Mexico City’s Salon Internacional Alta Relojería (SIAR) is Latin America’s most important annual watch fair. As such, this major horological event has become an opportunity for brands to release special editions celebrating Mexico and its culture. Among the watches presented in 2019 are two Louis Moinet pieces, the “Only Mexico” and “Metropolis Mexico”. Louis Moinet […]
Two young Belgian watchmakers got to know each other at the watchmaking school of Namur. After one of their long midnight conversations about watches, they decided to start their own brand (I’m sure you can picture the scene). By 8 o’clock in the morning, the first sketches were ready. Now that watch has become a […]
The Luxury Sports Watch category is dominated by iconic classics such as the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Nautilus – two watches that defined the genre back in the 1970s. It is also one of the most successful categories these days, with these two models being almost impossible to find at retailers. […]
Usually, professional football players show a preference for a handful of watch brands. They are usually spotted with mainstream brands like Audemars Piguet, Hublot, Patek Philippe, Richard Mille or Rolex. I have observed a couple of players with timepieces from A. Lange & Söhne and Patek, and also watches from independent brand Urwerk. This leads […]
Karsten Fraessdorf, the founder of Montres KF, has been a watchmaker since he was a teenager. Restoring old clocks and pocket watches, he learned all about classic escapements and chronometry. Over the past decade, Karsten Fraessdorf has created several watches, and by created, we mean literally created from the ground up with self-developed movements, often […]
When it has been introduced back in 2018, MB&F HM9 Flow made some noise. Not that we should be surprised by the independent watchmaker creating a bold watch, but the HM9 Flow was using different inspirations and came with unprecedented shapes. The latest opus in the Horological Machine series, HM9 paid tribute to 1940s automotive […]
The abbreviation MIH probably doesn’t mean much to most of our readers, except to the hard-core watch enthusiasts (or WIS, which stands for Watch Idiot Savant – another horologocal abbreviation) immediately recognize it. MIH stands for Musee International d’Horlogerie and during the time that mr. Ludwig Oechslin was curator of the museum, he introduced the MIH Watch. Portion of the proceed go to the museum and fund special restoration projects. And now there’s a new MIH Watch called the MIH Gaïa Watch.
For the 2017 edition of Only Watch, Urwerk surprised collectors with a unique and clearly unusual collaboration piece made with the most classic of independent watchmakers: Laurent Ferrier (more details here). The result was impressively bold and subtle at the same time. For the 2019 edition of the charity auction, Urwerk again teams up with […]
Ophion is a rather young brand that launched in 2015, with a watch that already had quite some arguments. Accessible, well-designed and powered by a nice movement, we were pleasantly surprised. Then came a second model, the OPH 786, and from that point onward, we knew that something special was happening at Ophion. Great CNC guilloché dials, classic looks, superb decoration of the movement… And with a highly competitive price. Today, Ophion up the game again with the new OPH 786 Vélos, which features a newly-designed case made by Voutilainen (just that) and new dial options… but still a reasonable price.
If you’re a recurring reader of MONOCHROME, you should now know all about Urban Jürgensen – and if you don’t, we encourage you to have a closer look here, as this independent watchmaker truly deserves the attention of haute horlogerie lovers. Recently, we had the chance to have quite an exclusive piece from this manufacture […]