Wristfashion | Watch Blog

True Beat

Adnan — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:00:12 +0000

THe TB88 by Arnold & Son. A complcation that unlike conventional mechanical watches, measures time in complete seconds instead of fractions dependent on the balancy frequency.

Antoine Martin Baselworld 2012

Adnan — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:32:22 +0000

Tourbillon Quantieme Perpetuel

The new releases by Antoine Martin at Baselworld 2012.

Tourbillon Quantieme Perpetuel

Quantime Perpetuel au Grand Balancier

Quantime Perpeteul au Grand Balancier

Harry Winston Opus 12

Adnan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 10:46:31 +0000

For those who aren’t familiar with Harry Winston, every year the brand launches a truly innovative mechanical monstrosity that would leave anyone drooling. This year marks their 12th release which has been created in collaboration with watchmaker Emmanuel Bouchet and it really lives up to the hype of the series – The money shot in the watch is when the hour and minute markers roll 180 degrees. It is hard to explain the visual effect so the best thing to do is watch the video presentation at the top. The price is approximately $260,000.

An amateur photograph of the watch uploaded by Worldtempus on twitter

Omega Speedmaster Z-33

Adnan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:53:13 +0000

The Spacemaster Z-33 is the latest addition to the Omega Speedmaster series. It’s meant to be a wristwatch designed specifically with modern pilots in mind and marks a break away from the traditional Omega case for pilot watches. Functionally, the watch allows professional pilots to log up to ten flights and visualize the logs with a date-hour indication. This, apart from the regular alarm, perpetual calendar, chronograph, countdown timer and a dual timezone display.

New Bell & Ross

Adnan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:35:54 +0000

The new addition to Bell & Ross spotted at Baselworld 2012

Gucci 40th Anniversary

Adnan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:27:27 +0000

New Bamboo

Gucci celebrated its 40th year in watchmaking quietly with few updates to their current collection all designed or updated by it’s Creative Director, Frida Giannini.

G-Timeless Automatic Chronograph

G-Timeless Sport BRB

G-Timeless Quartz Chronograph

G-Gucci PVD (small & medium)

G-Chrono Ceramic

I-Gucci Sport

New Ventura

Adnan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 04:35:03 +0000

The new V-Tec Gamma is this year’s addition to the Ventura collection. It’s a larger size than previous models and features the same digital module Ventura is famous for including the EasySkroll interface. The model will be available from June 2012 onwards and is priced at approximately 1000 USD.

The Alessi Grow Watch

Adnan — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:11:18 +0000

Italian Architect and Designer Andrea Morgante has always been inspired by organic engineering, that is, the influence of shapes found in nature on his work. So when he was offered to do a wristwatch for Alessi, he couldn’t help but apply the ribbed look of a tray he designed previously thus creating a watch where grooves permeates through it entirely, from the bracelet to the case and then to the glass.

The Designer

His work

Issey Miyake’s New Watch

Adnan — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 04:58:35 +0000

Every year for the past decade, Issey Miyake has released a single wristwatch designed by a prominent designer. This year, the eleventh new series is called simply, the ‘W’ and it has been created in collaboration with Japanese car designer Satoshi Wada. Satoshi’s design milestones include designing the A5 for Audi and a long history with Nissan.

The watch is intended to be a minimal no-nonsense design and it features a quartz chronograph movement but has a second hand that moves instantly like that on an automatic watch with the same button click feel of an automatic movement. Those who’ve worn an automatic watch would probably appreciate this.

World’s first Solar GPS Watch

Adnan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:05:49 +0000

Billed as the ‘watch that understands time zones’, Seiko has created the first solar powered GPS watch that receives GPS signals and identifies the time zone, time and date data using four GPS satellites. The watch updates automatically once a day and also on demand. It’s named after the company’s 1969 predecessor which was the world’s first quartz watch. It will be released in the fall of 2012 with a price of around 2000-3000 euros. There will be five models with one special edition limited to 2500 units.

CK’s new Minimal Watch

Adnan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 07:42:30 +0000

CK knows when it has a hit on it’s hand (pun intended). Every single person at their booth at this year’s Baselworld was sporting one of their new ‘Cogent’ watches. The cogent is a very minimal watch with a mineral crystal glass that also covers the side of the watch. There are four visible screws that hold it up giving it a more modern / architectural look.

Street Artist meets Swiss Brand

Adnan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 07:19:26 +0000

Ikepod has always had one of its foot in the art world thanks to its designer Marc Newson’s prolific work in the field. This year, they go one step further with a collaboration watch called the ‘THE HORIZON BY KAWS’ with infamous street artist named KAWS.

