While most brands stayed safe this year, Marc Ecko decided to dip into tattoo culture by developing several japanese tattoo inspired watches including the Global Ink model. With the rest of the collection, the brand pushed up its identity by focusing on the rhino.
This year Tissot focused on two re-issues, some new variations of pre-existing models such as the Sailing Touch which is their touch screen version for martime enthusiasts, the release of PRS 516, a classic tissot case with an automatic movement and five smaller (3mm smaller) quartz variations and of course, the Visodate.
The Original PRS 516
Visodate Automatic 1957 – Reissue
Tissot Veloci-T (Gents and Ladies) Automatic
Tissot Lovely – 37 Top Wesselton Diamonds, Quartz movement
Lady Heart – Diamond Studded, Automatic, 3 ATM
Sailing Touch – A new additional to Tissot touch screen collection. The ST version has a maritime theme with meteorological forecasting ability, a tide-calculator and a regatta countdown in addition to the regular T-touch functions
British Designer Michael Young has teamed with Odm to create a ‘Reserve’ watch collection that reverses the position of the buttons to the face of the wristwatch to create a fresh new look.
This is already all over the blogs, but I got to be the one who actually saw the unveiling before the show and then bumped into Yves Behar, the designer as he spent an entire day at the booth pitching the wristwatch to potential distributors.
The Vue, if you aren’t familiar with Issey Miyake, is the latest in a line of watches that are released annually by the brand. Each watch is done by a prolific designer and usually features a design or stylistic feature that makes the wristwatch unconventional. For the Vue, Yves replaced the hour hand with a disc and a filter that would make it appear as if the current hour fades in and then out.
But despite a neat concept, I felt that the watch feels a little underwhelming because of its size and lacks presence. This is Yves second wristwatch after his previous one for Mini.
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.
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.
