1,590 articles · 1,634 videos found · page 47 of 108
Monochrome
As we’re obsessed with fine mechanical watches, and preferably independent watchmaking, we feel obliged to showcase never-seen-before projects by people you also may have never heard of. And if it weren’t for me stumbling on an Instagram post by a befriended Japanese journalist, you might never have come across Quiet Club. A bit of an […]
Worn & Wound
One of my favorite watch discoveries last year was Atelier Holgur, whose debut diver, the Frømand, I reviewed last year. When I had it in for review I found it to be quite impressive on a number of levels, but the best thing about it was its commitment to the idea behind it. It’s a perfectly capable diver, but everything about it has been designed with a particular aesthetic appeal in mind. In a watch world full of brands that are trying to sell you “tools” you will never actually need, it was weirdly refreshing to see Atelier Holgur admit that they just wanted to make something that looked nice. Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, and you might see the Frømand and immediately want to turn away, but I happened to enjoy it’s unusual take on the skin-diver format and highly legible dial execution. Now they’re back with an update to the Frømand, the new Edition Fumée Silver Tide, with a dial that provides this diver with a very different personality than the debut. The new Silver Tide follows other Edition Fumée releases in a variety of colors that have trickled out from Atelier Holgur over the last year. The Silver Tide variant, according to the brand’s founders, takes inspiration from their night diving experiences, where moonlight reflects off the water with a silvery glow and fades into the black of the ocean. The dial here is higly evocative, with a bright silvery center that gradually becomes darker until it reaches total blackness at th...
Fratello
When I assembled my list of favorites from this year’s Watches and Wonders, I didn’t even mention the Rolex Day-Date with the new white dial and deconstructed Roman numerals. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it because it’s way out of my league budget-wise, and it seems like such a small update that it didn’t […] Visit Hands-On: Rolex Day-Date With A White Dial And Deconstructed Roman Numerals to read the full article.
Monochrome
Most of Delma’s repertoire is sporty, verging on instrument-style watchmaking incarnated by the highly impressive 5,000m-rated Delma Blue Shark IV. The brand has long demonstrated its ability to create robust and capable watches at fair prices. But today, Delma has decided to embrace the other end of the spectrum with its answer to the highly […]
Monochrome
Piaget has been busy celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. As a precursor of ultra-thin movements since the 1950s, Piaget has recovered its throne and is basking in the limelight with its world record-breaking 2mm-thin Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon. While it does not hold a world record, Piaget’s flamboyant 1979 Polo watch has also been […]
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Fratello
It has been a while since the last episode of Building A Watch Brand. In fact, that was a full month before the big launch, which took place on March 7th. As you may have gathered elsewhere, the VPC Type 37HW presale was a success, meeting the threshold number of sales over the first weekend. […] Visit Building A Watch Brand Episode 14: An Update On The Production And Presale Of The VPC Type 37HW to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
Without a doubt, my favorite pen is the LAMY AL-Star. I could (and very well might) write paragraphs about this incredible fountain pen - something which would be an absolute joy, thanks in large part to the lovely experience the LAMY offers - but that’s not the pen I’m here to talk about today. That’s because, despite my fondness for the iconic AL-Star, it is not the pen I use most. It’s not even the fountain pen I use the most. No, that honor goes to the humble Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen. I would categorize the LAMY AL-Star (and its remarkably similar sibling, the Safari) as the Seiko of fountain pens. Like a Seiko, it is often cited as a great first fountain pen for people looking to try something outside the typical rollerballs and ballpoints we see everyday. Also like a Seiko, the LAMY is a gateway pen, one which often leads to other more expensive options. The LAMY could easily be the one pen with which you live your entire life. For a totally reasonable amount of money, anyone could be happy with a LAMY, just as anyone could be happy with a Seiko SPB Diver. The AL-Star’s got everything you need, and nothing you don’t. It’s well-made, well-designed, and comes in so many variations that it would be hard not to find one that suits your taste. Pen collectors I know who have pens many multiples (sometimes many, many) the value of the LAMY still frequently cite it as one of their favorites. But if the LAMY is the Seiko of fountain pens, then t...
SJX Watches
Antoine Simonin (1938-2024), who died on May 20 at the age of 84, left his mark on generations of watchmakers and watchmaking enthusiasts. He will be best remembered as the director of WOSTEP (Watches Of Switzerland Training Educational Program) from 1976 to 2003. Simonin was a person obsessed with the transmission of watchmaking knowledge, and sought to make WOSTEP an instrument for the international dissemination of watchmaking mastery. Founded in 1966, WOSTEP sought to train watchmakers capable of maintaining and repairing Swiss-made watches according to the standards laid out by their makers, the Swiss watch industry. Over time, its courses have been taught in English, French, German, Japanese, Swedish, and Mandarin. “I studied at WOSTEP under Antoine Simonin in 1987 and 1991,” says Peter Speake, the watchmaker best known for founding Speake-Marin, “He was instrumental in keeping WOSTEP going during that difficult industry period, subsequently influencing the careers and friendships of many watchmakers, directly and indirectly, playing a significant role in the lives of many crossing multiple generations.” Recounts another student, Paul Francis Madden, now himself an instructor at WOSTEP, “I was a student in 1987, back when the staff at WOSTEP was only Mr Simonin and his wife Josiane… It came to showing him my first hairspring… He slowly spun my balance wheel in his callipers, scrutinising it for what seemed like an eternity, and all without saying a sing...