For those who don’t know Kaws, he is one of the few that have been successful both as a contemporary artist with his paintings and sculptures and also commercially with his vinyl toys and his clothing brand named Originalfake. He is most famous for his trademark ‘X’ symbol that he’s used to rework familiar icons such as Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man, SpongeBob SquarePants and now an automatic Ikepod watch.

Kaws

Limited Edition Rado R-One

Adnan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 06:50:27 +0000

Standing out in between their regular line up at Baselworld 2012 was Rado’s new science fiction inspired R-One which i took an instant liking for. The R-One is an automatic chronograph that is limited to 300 units – Black High-tech Ceramic, Tron inspired blue luminous, a Dome-shaped sapphire crystal which covers a very interesting longer watch face and lots of references to teleportation in their press release in case you missed the science fiction angle.

Baselworld 2012 – In Pictures

Adnan — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 06:49:41 +0000

The halls that host Baselworld will be changing its look next year so you can spot all the on-going interesting new construction

This year, like every year for the past five baselworld events, i will be covering the fair so keep on following the blog for the coverage. If there is something you would want me to cover, you can email me (wrist [at) wristfashion.com).

Press Day – A day before the event, the press gets to roam the halls hunting for press events

There’s always a lot of fancy displays – like this one where you insert your hand inside and rotate a globe on the screen by twisting it. The presentation highlights the features of the Tissot T-touch and so when you for example watch a helicopter fly, you can feel air being sprayed on to your wrist for effect. Very fancy indeed

The new super glam-ed up Dior

The Tron-inspired new Rado Limited Edition

A Porcelain art piece with Lacoste logos graciously dotting its landscape

Nooka Founder’s new art project

Adnan — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:10:48 +0000

If you’ve heard of Nooka and have a special soft spot for the brand, you may be interested to know that the founder and designer, Matthew Waldman is currently using kickstarter, a website where people get their projects crowd-funded, to fund his art project titled – “A Fairy Good Project”.

People who contribute get free prints or sculptures from the exhibit depending on the size of their contribution. We recommend you check it out.

Trendspotting: Edited and Curated

Adnan — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:39:36 +0000

UniformWares

Void

Tsovet

Here’s a trend that I’m a big fan of – Singular vision indie watch brands. In today’s connected world of the internet where anyone can be a taste maker and curate images on their blog or tumblr, it isn’t too far fetched to have for-seen a trend of small indie watch brands that are more restrained, curated edits with a singular feel. Examples of this includes the logo-free UniformWares, the Digitally inspired Void, the Tough and ambitious Tsovet and now Autodromo – a more delightful restrained addition to the never ending range of automotive inspired wristwatch brands.

Autodromo

MB&F Flying Panda Watch

Adnan — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:28:52 +0000

This is MB&F’s contribution to this year’s Only Watch event – a collaboration with Chinese artist, Huang Hankang. Only watch is a charity auction that happens every two years to be benefit research into duchenne muscular dystrophy. Many well known haute horlogerie brands contribute one-offs to the auction. This year’s edition will take place in Monaco on the 22nd of September 2011.

Suicide Wristwatch Ad

Adnan — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 10:57:12 +0000

This is an old Vestal print ad that I had saved in a file somewhere. Probably the only Watch advertisement that depicts a fake suicide. :^)

Tokujin Yoshioka for Issey Miyake

Adnan — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:38:28 +0000

This year’s two new additions to the Issey Miyake wath range are by two famous japanese designers. Tokujin Yoshioka and Naoto Fukasawa. Since there are no press images available, I’m only able to post Tokujin’s watch that builds on his current transparent style that dominates his work.

The Water Bar

The Swarovski store by Tokujin

The Invisible (chair)

Cinco: Nixon Collaborators

Adnan — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:34:24 +0000

Matt Capozzi of Cinco

The Unit by Cinco for Nixon

The RPM by Cinco for Nixon

by Adnan Arif
Editor

There are a lot of new fashion watch brands launched every year but there are very few that truly breakout. Even rarer is a long term collaboraton between a breakout brand and a design firm that has gone from strength to strength each year. Such is the relationship between Nixon and Cinco.

Established in 1997, Nixon was an attempt to reboot the wristwatch accessory market in the action sport genre. Watches previously sold in skate and surf shops didn’t serve their market well and Nixon saw an opening. However, the brand quickly attained crossover appeal and now is a success story with a presence in over 25 countries and a product range that includes watches, soft goods and now headphones.

