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Monochrome
Watches and Wonders Geneva 2026 and the Geneva Watch Week are fast approaching, so it’s the perfect time to start planning your trip. Here’s an overview of what awaits you, whether you’re visiting Geneva for a week of work, fun, or simply a celebration of watches. The event continues to expand in scale and importance along with […]
Monochrome
As you might remember, Louis Vuitton and De Bethune recently introduced the third chapter in LV’s ongoing journey through independent watchmaking, the LVDB-03 Louis Varius Project, following the LVRR-01 Chronographe à Sonnerie made with Rexhep Rexhepi, founder of Atelier Akrivia, and the LVKV-02 GMR 6 made with Finnish-born watchmaker Kari Voutilainen. While we were expecting to […]
SJX Watches
Today in Paris a panel of five judges – including Carole Forestier-Kasapi and Kari Voutilainen – presented Alexandre Hazemann and Victor Monnin with the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives. The very same young watchmakers who won the F.P. Journe Young Talent Competition in 2023, the pair clinched the prize for their jump-hour “School Watch”. Launched in 2023 by Jean Arnault, who has spearheaded Louis Vuitton’s fine watchmaking ambitions, the initiative supports promising independent watchmakers while burnishing the maison’s credibility in the watch world. Last year the trophy – and its matching Louis Vuitton trunk – went to Raul Pages for his RP1 Régulateur à Détente. This edition’s victors met at Lycée Edgar Faure, a technical high school in Morteau, France, which is well known for its strong and respected watch and jewellery bent. Their aptly named School Watch developed from the pair’s school watch project. They have since set up shop in Saint-Aubin-Sauges, Switzerland, though both will now have the option of a one-year apprenticeship at Louis Vuitton’s La Fabrique du Temps manufacture in Geneva, in addition to financial support. In December, a Committee culled the 20 semifinalists, which we covered here, down to just five in December and appointed a five-person panel to select the winner. Other finalists included Norifumi Seki, who debuted the ambitious Fading Hours alarm watch, and Bernhard Lederer. Carole Forestier-Kasapi pr...
SJX Watches
The Ardra Labs Delta Type addresses the sizeable minority that grapples with unusual time-zone offsets ignored by traditional GMT watches, doing so in a clever, practical, and visually distinct manner, in a well-rounded package. Initial thoughts Most of our lives follow standard time zones defined as full-hour offsets from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) - the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), practically speaking. However, well over a billion people, from Newfoundland, Canada, to New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, march to a different beat. The Ardra Labs Delta Type, created by Indian-American Nava Krishnan - a cybersecurity professional living in Washington, DC, with family back in South India - aims to provide a solution for those ignored by conventional GMT watches. Louis Vuitton made an attempt towards the same end, though by very different means, with the recent Twin Zone. Timezones of the world. Image – CIA World Factbook India, the world’s most populous country since 2023, spans two of the 24 geographic time zones - GMT+5:00 and GMT+6:00 - however, rather than splitting into two, the country splits the difference, with the entire nation observing a single GMT+5:30 time zone. This is not entirely unique: China nominally operates on a single time zone rather than the five geographic ones it covers, though that is a full-hour offset. While Venezuela and North Korea have abandoned their partial-hour time-zone offsets in the last decade, the Indian governm...
Two Broke Watch Snobs
The updated Seiko Marinemaster HBF001 and HBF002 models bring a new movement, ceramic bezel, and real upgrades. Here's what stands out.
