Latest watch news · Page 5

Since its launch in 2021, the Seastar 2000 Professional has occupied an interesting spot in Tissot’s catalogue. For around EUR 1,000, it delivers a specification sheet that normally comes with more expensive dive watches: a helium escape valve, a ceramic insert bezel, 600m water-resistance, ISO 6425 certification, and a robust Swiss movement. In short, this […]

Welcome to another episode of Fratello On Air! This week, we talk about how hype can help or hurt brands. Naturally, there are plenty of other topics on the docket, including television, German culture, and more! This podcast player is blocked because you did not accept marketing cookies. Change cookie settings Hype is a funny […] Visit Fratello On Air: How Hype Can Help Or Hurt A Brand to read the full article.

First released in 2019, Vacheron Constantin’s Traditionnelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar marked a before and after in the sophisticated realm of QPs. While not the first watchmaker to feature dual frequencies, Vacheron’s Twin Beat broke new ground as the first movement allowing you to switch between the two regulating mechanisms, converting a gas guzzling complication […]

When I think of Farer, I don’t necessarily associate the brand with pilot’s watches. Moreover, I don’t link it to any particular watch category at all, even though I’ve previously reviewed a couple of iterations of the Farer World Timer. Instead, the brand is best recognized for its compelling use of color. That said, the […] Visit Hands-On With The Farer Pilot Series II Curtis — A Fresh Take On The Pilot’s Watch to read the full article.

The honorary president who kept the family independent, survived the quartz crisis, and built a generational legacy. Philippe Stern, honorary president of Patek Philippe and the man who shaped modern fine watchmaking, passed away on June 14, 2026, aged 88.

The fusee and chain system is one of those terms in high horology parlance that instantly elevates the status of a given watch. And yet few appreciate the elegance and subtle complexities of this horological contraption that surprisingly predates the invention of the hairspring itself. The need for constant torque A high-performance oscillating system requires a somewhat constant power source in order to keep it swinging consistently. This issue relates to isochronism and the insufficiencies of real-world oscillators. For a watch, this means that its precision is, to a degree, dependent on how constant the torque reaching the escapement is. This is not as easy as one might think. The mainspring stores potential energy in its wound coils, which it then slowly feeds into the gear train as the barrel unwinds. Because of how the system is built, and due to physics-related constraints, the power coming from the mainspring barrel is all but constant. Ideally, the torque would be linearly decreasing — meaning that the slope of the barrel torque is directly proportional to the arming angle. Coiled mainspring inside a barrel. When a mainspring barrel is fully wound, the torque it feeds into the going train is maximal, sometimes causing the balance wheel to swing too wide and over-bank. As the mainspring unwinds, the torque stabilises to a steadily declining rate. But as the movement enters its last hours of power reserve, the torque from the barrel decreases considerably and more...

Charlie Paris has been designing and assembling accessible watches since 2014. The Alliance line represents the French indie brand’s take on a go-anywhere, do-anything (GADA) model. I got a chance to go hands-on with the Charlie Paris Alliance in two versions. This is how we got along. The Charlie Paris Alliance features a sunburst dial. […] Visit Hands-On With The Versatile And Thoroughly Modern Charlie Paris Alliance to read the full article.

Doxa is one of those watch brands where the lore is kind of hard to escape. Every release is the subject of intense enthusiast discussion as the watches are contextualized through a complex history. There’s real mystique to the brand, which I think largely stems from the fact that Doxa’s dive watches were always true enthusiast products, made for actual divers as tools of their trade. This sets them apart from Rolex, Omega, and many other Swiss luxury houses, not because they didn’t also make tools for real divers (they certainly did), but because they also focused their attention on more mainstream pursuits. Doxa, at least in the public imagination, 50+ years on, did not. They’re seen as a brand for purists, and still appreciated by them to a great extent, even if they sometimes do something that’s a little on trend. There’s perhaps no watch in their catalog with more lore attached to it than the Sub 200 T.Graph, a chronograph version of the Doxa’s iconic Sub 200 diver. This watch was briefly released in a very limited way all the way back in 2019, and, ever since, collectors and fans of the brand have been clamoring for a non-limited edition. This week, Doxa has given the people what they want, with the introduction of the Sub 200 T.Graph II.  The new Sub 200 T.Graph II is, at least on the surface, exactly what you’d expect a modern, permanent version of the T.Graph to be. It is sized down just slightly from the 2019 limited edition, with a 42mm case in ...