There are a number of reasons for Nixon’s success – their ability to conjure up enthusiasm in their action sport segment, their unorthodox brand positioning but most of all, it is their product design that adds a fresh twist to the current world of mainstream wristfashion.

So, ever curious, I recently spoke with Matt Capozzi of Cinco about their work with Nixon. Matt has always worked in the action sports industry and has had the unique opportunity of having worked both with Cinco as a client as part of Nixon and now as Cinco’s Product Experience Director:

Could you tell us how Cinco got around working with Nixon?

Matt Capozzi: This one goes way back. Before starting Cinco with 4 other friends Kirk James worked back in Vermont at JDK on many great projects including Burton Snowboards. One of his main clients was Andy Laats who would later start Nixon. Years after working together Andy was starting to formalize his plans with Chad Dinenna to start Nixon. They needed a design partner to help with many aspects of the brand from naming, identity and logo, to the overall look and feel as well as their product, packaging, retail and tradeshow booths. That was back in 1997 and we are still designing almost every technical product they make here at Cinco today. Since then like Nixon has grown, so has Cinco. We are now a studio of over 35 here in Portland bringing our wholistic brand, digital and product design strategy to many of the worlds top brands in the lifestyle, entertainment and consumer electronics space.

How would you define Cinco’s design approach when it comes to watches?

Matt Capozzi: Our approach is to keep it fresh. Over the years with Nixon we have crafted a design language and strategy for their line. So with this, our approach is to understand what the line is missing from the great product management team at Nixon and deliver a fresh, authentic and relevant designs to their team. We always design for the end consumer and with Nixon, many of us at Cinco are the end consumers, so that makes understanding their target easy. We like to say at Cinco we design things for us and our friends. We are great friends with all of our clients and in turn all of their consumers. In addition to continuing to further their watches we have had the opportunity to extend our design work into Nixon’s new range of audio products that drop this Spring (2011) which has been very exciting.

Nixon at Baselworld

How has being an outsider contributed to Nixon’s success?

Matt Capozzi: I can’t speak for Nixon as much as I can for Cinco, but being an outsider is why we are here. With so much of our collective background coming from alternative sports, music and culture we have all come up as outsiders. When the opportunity arose to design a brand and products to connect to a group that wasn’t being served by the main stream products in the market we jumped on it. When you come from the outside it’s sometimes easier to see a clear opportunity for a distinct difference in design. Nixon has done an amazing job at staying connected with their core market while at the same time expanding beyond action sport distribution. Even with a booth at Basel, Nixon is still an outsider to the watch industry and I’m sure they wouldn’t have it any other way.

You said that it’s sometimes easier to see a clear opportunity for a distinct difference in design. Can you give me some examples?

Matt Capozzi: Good question…the two examples that we like to talk about here are the Rotolog and the 51-30. There are a lot of newer designs that we could talk about, but both of these were pivotal for both Nixon and Cinco.

The Rotolog was done years ago now, but is still going strong. Nixon as a brand was already very established in the action sports retail channels and was a leading brand for that audience. At the same time, back in the 2004 time frame, the influence of mid-century modern furniture was being felt strong for that same audience. I was working in-house at Nixon at the time and we were talking to some of the team about a modern, unexpected product that was inspired by some of the innovative and bizarre watches of the 70’s. Kirk and the team at Cinco was able to pull some amazing concepts together that started to hit a chord strong with the team.

Rotolog’s initial sketches

After we saw these first sketches we loved the idea of the direct time, rotary dial concept and moved forward. Digging back into our inspiration we hit a form that felt right and also came to the idea of inlaying material, which had not really been done in this way in the watch industry. The whole time we were not worried about what was out there but what was right for the Nixon audience.

Some of Cinco’s refined designs before they hit with the final version

The Final Rendering for the Rotolog

The idea to inlay wood and enamel into the watch felt perfect. After many samples and prototypes we hit on a way to inlay real wood veneer into a stainless steel watch that used a rotary dial and bright LED light. It was right on point for the brand. When the watch launched it was something that no one in the industry had expected and still stands on it’s own today. This watch lead to a whole line of accessories and other products that are still in the line today that hit this chord of classic, modern and unexpected at the same time. The Rotolog has gone on to carry inlays of Tony Hawk’s skate board, Jeremy Jones’ snowboard and even an amazing diamond encrusted skull design for Barney’s that sold for $18,000.

