Feb 19, 2026
Owner’s Review: the Elliot Brown Holton Automatic GMT Black Whiteout
I want to let you in on a secret of mine: As I was preparing to attend my first Windup in October of 2023, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t make any impulse watch purchases at the fair. In all honesty, I was still pretty new to watches at the time, and I wanted to make sure I fully understood both the watch’s mechanics and the brand I was buying from before committing to a purchase. Making it through that first fair unscathed, I decided this self-imposed restriction was pretty smart. After coming on staff and being wonderfully overwhelmed working those first Windups, I managed to keep that internal promise for over a year before I finally made my first purchase last year in Dallas. Having learned a ton from working my first fair (namely, wear good shoes and drink way more water than you think you need), I went into Chicago with an entirely different game plan. While the primary goal was and still is to capture the moments that make Windup so special, I also wanted to start meeting the people behind the brands that I’d heard so much about. In doing so, I found myself chatting with the crew from Elliot Brown Watches. At the time, I hadn’t heard of the brand (or many others in the room, to be honest), but it was the fact that they stood in front of their booth, rather than behind it, that drew me in. While I didn’t walk away with anything this time, I started paying attention to their brand as they released the Arne, a Founder’s edition of the Beachmaster, and th...