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Teddy Baldassarre
In general, a conversation about the top watch producing countries centers around two nations: Switzerland and Japan, with Japan often occupying the more affordable end of the spectrum and Switzerland more commonly associated with luxury watches and high watchmaking. Of course, this is an overgeneralization of the highest degree, as Japan is home to some of the finest purveyors of high watchmaking, and there are indeed great deals to be found from Switzerland. However, the real tragedy here is the omission of the often overlooked superpower in watchmaking that is Germany. Home to dozens of brands, including some of the best in the business according to a variety of metrics, Germany is an excellent country for watchmaking. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at some of the best German watch brands to provide an overview of names you should know if you’re new to German watches. In each synopsis, We'll begin with a bit of history, share a few of the brands' major accomplishments or best-loved models, and say a bit about what they’re up to these days. [toc-section heading="Laco"] Laco began life as Lacher & Co. in 1925 in Pforzheim, where it is still based today. The company is most famously known for being one of the five brands contracted to produce flieger watches (such as the Beobachtungsuhr) for pilots in the German Luftwaffe ― alongside A. Lange & Söhne, Stowa, and Wempe. The Laco of today continues to be popular for its flieger watches. And unlike IWC an...
SJX Watches
The Christopher Ward C63 Sealander True GMT fills a conspicuous gap in the brand’s catalogue with a proper ‘flyer’ GMT, complete with an independently adjustable local-time hour hand. A handsome, expensive-looking dial conceals the new CW-002 movement, which is COSC-certified and offers a five-day power reserve - a rare pairing. While collectors have noticed that Christopher Ward’s pricing has risen steadily in recent years, the True GMT makes a compelling case that the technical substance has kept pace. The journeyman brand Christopher Ward (CW) is a brand that is evolving unusually rapidly, and seems to have been in a state of almost constant transformation since it was founded in 2004. The brand has cycled through a number of different logos in a fairly short period of time, which has confused collectors. The product mix has also shifted, reflecting more upmarket ambitions that have priced out fans of the brand’s early budget products. This instability has turned off some collectors, which is understandable - most luxury brands are fairly conservative, in part to emphasise the long-lasting social capital that comes with a purchase. That said, CW seems to have finally found an identity worth sticking to. The new logo, which combines England’s St. George’s Cross and the white cross of the Swiss flag, is simple and appealing, and concisely communicates the English/Swiss origin. And while it’s true that prices have crept up, the brand has increased innov...
Time+Tide
The new Seiko Marinemaster HBF001 is the first non-limited Prospex model to use the more accurate 8L45 calibre introduced in July 2025.The post This new Seiko Marinemaster is the first non-limited Prospex to use the higher accuracy 8L45 movement appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Monochrome
Prospex Marinemaster… When you hear these two words, you know things are about to become serious. The name Prospex is all about tool watches for Seiko, being the contraction of Professional Specifications. This is the line of watches where you’ll find instruments made for exploration and diving. Marinemaster is another name with great importance for […]
Teddy Baldassarre
A forerunner of both the rise of microbrands and the ongoing revival of France’s watchmaking industry here in the 21st Century, Baltic Watches emerged on the scene in 2017, originally as a Kickstarter project. Founder Étienne Malec discovered the inspiration for his watchmaking enterprise in his father’s watch collection and named the company in honor of his father’s Polish roots, after the sea off the country’s northern coast. The goal from the start, according to Malec, was to produce “timeless pieces, of the highest quality, for fair prices,” and most would agree that Baltic has delivered on this mission statement. Baltic watches are all assembled in a workshop in Besançon, France, the nation’s historical cradle of watchmaking, and evoke vintage timepieces like the ones Malec’s father collected and extensively catalogued in his journals. Here we will look at the Baltic Aquascaphe, one of their most recognizable watches. The first Baltic watches were the three-hand HMS 001 model, with a Japanese Miyota caliber, and the hand-wound Bicompax 001 chronograph, with the Chinese Seagull ST19 movement. While both these watches were successful, and put Baltic on its path to fan-favorite microbrand status, the small company has since become best known for its Aquascaphe series of dive watches. The Aquascaphe, which was launched in 2018, takes its design inspiration from early “skin diver” watches of the 1950s and ‘60s, with no small amount of influence from...
