Worn & Wound
[VIDEO] Hands-On: the Raymond Weil Millesime Collection
Sometimes the little moments inform our collecting more than the big ones. A big moment might be the first time Dad trusted you to wear his watch. While formative, there’d be a lot more two-tone bracelets on Instagram if those moments drove purchasing decisions. My “big moment” came on my seventh birthday. After weeks of begging for a digital watch, I opened a package to be greeted by black resin and the coolest digital screen I’d ever laid eyes on. The subsequent victory lap through the kitchen resulted in a trip to urgent care. Though I still have the scar to remember the watch that unleashed the horological nerd within me, my watchbox is currently void of a single digital watch. On the contrary, little moments are constantly influencing how I think about and consume watches. These are often as simple as offhand remarks I hear at a meetup or a comment I read on Reddit. One of these little moments came while I was listening to Rico’s Watches Podcast a couple years ago. A RedBar chapter head was the week’s guest, and he made some brief, unflattering remarks about Raymond Weil. Sharing a story of buyer’s remorse, he cited a lack of demand on the secondary market and a design language that was an amalgamation of other brands rather than something original. These quick quips stuck with me. As a newer collector, I’d already discerned that anything with “mall watch” vibes might not receive the nod of approval from my enthusiast peers. And, having personally ...