The other watch that was obvious to us, but not to the industry was the 51-30. It was briefed as a watch called “The Waterman” to us here at Cinco. The idea was to create a classic watch that was designed with the surf team to wear when they are living their lives on boats, fishing and just being in the water…they call these guys Waterman…more than just surfers. We were able to work closely with the Nixon surf team and realized that big bold numbers, a count down bezel and tide information were key.

Initial Sketches for the 51-30

As the scale of the watch came up through our concepts the realization was that we had to move the crown to the 9:00 side so it doesn’t dig into your wrist when you are surfing. Put it all together and you have a 51mm watch that is water resistant to 30ATM that is great to surf with and live as a true Waterman with.

Refined drawings of the 51-30

The 51-30

This watch has blown up for Nixon and is available in multiple sizes, finishes and materials. It has continued to evolve and is now available in solid ceramic with more exciting version coming soon.

The overarching answer is that we see an opportunity for distinct designs for the Nixon customer without worrying about the watch industry at all. Because of that we often find ourselves doing things that others don’t often do.

What was the thinking behind the Nixon logo change?

Matt Capozzi: Nixon is a brand that is focused on bringing current, relevant, premium accessories to their consumers. The original type for the brand was great and served the brand well to differentiate itself, and disrupt the market. It did exactly that. As the brand matured and the products that we have designed for them began to define the face of the brand it was time for the attitude and the bold stance of the word mark to take a step back.

The Logos

With a strong, simple, classic typeface the word NIXON now is an elegant tie back to an impactful product, message or image. While we did make a big change to the type for the wordmark, we left the original icon logo untouched. With a loose reference to the wings of time the Nixon icon remains strong. We realize that a change like this is’t very common in the watch world but in our world change is good.

The new Loop by Cinco for Nixon

Being an outsider, what are your views on the watch industry?

Matt Capozzi: From our view the watch industry in an interesting place these days. The need for a watch is nearly gone with a few exceptions. Mobile devices and media everywhere has made telling time a commodity which means brands have to connect with their consumers in new ways. If someone younger than 35 is wearing a watch these days, chances are it is saying something special. It’s speaking to their personality and is a big part of their self expression. It will be interesting to see as these consumers grow older what their demands for premium accessories will be. It may not be watches at all. Maybe it will be some amazing headphones or some other personal accessory we can’t even see today. Either way from our side here at Cinco it’s a good time to be an outsider in the industry, it’s what makes our designs unique.

Wristfashion | Watch Blog

True Beat

related links

Antoine Martin Baselworld 2012

Tourbillon Quantieme Perpetuel

Tourbillon Quantieme Perpetuel

Quantime Perpetuel au Grand Balancier

Quantime Perpeteul au Grand Balancier

related links

Harry Winston Opus 12

An amateur photograph of the watch uploaded by Worldtempus on twitter

related links

Harry Winston (via Perpetuelle)

Omega Speedmaster Z-33

related links

New Bell & Ross

related links

Gucci 40th Anniversary

New Bamboo

G-Timeless Automatic Chronograph

G-Timeless Sport BRB

G-Timeless Quartz Chronograph

G-Gucci PVD (small & medium)

G-Chrono Ceramic

I-Gucci Sport

related links

New Ventura

related links

The Alessi Grow Watch

Related links

Issey Miyake’s New Watch

related links

World’s first Solar GPS Watch

related links

CK’s new Minimal Watch

related links

Street Artist meets Swiss Brand

Kaws

related links

Limited Edition Rado R-One

related links

Baselworld 2012 – In Pictures

The halls that host Baselworld will be changing its look next year so you can spot all the on-going interesting new construction

Press Day – A day before the event, the press gets to roam the halls hunting for press events

The new super glam-ed up Dior

The Tron-inspired new Rado Limited Edition

A Porcelain art piece with Lacoste logos graciously dotting its landscape

related links

Nooka Founder’s new art project

related links

Trendspotting: Edited and Curated

UniformWares

Void

Tsovet

Autodromo

Related Links

MB&F Flying Panda Watch

related links

Suicide Wristwatch Ad

related links

Tokujin Yoshioka for Issey Miyake

The Water Bar

The Swarovski store by Tokujin

The Invisible (chair)

related links

Cinco: Nixon Collaborators

Matt Capozzi of Cinco

The Unit by Cinco for Nixon

The RPM by Cinco for Nixon

by Adnan Arif Editor

Nixon at Baselworld

Rotolog’s initial sketches

Some of Cinco’s refined designs before they hit with the final version

The Final Rendering for the Rotolog

Initial Sketches for the 51-30

Refined drawings of the 51-30

The 51-30

The Logos

The new Loop by Cinco for Nixon

related links

by Adnan Arif
Editor