What We Know Angelus is bringing back one of my favorite traditional chronograph designs with the new multi-scale Instrument de Mesures. The new version of their 2025 GPHG Chronograph award-winning monopusher features three scales for telemeter, tachymeter, and pulsometer, and comes in a black or white dial, harkening back to early 1930s and 1940s chronograph designs where chronographs were pure utility. Powered by the manually-wound A5000 movement, a version of a La Joux-Perret 5000-4 (a movement manufacturer which is under the same ownership umbrella as Angelus), the watch measures 39mm by 9.25mm with a stainless steel case and display caseback, a single co-axial crown pusher for the chronograph, and 30m of water resistance. The movement has a 42-hour power reserve and runs at 3Hz. If the movement architecture looks familiar, LJP owns the rights to the famous THA monopusher movement.  The telemeter scale allows you to calculate distance by measuring the time between when you observe something and when you hear it. The tachymeter, of course, allows you to measure speed over a distance. And the pulsometer allows you to check your heart rate. Combining all three can be a mess of a thing, but long ago, the watch world settled on this beautiful stacked set of scales with a snailed, swirling effect. The watch also features lume at the hour markers, hidden in the three scales.  The new Angelus Instrument de Mesures is limited to 25 pieces in each dial version and retails for ...

Philippe Stern, who served as general director and later president of Patek Philippe from 1977 to 2009, died yesterday at the age of 88. Under his stewardship, the Geneva manufacture was transformed from a small, workshop-scattered operation into the global benchmark for fine watchmaking, a position it holds to this day. He was the third generation of the Stern family to lead the company. His grandfather Charles, alongside his brother Jean, had acquired Patek Philippe from insolvency in 1932 from their position as the firm’s trusted dial supplier. His father Henri had built the company’s modern international distribution network and established the Henri Stern Watch Agency in New York, laying the commercial foundations on which Philippe would build. Father and son, Henri and Philippe Stern. Image – Patek Philippe Philippe Stern became managing director in 1977, at the height of the quartz crisis. The timing could not have been more demanding. Swiss watch industry employment was collapsing, from roughly 90,000 workers to a fraction of that figure within a few years, as electronic timekeeping rendered the mechanical watch commercially marginal almost overnight. Many established manufacturers collapsed, merged, or abandoned mechanical production entirely. Stern’s response defined his presidency. He kept the tooling, retained his engineers, and committed Patek Philippe irrevocably to mechanical watchmaking at the precise moment the industry consensus ran in the opposit...

Long-time MONOCHROME readers might remember that we were among the very first to cover the work of Dutch designer and watchmaker Laurens de Rijke. Back then, the focus was on the ingenious Amalfi Series I, a watch with a rotating inner case inspired by driving and travel. Since those early days, De Rijke & Co. […]

After hands-on testing, these field, pilot, digital, and tool watches stood out for making the time easy to read without fuss.

Philippe Stern, the visionary executive who led Patek Philippe through the end of the quartz crisis, kept the family company independent and secured its position at the top of Swiss mechanical high horology, died on June 14th at the age of 88. The Geneva-based company announced Philippe Stern's passing in a statement calling the Patek Philippe Honorary President a "pioneering and visionary spirit" who "left an indelible mark on the history of the family manufacture, preserving its independence and establishing its global stature." Philippe Stern. Photo courtesy Patek Philippe. Stern led Patek Philippe as President from 1993 to 2009. During his tenure, he consolidated Patek Philippe's manufacturing at a new flagship manufacture in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva. He integrated its production capabilities to bring as much as possible in-house. He also oversaw the launch of the Nautilus sport watch in the 1970s, the multi-year project to build the Caliber 89, the most complicated portable mechanical watch at the time, boasting 33 complications. In 2001, he inaugurated the Patek Philippe museum in Geneva, an unparalleled exhibition of not only Patek Philippe but of the entire history of horology. Philippe Stern was born in 1938 into a family already at the center of Swiss watchmaking: his grandfather, Charles Stern, had recently acquired the Patek Philippe manufacture in 1932, and his father, Henri Stern, had just joined the company. After studying economics and commerce, Philippe Ste...