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Worn & Wound
This year’s LVMH Watch Week looked a little different. It was held in Milan just ahead of the Winter Olympic Games and was limited to a highly exclusive and mostly international guest list. As such, several of the maisons under the LVMH umbrella separately held their own dedicated events here in NYC to exhibit their latest collections as soon as the pieces came available stateside. We finally got our hands on Louis Vuitton’s newest high watchmaking novelties at its massive five-story flagship on Madison Avenue in New York City. In addition, we got the chance to preview a model that will debut later this spring, and spoiler alert: it’s going to knock your socks off. So, stay tuned for that in the coming months. For now, let’s get down to it – we have a lot of ground to cover. Here, we have a slew of new watches joining two of Louis Vuitton’s core collections: the Escale and the Tambour. As a quick refresher, the maison broke from the traditional high fashion space and into the watch sphere back in the late 80s with the Monterey. However, it was really the Tambour, which came a few decades later just after the new millennium in 2002 that started to establish Louis Vuitton in the horological world. The collection has since become the cornerstone of the brand’s watchmaking identity with staying power over the past 20+ years. I guess I’m too giddy to jump to my favorite piece in the new lineup first – the Tambour was the frontrunner of the bunch for me. Here, ...
Fratello
The 150 Heritage pocket watch, the Neo Frame Jumping Hour, and the skeletonized Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar might have stolen most of the limelight when Audemars Piguet presented many novelties in January. Nevertheless, the pieces I was probably most curious to see and try on were a series of three tool watches. Well, these are […] Visit Hands-On With The Three New Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Selfwinding Diver Watches In Steel to read the full article.
SJX Watches
Girard-Perregaux (GP) is starting the year with an ambitious new calibre inside the Minute Repeater Flying Bridges, the in-house GP9530. Also equipped with a tourbillon, the symmetrical, skeleton movement is a micro-rotor automatic, making for an exciting pairing of complications. Notably, even during GP’s heyday as a manufacture, it depended on specialists for its repeater movements. The GP9530 is the brand’s first in-house minuter repeating calibre (though it does borrow from an earlier striking movement created with the help of a complications specialist). The strikework is exposed on the dial, while the reverse reveals the winding mechanism under circular bridges. Initial thoughts In the past couple of years GP has been slowly making a comeback, after a few slow years, as a serious and motivated manufacture. The comeback started with the release of the reworked constant-force escapement and accelerated with last year’s unveiling of the workhorse GP4800 and the GP9620 skeleton tourbillon. This is in some ways a return to form. Historically GP was a powerhouse in this respect, making complicated movements under its own name as well as supplying movements, both complex and simple, to other high-end brands. At that time, however, GP still did source repeater movements from the likes of Christophe Claret. In time, the evolution of the industry reduced the need for such outsourced movements, and the marquee’s lustre dulled. The Minute Repeater Flying Bridges and its ...
Worn & Wound
I’ve been a freelance journalist for 14 years, and while watches have been part of my repertoire since the beginning, I didn’t fully niche into the horological sphere until 2018. One of the assignments I consider to be a breakout story that really gave my career in the watch world momentum came a year later in 2019. At the time, I was writing for The Hour Glass, and I had the opportunity to cover the inauguration of the Gérald Genta Heritage Association. In my then seven-year journey ascending to full horological obsession, I had come to revere Genta as one of the most influential figures in the history of watchmaking, and, in particular, I was charmed by the story of how the Royal Oak came to be. Yes, I have since referenced, been told, and retold the tale dozens of times over, but for me, Genta and the creation of the Royal Oak – the moment that arguably gave his career in the watch world momentum – will never get old and forever hold a special place in my heart. With that said, I’m here to share my hands-on experience with Audemars Piguet’s first semester novelties thanks to a recent trip to AP House in downtown New York City. Among them are several new versions of the Royal Oak, and while none of these are the frontrunner of the lineup, they still bear recognition in my humble opinion. Yes, I will have to respectfully disagree with my Editorial Director Zach Kazan’s opinion piece defining the Royal Oak as “a pure flex.” Sure, like countless luxury ...
Two Broke Watch Snobs
The Timex Expedition Freedive Solar is an affordable solar watch built from ocean-bound plastic, with a rotating bezel and a $159 price tag.
