “built for adventure”, “to stand the test of time”, or to “take a licking and keep on ticking” (okay, maybe that last one is less current). One look at the watch marketing out there today, and you will be inundated with images […]
Worn & Wound
Nomos has had an incredibly interesting trajectory among watch enthusiasts over the past decade or so. If you got into the hobby at a certain time, Nomos was almost certainly one of the first “forum brands” that you’d be introduced to as a level up from some of the core enthusiast watches that you might be able to scrounge for in your local department store or pick up on Amazon. Nomos (and Sinn, and a handful of other brands) required a bit more expense, and a bit more effort to get your arms around, but once you did, you really felt like you were part of the club (no pun intended). And then things kind of settled. The enthusiasts who cut their teeth on Nomos did what enthusiasts always do, and discovered other cool things as the watch community migrated from the antiquated forums to Facebook and Instagram. Nomos never stopped releasing good watches, but there was a sliver of time when it felt like they were improving rapidly and we’d have exciting new releases from them on a regular basis. It didn’t really turn out that way – they’ve largely iterated on core designs, offering new sizes (usually bigger) and sportier specs (bracelets, and better water resistance). The hypothetical Nomos chronograph that I can recall so many anonymous forum users speculating about never materialized, and it seems like the brand has become very comfortable simply being Nomos and making Nomos watches. Things changed a bit this year at Watches & Wonders with the release of the...
Monochrome
French brand Yema got a foothold in the watch world with its rugged tool watches, exemplified by models like the mighty 300 water-resistant Superman skin diver of 1963. Proud of its French roots, Yema secured strategic alliances with the French Navy (Marine Nationale) to develop military tool watches. Based on its 1970s Navygraf dive watch, […]
Monochrome
A slightly more discreet member of the Nomos family, the Metro is a more youthful, cosmopolitan, and modern take on the brand’s clean design language, compared to the deliberately austere Tangente and the classic Ludwig. Soft in shape, elegant with a twist, the Metro is a watch that deserves more attention. And, with the latest addition to the collection, […]
Monochrome
CIGA Design has carved out a distinct lane in contemporary Chinese watchmaking: bold industrial design, visible mechanics, and aggressive value. Founded by industrial designer Zhang Jianmin, the brand built early recognition with skeletonised mechanical pieces and unconventional case forms, then vaulted onto the global stage with the award-winning Blue Planet, cementing its credibility beyond the […]
SJX Watches
Every great collection is a reflection of its owner. In the case of Thomas Engel (1927-2015), the imprint is unmistakable; the mind of an inventor, the discipline of a scientist, and the independence of a man who built his fortune by intuition and sheer will. Engel lived through war, displacement, and postwar scarcity, only to reinvent himself in the 1950s as a pioneer of polymer chemistry. By the time he turned to horology, he had already registered more than a hundred patents, licensed his inventions to multinational firms, and been hailed as a ‘modern Edison.’ The story that follows is drawn from Engel’s own accounts, above all his two books - Breguet: Thoughts on Time and Ein Moderner Thomas Edison - which preserve his memories, methods, and reflections. They allow his voice to guide the narrative, from his earliest mistakes to his most celebrated acquisitions, and from his inventions in plastics to his interpretation of Abraham-Louis Breguet’s works. Engel brought to collecting the same qualities that had defined his scientific career: a commitment to verification, a reliance on systematic method, and an instinct for invention. Each watch he acquired was studied as an instrument, its mechanism understood and its history traced. To hold a Breguet, for Engel, was to engage in dialogue with a fellow inventor across centuries. The man Thomas Paul Engel was born in Leipzig in 1927, amid the uneasy calm between wars. His father, a textile merchant dealing in fin...
Worn & Wound
Watches & Wonders can be a blur of new releases in and of itself. So, when a brand asks if you want to preview some upcoming introductions for the year ahead, it can start to make your head spin. However, at my Raymond Weil appointment this past spring, I relinquished. The brand had a small display of archival pieces in a vitrine at their booth, and its Chief Marketing Officer Jeremie Bernheim assured me the reveal would be worth viewing alongside the mini museum of vintage designs. What he shared with me was a new capsule within Raymond Weil’s Toccata collection drawing from the retro models and aptly named Toccata Heritage. Today, this collection comes to you in nine styles, each more beautiful than the next, and with the option of either quartz or mechanical, manually wound movements for the first time. If you have followed Raymond Weil through any point of its nearly 50-year history, you know the brand loves to play with shape and case architecture. The existing Toccata collection explores this with a combination of rectangular and round models. For the new Toccata Heritage capsule, the maison has refined this design language even further. Here, you have a shape the brand simply calls oval, but in my humble opinion, this description does not do the case justice. The case design of the new Toccata Heritage models is decidedly not the harsh, egg-shaped oval profile you might associate with other watch brands. Instead, it takes the structure of the current rectangular m...