Fratello
If you haven’t heard that term before, that makes two of us, but trust me; I’ll explain. The CHPTR_Δ.5 (pronounced “Chapter Delta point five” in case you were stumbling) is the lovechild of BA111OD and Label Noir, designed by Thomas Baillod. It is a triangularly different, semi-open-worked creation with a dark vibe. This comes in […] Visit Introducing: The Stealthy Allure Of The BA111OD CHPTR_Δ.5 Label Noir Limited Edition to read the full article.
Fratello
I’m sorry; I misunderstood the task at hand. This is not about me being given €7,500 to spend on three watches… I’ve reluctantly given myself a purchasing embargo, and for an addict, that’s not easy, hence the happy outburst. But I still relish the challenge of picking the best watches under €2,500, which is not […] Visit Fratello Favorites: The Best Watches Under €2,500 - Thor’s Picks From Tissot, SpaceOne, And Sinn to read the full article.
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Worn & Wound
A few weeks back, I found myself sitting at the end of my kitchen island on a phone call with a man I have never met, but with whose collection I am intimately familiar. After all, CB - better known as @onlybuyingtime - has over 30k followers on Instagram, he is a voting member of the GPHG, and he is the owner and caretaker of, quite frankly, one of the most diverse collections of independent watches I’ve seen anywhere. CB has been collecting for the entirety of his adult life, though his fascination with watches extends back further. As he describes it, CB had “fun watches as a kid,” but it was only in adulthood that he really started collecting in a tangible way. “It wasn’t like I had a parent or anybody that was really into watches. I think I really fell into it as an adult and realized this is something that’s very unique to each man. It tells a lot about a personality. If you are in a sports watch vs. a dress watch; the colors, the make, the models, the complications, all that stuff tells a lot about somebody. And for me, it’s just another level of expression.” Modern Day Patronage One of the great treasures of Philadelphia is the Barnes Foundation which is, for those unfamiliar, one of the world’s stand-out collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern art. When I first moved to Philly in 2022, it took me less than a week to visit the Barnes for the first time, and, in a city filled with great museums, it remains my favorite, and...
Fratello
As I become more familiar with the Sternglas brand, I realize I’m not as tuned in as I thought. On the face of it, this Hamburg-based watch brand embraces minimalism in its designs, albeit with considered bursts of color. The popular Hamburg line of watches, named after the brand’s home city, is a typical example. […] Visit Hands-On With The Sternglas Hamburg Chrono Regatta And Hamburg Edition Hafen to read the full article.
SJX Watches
A bestseller thanks to its integrated-bracelet design and accessible price, the Tissot PRX now gets more new dial options, including a “light green” hue for the time-only PRX Powermatic 80 and a “graded” green for the PRX Chronograph. The new green dials join the recent blue dial options and more compact 35mm model. Initial thoughts The new models are only cosmetic updates, but are otherwise the same. The brushed steel cases and ETA movements remain unchanged. So do the respective prices, making them the same value propositions as before. Notably, the chronograph dial gets a more substantive cosmetic upgrade beyond the colour. It now sports the waffle-patterned dial previously found only on the PRX time-only models. This is an attractive upgrade that imbues the model with a sportier aesthetic. New dial options The Powermatic 80’s dial features the same waffle pattern found in past models, but now finished in a “light” green hue that first seen on the quartz version released in 2021. The chronograph dial is presented in a darker shade of green with a gradient finish. It also gains the same stamped pattern found on the time-only model. This marks a departure from previous iterations of the chronograph, which were characterised by a vertically brushed finish with a two-colour scheme. Both watches retain the same case dimensions and movements found on earlier models. The three-hander is powered by the Powermatic 80.111, derived from the ETA C07.111. Tissot has e...
Fratello
This is hardly the first open-worked version of the legendary Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin, but it is my favorite one so far. The perfection is in the white gold that “AP” used for the watch’s exterior, the internal and external finishing, and the choice of colors. The way the watch combines significant weight […] Visit Hands-On: The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin Openworked In White Gold to read the full article.
Hodinkee
Brace yourself for guilloché dials, diamond embellishments, and funky straps, oh my!
