Of all the pilot watches IWC make, and there are many, the 3705 might be the most special. First, there’s no Top Gun branding, that hadn’t been invented yet in 1993. Second, it was materially innovative. Hublot and AP might enjoy shouting about their new ceramic technology, but IWC were...

This is where the 222 and even Overseas began. This, not the 222, was the first Vacheron Constantin integrated bracelet steel sports watch. It’s called the Royal Chronometer, but better known by ref. 2215. Introduced in 1975, it was replaced by the 222 just (this gets a bit confusing now)...

Damn nearly everyone who’s into vintage watches at a certain level develops a soft spot for the Polerouter. It is the least discussed work of Genta, aesthetically all kinds of restrained, art deco perfect. It was technically competent, the world’s first micro-rotor wristwatch (Büren, I don’t want to hear it)....

There are Day-Dates and then there are Day-Dates that look like they smoke on airplanes. This is an 1806, which is precisely 3 better than the 1803 you’re used to. That 6 denotes a Florentine (sometimes called Morellis) bezel and case finish, which is a hand-hammered texturize finish. Florentine cases...

If I were to ask a reader at random, ‘What is a Royal Oak?’ Most would answer something like this, ‘A luxury, steel sports watch where the case is integrated to the bracelet with an octagonal bezel and monocoque case.’ This 14800BA is, well gold. And you’ll note, it’s on...

You wouldn’t guess it at a glance, but this is a perpetual calendar. It’s just a perpetual calendar in titanium with a spherical palladium/zirconium moonphase and day/month apertures in a place you might not expect. There’s an inherent paradox here. Denis Flageollet has had some pretty audacious cases and designs...

There is an intangible allure to true vintage Rolex which has lived with just a single owner. Is watch really any different if one person or two have owned it? That depends entirely on the people in question. The majority of us won’t have ever had the option to have...

This is an IWC you probably won’t have seen or heard of. It’s a ref. 5251, the picture of 1980s excess in two dimensions: 46mm wide but a remarkable 9.5mm thin. This thing makes the Padellone look like a tea saucer in both dimensions, but it’s not without reason. Kurt...

Richard Mille did not invent casual haute horlogerie, but the 90s did. The dot-com bubble millionaires were of a different ilk to pre-quartz-crisis wealth. So Patek Philippe approached the problem with typical-of-era obsessive over-engineering and thought. In the process, they accidentally made the watch world’s ultimate summer watch. The Aquanaut...

Developed just after the initial Worldtimers by Louis Cottier, the ref. 2597 is a damn cool ‘Travel Time’ from 1956, the very start of the jet age. The reference can be thought of as a 570 Calatrava with a little je ne sais quoi complication reminding you to go out...

Perceptions of watches change over time and no watch may have rocketed from total obscurity to the spotlight as quickly as the 222 last year. The 222 was, for some time, the very unobvious, alternative choice. I know this because for a decade until 2022, when someone asked me ‘Royal...

The 1665 Double Red Sea-Dweller (DRSD) is like a 5513 Sub turned up to eleven. It’s a little more technical with a helium valve, a little more appealing to some for its lack of cyclops, and just a little more nuanced in the details. But this DRSD goes way past...

Until this year in the new 1908, the words Rolex and guilloché almost never went together. But very, very occasionally, there was a Day-Date with a hand engine turned dial. A quick Google will turn up the last one that came to market which we covered, a square pyrimidal cut....

The first of anything in Rolex-land tends to be a bit different, not just because it’s new, but relative to what came after. These small, initial periods of experimentation are where you get meters first Subs, red depth Datejusts, fuchsia GMTs, ‘Blackout’ 14270s, and, indeed, this Floating Cosmograph. This is...

In the release of IWC’s latest Ingenieur, the brand went out of their way to not advertise the watch on the basis of its magnetic resistance or indeed list it in any media. Isn’t that a bit odd for thee IWC Antimagnetic watch? In this 3508 from the late 80s,...

The Monopoussoir is dead, long live the Monopoussoir. Yes, there’s a new Monopoussoir around but CPCP will always be a more significant moment in Cartier’s long and storied ascent out of the treacherous 1980s. There is just so much to this watch, culturally and tangibly. And I don’t even think...

For all the chatter around design-led watchmaking now, it’s easy to forget that Roger Dubuis went to great lengths in the 90s to create a shape quite unlike anything before or after. After branching out on his own, the Sympathie line was the first time Roger pushed the boundaries of...

This Triple Calendar Chronograph is not a Rolex, Heuer, Girard Perregaux, or Zodiac; it has no brand, the generic label. It was the ultimate pride and joy of a budding watchmaker in the mid-late 1960s. This dial reads Technicum La Chaux-de-Fonds, short for Technicum Neuchâtelois. This was, at the time,...