As Watches & Wonders approaches, I find myself thinking back to last year’s fair and the various high and lowlights from that crop of releases. I’ve commented before about a pretty big highlight of last year’s show being Parmigiani Fleurier’s output, particularly their very strong Toric...
“Kollokium is not a brand. As pretentious and cliché as that sounds, it’s true.” So, how could we define Kollokium? It’s a collaborative project between three friends, all fairly established names within the watch industry: Manuel Emch, Barth Nussbaumer, and Amr Sindi (The Horophile). Rethinking...
Hublot regularly makes headlines. Most of the time, however, these headlines revolve around marketing and branding. A new superstar ambassador or a crazy limited edition is more likely to generate exposure than pure watchmaking prowess. Now, in part, this is down to Hublot’s doing. The house...
In a market overcrowded with vintage-inspired dive watches, ranging from truly affordable models to high-end watches produced by esteemed brands, Eska, a name with over 100 years of history (with a stop from 1987 to 2024), has managed to find a place for its cool-looking, well-built and fairly...
We’ve been following the horological adventures of Vincent Bonnaud (1991, France) since 2021, when he introduced his first BND dive watch. What caught my attention was that Vincent received a lot of praise for his BND watch from former Rolex ambassador and COMEX diver Théo Mavrostomos. Someone...
This watch is known as the Louis Erard 2340 x Astro Boy reference 35123TA23.BMT12, a limited edition made in collaboration with Japan’s Tezuka Productions (which owns the rights to the Astro Boy entertainment franchise). To my knowledge, this is the first “character dial” watch (at least...
Perhaps “caught between a rock and a hard place” is a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems that Jaeger-LeCoultre is trapped between status and prestige. A Rolex on the wrist is a status symbol, and a Patek Philippe is the prestigious choice. But what does a JLC on the wrist say about its owner?...
I’ve been a freelance journalist for 14 years, and while watches have been part of my repertoire since the beginning, I didn’t fully niche into the horological sphere until 2018. One of the assignments I consider to be a breakout story that really gave my career in the watch world momentum came...
The Vostok Amphibia has long been recognized by in-the-know enthusiasts as one of the most affordable yet reliable dive watches on the market, as well as one that retains a quirky appeal like no other, owing both to its origins in Soviet Russia as well as its more recent turn as a...
Otsuka Lotec… The Japanese brand (or should we call it an atelier) that makes some noise in the global watch collecting community, despite being unavailable outside of Japan – which might partially explain its popularity. A true JDM sensation, Otsuka Lotec is the brainchild of Jiro Katayama, a...