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Worn & Wound
Look, I’m not going to say that I have all the answers here, people, but if there’s one thing I know how to spot, it’s a good notebook. While taxes may send me into a tailspin and I enter a fugue state any time that I’m forced to load the dishwasher, I can confidently say that if you want your notes written down and you want to carry around something that’s aesthetically pleasing…well, I’ll humbly say that I’m your guy for the right answer. Partially, my knowledge of notebooks is collateral damage because of my job – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or even someone who knows how to load a dishwasher) to see a job in pens has given me a deep understanding for what one writes with as much as what one writes on. To this effect, I have a general knowledge of the pros and cons of legal pads versus Moleskines, washi tape versus Scotch. But that stuff can be found fairly easily – Reddit, for better or worse, is a gold mine of information on stationery. But the other reason I find myself knowing about stationery is, quite simply, it’s a passion of mine. While some may find something akin to passion in their marriage or by binge watching Heated Rivalry, I’m much more likely to get butterflies ripping the cellophane off a new notebook versus ripping – you get the picture. This is all to say that, when I tell you Plotter makes some of the most beautiful notebook covers out there, you need to believe me. And when I tell you that pricetag flirting somewhe...
Worn & Wound
Once again, here I am late to the party as our own Zach Kazan blows my mind with another brand specializing in artistic dials featuring my favorite métiers d’art craft: enameling. You may recall when he first covered the partnership between De Rijke & Co. and the illustrator Guy Allen two years ago. Now the duo is back with another trio of driver’s watches spanning on the previous Amalfi theme, this time with a stronger focus on the automotive angle. While the Dutch watchmaker and the British artist have been teaming up for nearly a decade, the pair took their work to the next level in 2024 by collaborating on their first set of watches, establishing the Amalfi special editions. The initial set of three watches focused on the themes of air, land, and sea with distinct designs and color palettes reflecting each element. Thanks to champlevé enamel, the illustrations come to life with texture and depth. For the uninitiated, the specific technique of champlevé enamel (French for “raised field”) is similar to cloisonné. However, instead of raised sections to hold enamel, reservoirs to hold the material are created by carving directly into the metal base. The newest trio builds on these designs, but now takes the automotive theme more literally on both the enamel dial and the engraved caseback. The names of the models draw from three regions, the Amazon, Sahara, and Turini, and each gets a corresponding vehicle you might drive there. For the Amazon, you get the Landr...
Time+Tide
Watches and Wonders Geneva 2025 is set to be the biggest edition yet with 65 brands. Here's everything you need to know.The post Everything you need to know about Watches and Wonders 2026 appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Teddy Baldassarre
When surveying the horological landscape, most roads lead back to Switzerland, Germany, or Japan. But there is a burgeoning watchmaking scene emerging in India of all places and it certainly deserves our attention. Here we are going to adjust our loupe to the vibrant, burgeoning powerhouse that is Indian horology, specifically the microbrand Bangalore Watch Company. When you survey the broader horological landscape today, microbrands have become the absolute frontier of enthusiast watchmaking. These small independents are giving collectors access to serious mechanical specifications and originality without the traditional luxury markups. India is finally translating its massive cultural and technological footprint into this segment of watch collecting, and Bangalore Watch Company appears to be at the forefront of this transition. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into what makes these watches so unique and what you need to know before you add one to your collection. [toc-section heading="Filling the Void After HMT"] To truly understand what you’re getting with Bangalore Watch Company, you have to understand the massive void it stepped into. For decades, the Indian watch market had been dominated by state-run enterprise Hindustan Machine Tools, better known as HMT (the undisputed king of South Asian watchmaking during the 1960s and 80s). Estimates suggest that HMT’s lifetime production exceeded a staggering one hundred million timepieces, generating an appetite ...