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Worn & Wound
It’s always fun when we get to introduce you to a new entrant in the micro-brand tool watch space, and today is no exception. Tuul (pronounced tool) is a brand new Brooklyn-based micro-brand with a focus on - you guessed it - tool watches. If you spend too much time on Instagram (who am I kidding, we all do), you may have seen teasers for their first watch peppered through your feed over the last year. Now, with the introduction of the Filthy 13, we’re finally getting to see what a Tuul watch looks like. For a new brand building their first watch, it is almost always the right choice to go simple. Making a watch is hard, making a good watch even harder, and overcomplicating the process can easily turn the whole thing into a jumbled mess. Besides, tool watches should be simple and straightforward, ready to do their job and not much else. So it’s no big surprise that Tuul has fallen back on a familiar source of inspiration for their first release - the Dirty Dozen watches issued by the MoD to British troops during World War II, which is in many ways the prototypical tool watch. The Filthy 13 follows closely in the footsteps of the Dirty Dozen Watch, Wrist Waterproof spec and carried over the familiar dial layout with central hour and minute hands, small seconds at six o’clock, large Arabic numerals, a railroad minute track, and an abundance of lume. The Filthy 13 swaps the radioactive paint used on the original dials for Super-Luminova, which here has a slightl...
Fratello
I still can’t usually remember how to use a compass bezel, but the prospect of a tougher, even more versatile Hamilton Khaki is tempting. By offering two of the subjectively best-sized case designs, the Hamilton Khaki Field Expedition covers most bases. We covered this release late last year, but it slipped under my radar, and […] Visit Revisiting The Hamilton Khaki Field Expedition to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
There’s no denying that even considering carrying a knife may be a bit scary. Will people stare at you? Are you now carrying a weapon? Is this even legal? The answer to all of those questions is “maybe”. There are dozens of variables that come into play when considering your first knife purchase, so I’m here to make that whole world seem a little less daunting by sharing some of my personal experience as well as some widely accepted tips from the world of EDC (everyday carry). Ultimately, I believe the way to look at a knife is that it’s a tool. One for opening up that new watch box, slicing up an apple at lunchtime, or helping out with some random tasks around the house. Sure, you could use a key to open up a box or your teeth to tear open a package, but it’s important to have the right tool for the job to prevent yourself from breaking an item while using it for something it’s not meant for, or even worse - requiring an embarrassing trip to the dentist. I don’t mean to frame this as some sort of pro-knife propaganda, since you ultimately can get by without one, but after slipping one into your pocket and seeing just how often it comes in handy, you might be surprised at how useful it is in your day to day life. There’s also the other option - you don’t even have to carry it with you at all. A knife tossed into your junk drawer at home or desk drawer at work will more than likely cover most of your use cases anyway. Let’s break it down a bit ...
Worn & Wound
One of the prevailing narratives to come out of Watches & Wonders 2024 was that it was, across the board, a pretty quiet year. That may have been true for some, but others, like IWC, came to play. A good portion of the attention IWC got this year was (justifiably) directed at the new Portugieser Eternal Calendar that Zach Kazan introduced a few weeks ago, but that watch was far from the only Portugieser IWC brought to Geneva this year. The Portugieser is not the first watch that springs to mind for most of us when contemplating IWC - far more likely would be some sort of Pilot’s Watch or, more recently, the Ingenieur - but it has been, at times subtly, possibly the most important collection in the IWC catalog. I know so many collectors for whom the Portugieser was their first nice watch, and it is a model I continue to see in the wild, especially in cities like New York or London where people still routinely wear suits to work. IWC, like Rolex, is a brand that prefers evolution over revolution when it comes to its designs - one only has to look at the slow transformation of the Pilot’s Watch for evidence of that. The last few years have seen the brand slowly tinkering with the Portugieser line, bringing it up to date and refining what was already a great watch to make it better. This year, they continued that process and introduced a slew of new models and colorways, all of which come together to make up possibly the best lineup of Portugiesers ever assembled. Co...
Worn & Wound
Over the course of three years visiting Geneva with the Worn & Wound team, a handful of traditions have begun to take shape. We carve out a night for a team dinner at Jeck’s, a hole-in-the-wall Singaporean restaurant that we stumbled upon in year one, and is consistently the best meal of the entire trip. We cover Tudor first, every year. I am in the habit of buying a Swatch at the Geneva airport on my way home. And every year, I have a meeting with Hublot, and I write a breathless article about the weird and wonderful stuff I’m shown. It’s consistently the meeting that underscores the “Wonders” bit about the week more than any other. When I first took on the task of writing about the new Hublot novelties at Watches & Wonders, it felt like a defense of sorts. Of the brand, the watches, and even our decision to cover them. I think, thankfully, we’ve all moved on a bit from a time when Hublot was just universally lambasted as a loud and unserious brand for loud and unserious people. They have never really been that in my opinion, but there was a time when the watches, if not really interrogated, could have given you that impression on a surface level. Hublot is covered differently now, and in recent years I’m glad to see them getting their flowers from a watch media that previously skipped them entirely or openly derided them. There are a variety of reasons for that, but a key one has to be that Hublot has, perhaps, calmed down a bit at the entry point in th...
