Worn & Wound
Year in Review: the Best New Brands of 2025
It’s hard to launch a watch brand. And yet, every year, new brands appear. It’s honestly tough to keep up sometimes, and when looking back at 2025, there seemed to be a flurry of new brands competing for our attention at all levels. It’s a truly crowded market, and in spite of the conventional wisdom that we’re moving towards consolidation, the reality on the ground for us is that there’s a surplus of good watches from new players out there to consider. More, in fact, than we can even cover. This is a selection of brands that broke through the noise in one way or another and impressed us in 2025, a difficult task when your inbox is overflowing with press releases and notifications of new stuff to check out. I’m quite certain I missed plenty of good stuff that will only resurface in 2026 when these brands will just be “new to me” and not simply “new,” but that’s an inescapable aspect of covering this industry – there’s simply never an end to the creativity and ingenuity of people drawn to the watch world. Anemoic This first brand immediately forces us to define our terms. Did Anemoic “debut” in 2025? It was the year that founder Magnus Swann began discussing the brand with members of the media and collectors, but they don’t actually have a watch to sell, and may never. It’s a design project from a member of the Studio Underd0g team, and it looks incredibly promising, but is also the type of thing that could vanish into the ether. The ...