In Greek mythology, there is the well-known story of Icarus, a heady youth whose lofty aspirations send him flying on homemade wings of feathers and wax. In its cautionary denouement, Icarus flies too high and gets too close to the sun, melting the wax, sending him crashing back to Earth. If Carina Massone Negrone knew the story of Icarus, she would also likely have known that the greater the altitude, the danger is not the sun's heat but extreme cold and a lack of oxygen. And yet, in 1935, the Italian aviator set an altitude record in an open-cockpit piston-powered airplane that remains unbroken to this day. Tudor has just debuted a short documentary film about Negrone, called "La Pilota: The Daring Story of Marchesa Carina Massone Negrone", which covers the flying pioneer's remarkable life and the watches—Tudors, of course—that she wore. Carina Massone Negrone was a "marchesa," a noblewoman by her marriage to a marquise, and could have enjoyed a life of ease in her palazzo in Genova. But her adventurous spirit compelled her to pursue activities that might have seemed "unladylike" in 1930s Italy. She was an avid swimmer and skier and fished the Mediterranean for sharks. And in 1933, at the age of 22, she took flying lessons from an Italian fighter pilot and became the first woman to get her pilot's license from the Reale Unione Nazionale Aeronautica. Only a year later, she set an altitude record for a seaplane by flying to 5,544 meters. But she wasn't done yet—far f...

Gerald Charles launches an addition to their Maestro 2.0 Ultra Thin collection with a new Asia Limited Edition in a jade dial.

In 2017, Simon Jeffs, an aero-mechanical engineer, founded Brooklands Watch Company with the help of his son Michael. The inspiration for the brand came from the historic track where British motorsport was born and the world’s first motor racing chronograph was invented in 1907 along with the father-son duo’s mutual love of timepieces. Five years after its founding, Michael tragically passed away from cancer at the incredibly young age of 28. Two years following his death – the year Michael would have turned 30 – his mother, Sandra, launched the 30 for 30 campaign, aiming to raise £30,000 in his memory for charities that had helped them during Michael’s illness. The response was extraordinary, and they went on to raise £132,642. This generosity gave Michael’s family the confidence to think beyond a single year of fundraising and to create a long-term legacy in his honor, which led them to establish the Buying Time auction opening today and running for one month until July 14. The auction is made possible in partnership with the Alliance of British Watch and Clock Makers, who embraced the idea of creating a charitable foundation supported by the watch community. Each of the watches up for sale is brand new, unworn, and generously donated by the brand, maker, or authorized partner exclusively for this auction. Every pound raised will go directly to the organizations’ partner charities, whose applications are reviewed quarterly to ensure every grant is thought...

A man who has been crucial in shaping the brand as we know it, Philippe Stern, General Director as of 1977, then President of Patek Philippe from 1993 to 2009 and father of current President Thierry Stern, passed away on 14 June 2026, in his 88th year. Considered one of the most influential business leaders […]

When Monovant introduced the Rheon Royal Lapis last year, the young Greek brand delivered a watch that was simple, sturdy, and regal. The deep blue lapis lazuli dial with a tiny diamond made a statement without relying on excess. Its clean display suggested that perhaps we need much less than we think we do. Apologies […]

Compare the Omega Speedmaster and Seamaster through wrist-tested fit, movements, water resistance, and daily wear. Decide which Omega line suits you better.

In a world of shrinking watches, a 47mm timepiece stands out. You could call a watch of this size countercultural, but for the new Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Tech, that’s incorrect. The new Fifty Fathoms Tech is a new version of the 2023 Tech Gombessa, and it’s a proper dive instrument. This aquatic monster is all […] Visit Introducing: Blancpain’s New 47mm Fifty Fathoms Tech — Its Fourth High-End Dive Instrument to read the full article.