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Worn & Wound
Very few things put a smile on my face quite like the Ulysse Nardin Freak. It’s one of the first haute horlogerie watches I can remember encountering, well before watches were ever a hobby or preoccupation, in a glossy magazine advertisement that I probably saw while waiting for a doctor’s appointment or something else similarly trivial and forgettable. The Freak, though, has stayed with me. How could it not? It’s one of the most cleverly named watches ever made, for one. And its “no dial, no hands, no crown” concept continues to endure, and even after multiple decades of horological innovation surrounding Ulysse Nardin (which they very much had a role in kicking off) it remains every bit as avante-garde, insane, and completely delightful as its always been. For the third straight year, Ulysse Nardin has brought just one watch to show at Watches & Wonders. The Freak S Nomad, a follow up to 2022’s Freak S, is a futuristic tour-de-force that pays tribute to classical watchmaking at the same time as it shows us something we’ve never quite seen before. The movement, an imposing flying carousel that rotates around its own axis, features two balance wheels posted at a 20 degree incline linked to a vertically integrated differential mounted to ball bearings. Every Freak movement, no matter how advanced or comparatively simple (this one is the most advanced there is) is an exercise in problem solving. When the movement itself is in motion, it adds a whole layer o...
Fratello
Watches and Wonders is a somewhat overwhelming experience. You are bombarded with new watches left and right, making it hard to separate the good from the average. But when the dust settles, some watches linger in your mind. Some have that X factor that most lack. These are those watches for me. These are the […] Visit Fratello Favorites: Thomas’s Favorite Watches And Wonders 2024 Releases to read the full article.
Monochrome
Once upon a time, Alpina clearly demarcated between its Alpiner collection geared for land adventures and its Seastrong models designed for underwater exploration. In 2022, Alpina beefed up its Alpiner sports watch with a powerful 200m water-resistant Extreme case with new embossed dial textures. Today, the brand fuses the distinctive Extreme cushion-shaped case with the […]
Worn & Wound
Following the success of last year’s glassbox Carrera chronograph releases, Tag Heuer extends the collection with a new for 2024 bi-compax panda look in stainless steel. This watch features a silver brushed sunray dial, with a black minute chronograph counter at 3 o’clock, a black hour chronograph totalizer at 9 o’clock, and a permanent seconds indicator in silver at 6 o’clock. Dimensions are 39mm in diameter, 46mm from lug-to-lug, and just under 14mm thick. Revealed through its sapphire display back is the in-house chronograph movement Heuer 02 (Ref.TH20-00). It features a bi-directional winding, a new shield-shaped rotor, and an impressive 80-hour power reserve. What made last year’s releases so appealing was their new combination of a concave dial and outward convex tachymeter rehaut, which hugged the outer curvature of the glassbox sapphire crystal. The look is quite frankly mesmerizing, and it has completely rejuvenated the Carrera line. This harmonious blend of vintage tribute, contemporary elegance, and novelty truly embody the spirit for which TAG Heuer is renowned. Retail pricing for the tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph is $6,650 USD, for more information visit www.tagheuer.com. The post TAG Heuer Introduces a New Glassbox Carrera Chronograph appeared first on Worn & Wound.
SJX Watches
ACHI member Konstantin Chaykin unveils his newest timepiece, the Joker Classic. Part of the Wristmon collection, the new Joker reverts to the original design of 2017 but boasts a case downsized to 40 mm and more notably a new movement. Initial thoughts The Joker, as introduced back in 2017, is a very quirky timepiece, not necessary suited to a wide range of tastes. The anthropomorphic dial is as striking today as it was then, with a niche appeal. Nonetheless, the timepiece was very well received – the original 99 pieces were sold out quickly. Since then there were some special editions based on the Joker concept, but most had their own peculiarities, mostly departing from the pure 2017 design. The Joker Classic remains exotic as ever, but feels like a return to the timepiece’s roots – complete with some embellishments and concessions to the modern industry standards. Priced at CHF16,900, the Joker Classic is amongst the more affordable of the Wristmon models. Like the original, it is a good value proposition given its distinctive design and high level of in-house manufacturing, despite the outsourced base movement. A familiar face The Joker Classic features the trademark white dial, made to resemble a smiling face. The regulator-like separated hours and minutes indicators make up the eyes, while the open grinning mouth reveals a cheeky moon phase complication. The Joker Classic is offered in two versions: the traditional color scheme of the original Joker (whit...
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