Monochrome
Delma isn’t a newcomer pretending to be a tool-watch brand. The independent, family-run company has been crafting robust sports watches in Lengnau since 1924 and has earned its reputation with capable (or highly capable) divers since the late 1960s. Within that foundation, the Oceanmaster line (introduced in 2017) is the brand’s nautical instrument: a large […]
Worn & Wound
It’s well understood that anniversaries in the watch world are fertile ground for new projects. We see it on what amounts to a weekly basis at this point, brands celebrating milestones for collections, movements, and of course the founding of the brand itself. Collaborations are also at the heart of pushing new products to watch enthusiasts, which again needs no further explanation at this point. So in that sense, the new limited edition release from Unimatic in partnership with the Armoury should be the least surprising thing ever. It’s a watch that represents the continuation of a collaborative relationship and a celebration of a pair of anniversaries. The Armoury, the menswear retailer founded by Mark Cho, turns 15 this year, the same year that Unimatic turns ten. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on the impact both the Armoury and Unimatic have had in the watch space in that time. Unimatic has developed into one of the leading design focused, approachable, independent brands. Like Ming, Fears, and a small handful of other brands that have hit their stride in roughly the same time period, they have an unmistakable aesthetic that is recognizable from across a room, as well as a committed contingent of fans that hang on every new release. And while the Armoury did not begin as an outpost for watches, it’s become an important part of the community thanks to Mark Cho’s genuine dedication to watches. He’s a true collector and admirer of great watches (at all p...
Worn & Wound
The Windup Watch Fair, especially the New York City edition, has increasingly become a venue for brands to debut new watches aimed at their enthusiast fans. It makes a lot of sense if you’ve ever been to a Windup – there’s an incredibly high concentration of watch lovers in a single place, and many of them are in what you might call a buying mood. And of course, the new stuff is often the most enticing when that particular mood strikes. This year, Serica got in on the act, debuting new references in the Parade collection, their unexpected but incredibly well executed “dress watch” from last year. “Dress watch” is in scare quotes here because of course it’s quite a bit more complex than that, but it’s perhaps easiest to understand the Parade when you view it as a contrast (and complement) to Serica’s sportier offerings. A quick refresher, in case it’s needed, on the Parade. Serica refers to the case as “stadium” shaped because it’s based on the architecture of the Roman Stadium, with straight sides that blend into an elliptical shape at 12 and 6. On the wrist, it presents as an oval, but a look at the case in profile (or any angle other than top down) reveals the case construction makes this one tough to pigeon hole. It offers 100 meters of water resistance while being just 8.2mm tall thanks to “sandwich” style construction that uses screws that hold the case together from the back and are housed in and protected by the bezel. This is far f...
Teddy Baldassarre
How much do you really know about Citizen Watches, the tough and stylish Promaster collection, the proprietary Eco-Drive technology, and other signature innovations of the Japanese brand, like the exclusive Super Titanium and the recent series of automatic calibers in the luxurious Series 8 models? In this article, we explore the history of Citizen Watch Company from its founding to the modern day and spotlight a dozen notable watches in today’s Citizen collection that have caught the attention of the Teddy Baldassarre team. By the end, you should be much closer to answering the question of whether Citizen watches are good-quality and whether they're for you. Citizen History and Early Milestones With its very high-tech lineup and avant-garde designs, one might be inclined to think Citizen Watch Company is a relatively new player on the worldwide watch scene. One would be mistaken, however. The company today known as Citizen traces its roots all the way back to 1918, when it was founded as the Shokosha Watch Research Institute by Kamakechi Yamazaki. The name “Citizen” first appeared on the dial of a pocket watch that Shokosha produced in 1924; it is believed to have been suggested by Yamazaki’s close friend Shinpei Goto, then the mayor of Tokyo, who believed such a watch should be universally appealing and accessible to all “citizens” of Japan. Shokosha merged with the Schmid company, a Japan-based manufacturing firm founded by expatriate Swiss watchmaker Rodo...
![Introducing – The Ulysse Nardin Diver [AIR] Ahmed Seddiqi 75th Anniversary Edition](https://monochrome-watches.com/app/uploads/2025/10/Ulysse-Nardin-Diver-AIR-Ahmed-Seddiqi-75th-Anniversary-Edition-5.jpg)
Monochrome
Celebrating 75 years of the United Arab Emirates’ leading watch and jewellery retailer and founder of Dubai Watch Week, Ulysse Nardin releases a special version of its Diver Air for Ahmed Seddiqi. Touted as the world’s lightest mechanical dive watch, the Diver [AIR] surfaces in blue attire to mark the retailer’s anniversary. Introduced earlier this […]
Monochrome
Founded in 1893 and rooted in the Saxon cradle of German watchmaking, Union Glashütte has never shied away from character. The brand´s Belisar series is famous for its automotive-inspired editions, and needless to say, the design cues of the Speedster editions have always been taken from a German car. This year, for the first time, […]
Time+Tide
This week marks the return of Australia's largest enthusiast-run watch and horology convention to Sydney - here's what you need to know.The post Australia’s watch community is gathering in Sydney this week for Watchfest 6! appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
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