Angular Momentum’s new model, La Boulle Classic “Day & Night”, has a 24 hour self winding mechanical movement and a clever elegant dial that i thought was noteworthy. Probably due to the recession, these watches are only made on order only.
I’m not a very big fan of Rado but I do like this new model called the r5.5 by Jasper Morrison. It was first launched during the vienna design week in austria, and will be gradually introduced to the world market soon.
Bell & Ross new limited edition timepiece creates a circular radar display using three discs with a small protruding hand as rotating hands thus mimicing the look of a radar. Limited to 500 pieces.
Burberry has launched a limited edition set for men and women this fall. The ladies watch is limited to 50 units and will retail at 800 USD, whereas, the men’s is limited to 60 units and will be sold at 1265 USD. I like both of them, though i think they should’ve made them part of their permanent collection.
Now imagine if you’re automotive designers Andy Shaw and Robert Silkstone and you decided to develop your own range of watches? And why not? Watch brands have for decades associated themselves with cars and if they could do it,so could you. And even better, you would go one step further, you would create these watches using your ‘automotive engineering methods’ and intensive manufacturing techniques like spark erosion and wire-EDM machining combined with laser engraving to create something … ordinary? I doubt you would, but their two debut models, Britannic and Vanguard-Precision don’t look too impressive especially since they are priced at $8000 USD.
Wisely, the designers have limited their collection to an edition of 15 units. No idea if it is a mechanical or a quartz.
This has already made the rounds on the blogs so I’m a little late to this, but Marc Ecko/Timex may be doing a Star Wars collaboration for the 2009 Holiday season. Since it’s mid October, I would’ve imagined it would be out now.
On a side note: I’ve been following on Timex’s initiative to go high-end and I noticed on one of the posts regarding the Star Wars collaboration that Stephen Scholz was now the Global Brand Director for Timex. I remember him as the Brand Manager for Ecko watches at Callanen back in 2005 before Timex purchased the company (Callanen and not Marc Ecko). This is significant because it shows how much of an influence Callanen’s culture of branding is having at Timex.
When I was a kid, there used to be a popular desk clock where the digits would appear on a see-through screen. Nooka brings back that technology for it’s latest Zaz model.
The luxury model uses the ZENV movement which means the first two bars indicate the hours, the third one represents the minutes. The RRP is 395 USD.
The UR-CC! is the first mechanical wristwatch to mimic the digital linear display. The linear time is displayed by two large cylinders. One for jumping hours and the other, a retrograde cylinder for the minutes. The seconds are also displayed by a rotating disk on the dial. The UR-CC1 took more than three years of R&D.
You’ve to give it to Diesel for being fresh with such consistency. This year, they made me do a double take when i first spotted the dz4160 shown above. At first I thought it was photoshopped. Renzo Russo, the man behind Diesel calls this – his company’s ability to innovate in stagnant fashion markets as the ‘Diesel treatment’.
In a recent book, Wilbert Das, Diesel’s creative director, explained their approach further:
“We’ve always been fascinated by things that are kitsch, colourful, decorative. Sometimes we refer to it as “retro-futuristic”, but that doesn’t quite capture it. We like to clash styles, piling references on top of one another. We get out of our way to challenge definitions of good taste. We’re not interested in fashion – we prefer to create things that are entirely our own. Diesel is anti-fashion fashion.
Tissot was the first wristwatch company that decided to experiment with different materials: They made the first watch out of plastic, mother of pearl, stone and of course, wood. However, all these shenanigans ended when the company was acquired by the Swatch Group.
Cue a few decades later and wood texture was hip again what with Nixon and its Rotolog, Vestal went all out with wooden dial for Paul Frank (Vestal is the license holder for Paul Frank watches) and Quiksilver one upped them all with a complete wooden special edition watch. And now, a new brand named Mica is entering the market this summer (2009) with what looks like an entire brand of wooden watches targeted the surfer/action sport community. (Also. I don’t want to skip Romain Jerome that used remains of famous tragedies or places i.e. titanic watch as inlays)
Mind you, while all of this was going on, unhip Joswissa always had a wood wristwatch collection (even a rock one too). Anyway, back to the Mica, there is no information about the price point.
To celebrate its 25th Anniversary, Guess has brought out a few new pieces including the G-Motion which uses a digital display that tells time by changing the color of the stones on the dial. It’s been done before but this is the first time its available in a everyday fashion brand.