Worn & Wound
If you had told me a few years ago that much of what I’d be doing at Worn & Wound in terms of new release coverage would be writing about mother of pearl and stone dial executions like a beat reporter at small town paper assigned to the high school basketball team, I probably would not have believed it. But here we are, multiple years into a trend that does not really seem to be letting up. It started with a resurfacing of high end vintage watches with exotic stone dials, moved to bigger brands capitalizing on the hype, shifted to smaller makers and microbrands offering impossibly affordable options, and now we’re back at the high end, and seeing brands looking for new ways to combine stones and materials in novel ways. Last week, Czapek announced a pair of watches that make particularly interesting use of mother of pearl. The Antarctique S Ice Cloud is, at a glance, simply an Antarctique with a mother of pearl dial. But there’s some special artisanal work that has gone into the making of this particular dial, which has been conceived as a “poetic interpretation of cloud formations in an icy landscape.” The dial is constructed from a piece of white mother of pearl that is cut to just 0.2mm thick – the height of two sheets of paper, according to Czapek. A varnish is then applied to the underside of the mother of pearl surface using a horsehair brush, which creates a cloudlike pattern that is unique to each dial. The varnish itself is tinted blue, and the art...
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Monochrome
Since its introduction in 1998, the classic IWC Portugieser Chronograph (ref. IW3914) has barely evolved visually. It has only undergone a technical upgrade in 2020, with the introduction of a new generation featuring a manufacture calibre inside (ref. IW3916). And that consistency in the design and overall sporty-chic, nautically-inspired spirit is what makes this watch […]
Worn & Wound
I’m going to say something quite controversial here, dear Reader, and tell you that I think pizza, in general, is just okay. I’ve had Neapolitan-style in Naples and Chicago-style in Chicago, and even Altoona-style in Altoona (for the unfamiliar, it’s got green peppers and American cheese on it and is disgusting). I’ve just never been especially impressed. With pepperoni or without, deep-dish or thin-crusted, it’s all the same to me. I mean, I like pizza, but I’m not one of those performative yuppies who sit behind their keyboard (okay, I am right now, but that’s because I’m getting paid to be) and tell you about the virtues of this type of tomato and that type of dough and the purity of ingredients and how pineapple on pizza isn’t real pizza and blah, blah, blah. Like I said, it’s not that I don’t like pizza. I just don’t think it’s anything to get worked up about. To me, it’s in the same category as Jacob Elordi or any organized religion: I have no strong opinions either way, I just don’t need to be told why it’s great all the time. Perhaps this is why I was dubious at first glance about the return of two pizza-inspired watches by Studio Underd0g and Time+Tide: the Burnt Pepper0ni and the Classic Cheese. Following the first pair of pizza watches released in 2024, this new iteration builds on that cult following with updated designs that lean into the theme without losing the brand language that has come to define Studio Underd0g. First, the...
Monochrome
Having mastered the art of ultra-thin mechanical movements, Piaget made its foray into jewellery watches in the 1960s. Unveiled at the Basel Fair in 1969, Piaget’s 21st Century Collection showcased avant-garde jewellery watches, including textured gold cuffs with hardstone dials, powered by the brand’s ultra-thin 2mm manual-winding calibre 9P. In 1973, Piaget introduced the predecessor […]
SJX Watches
On episode 30 of the SJX Podcast, SJX and Brandon discuss to what extent the latest crop of jump hour watches constitutes a trend. In just the first six weeks of 2026, several new jump hour models have been released, including a new collection from Audemars Piguet and the relaunch of the Niton brand, which is discussed in detail. Even the Louis Vuitton Convergence also fits into this trend aesthetically, despite being a dragging hours construction. SJX also provides context on the leading jump hour watches in the industry, including the Zeitwerk, Vagabondage III, and Opus 3, and the latest from Berneron. SJX also shares views on whether reliability still matters in today’s market. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Teddy Baldassarre
When we hear the phrase 'value for money' in watches, many often reduce it to spending as little as possible. This, however, is not the way we look at it, as value can be found at several price points, and in our mind, it's more a balance between price and diminishing returns. So, what we are going to look at in this v
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