Summer watches: Don’t be fooled by these brightly coloured stunners; there’s some serious horological clout here July 2, 2015 Summer: that time when every magazine lightens its pages with vibrant yellows, azure blues and that indefinable shade of pink that only surfaces between June and August (somewhere between “old lady” coral and Legally Blonde fuchsia). I thought I’d join the club. My esteemed peers and I sometimes have a tendency to get bogged down [...]
Lounge lizard: Party like it’s 1979 with these classic disco-era watches April 2, 2015 In the late 70s and early 80s, had you found yourself living it up in St Tropez, partying with the in-crowd at New York’s Studio 54, or following the jet-set around the hotspots of London, Paris and Milan, the watch you’d have repeatedly found on the wrists of the rich and glamorous would have been [...]
Baselworld 2015: Tag Heuer, Google and Intel just announced a major partnership to create smartwatches to rival Apple March 19, 2015 Luxury watchmaker Tag Heuer is partnering with Google and Intel to go head-to-head in the emerging smartwatch battleground. The trio announced their plans to team up today at the Swiss trade fair Baselworld, and between them they could produce something that knocks Apple's efforts out of the park. The announcement described it as “a [...]
The Datables: Watches with calendar displays can be things of beauty March 5, 2015 There are few things that niggle at me more than the presence of an unnecessary date display on a watch (yes, yes, first world problems). Brands are, in the large part, hopelessly addicted to them, allowing tiny, pointless displays to disrupt the unity and balance of their designs. I especially can’t abide the now-canonical magnifying [...]
Watch talk: A new generation of women’s watches is blazing a trail of originality March 5, 2015 Every January specially invited watch journalists decamp to Geneva’s Palexpo – a great, industrial box next to a motorway – to be shown watches that cost more than many of their flats in an unrelentingly beige luxury bubble. This is SIHH, where Richemont’s brands (and a few select “friends”) assemble to set out their stall [...]
The pursuit of strappiness: Women’s watches are getting a couture makeover February 5, 2015 When it comes to women’s watches, straps aren’t usually top of a designer’s list of priorities. But despite all the attention the dial tends to get, it’s the strap that covers the larger proportion of your wrist. Thankfully, there are brands out there that do spend time on these means of attachment. Hermès is famously [...]
Vintage-inspired ladies’ watches that have stood the test of time December 3, 2014 Watching Interstellar the other night was a thought provoking experience. Yes, the film posited theories about the nature of time travel, relativity, the true nature of time as a dimension and various other themes taking in the full gamut of life, death and the human experience. However, it was a watch, or rather the watch [...]
Time is money: Why are watches so expensive? December 3, 2014 There’s a very good reason top quality watches can set you back six figures. Let us start with a description of two dramatically different approaches to highend mechanical watchmaking. Bear with me. Firstly: “At certain moments you might leave the drawing and let the metal guide you… I really value the fact that I can [...]
Women’s watches with complications have hit the market October 28, 2014 A grande complication on a watch, generally speaking, used to be the preserve of those timepieces on the male side of the display cabinet. They allowed men to show off how much they knew about watches while indulging in a little horological one upmanship (this despite the fact I have never met a man who [...]
Tudor is back: Heritage-inspired watches are on the rise September 23, 2014 I’m excited: Tudor is back. Who? Well, you’d be forgiven for asking, since the brand hasn’t been in British shops since early in the last decade. But it’s a name that carries clout in the watch world, for Tudor is the sibling brand of Rolex. Hans Wilsdorf, Rolex’s founder, set up Tudor between the [...]