What should you do when a knife-wielding maniac tries to steal your Rolex?
Picture the scene: it’s a dark night and you’re leaving work when suddenly a man in a balaclava accosts you, waving a 12-inch knife in your face. Give me your Rolex or I’ll “f***ing stab” you, he yells. This was the nerve-jangling scene that confronted Mark Ewart last week as he left his business, Apple Flooring Ltd, in Basildon, Essex. On his wrist was his beloved Rolex Deepsea Sea-Dweller – he really didn’t want to give it up. CCTV footage showed what happened next. On a whim, Ewart snatched his watch off his wrist and hurled it onto the roof of a nearby Subway outlet. Bewildered, the masked robber grabbed Ewart’s laptop instead and pedalled off into the night on his bike. “I’m shaken up, I’m angry, I feel violated — all of the above and more,” Ewart told London’s Metro newspaper. “What I did was either brave or stupid, I just don’t know.” The 57-year-old admitted he was usually “an advocate for the bravest man walks away and fights another day” but acted impulsively to save his watch. “As soon as I did it, I just thought, ‘Shit, why did I do that?’ “I lived to tell the…
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The latest generation of the TAG Heuer Connected Watch has just been released and it represents a major and — practically everyone would agree — welcome departure from the tech and mindset of the previous two generations. Simply because it is now powered by Google Wear OS, which allows the Swiss to do what they do best — a dramatically refined and more luxurious case and overall design — and it lets Google run the hardware, with a raft of improved apps and functions, most of which we explore in the video. In terms of the story so far, let’s do a recap on where they’ve come from. It may surprise you to learn that TAG Heuer have actually been in the smartwatch game since way back in 2015, when they released their first generation watch. At the time, TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver claimed it to be a raging success. This was the same year the first Apple Watch was released. Connected Watches have been doggedly part of TAG Heuer’s remit since their inception. In 2017 we were given the second generation of Connected Watch, which saw improvements in almost every aspect, from the apps onboard to the screen resolution. The latest…
We may only be three months into 2020, but Seiko is dropping new novelties like the world could end tomorrow … which, given the current state of affairs, does feel ever so slightly plausible. Anyway, I know what you’re thinking: “enough of the doom and gloom, what about the watches?” Well, the Japanese watchmaker has released myriad new timepieces so far, some limited and some not, across their various collections. So we thought we’d round them up, present them to you and then, in a manner not dissimilar from the tasks my former educators had to undertake, give them a report card rating. Let’s hope Seiko has performed better than my scholastic efforts. The Seiko Astron Novak Djokovic 2020 Limited Edition Report card score: A Seiko really came out swinging with their first unveiling of 2020, paying homage to their long-term partnership with current World No. 1 tennis ace and 2020 Australian Open winner, Novak Djokovic. The Seiko Astron Novak Djokovic 2020 Limited Edition picked up where the 2019 edition left off; however, while last year’s Djokovic Astron rocked a black-on-black aesthetic with some serious stealth vibes, the 2020 incarnation was all about celebrating both the colours of the…
Sometimes, a Time+Tide Watches reader will share a small piece of watchmaking history that makes us turn to each other and wonder how we hadn’t know about it before. This is exactly what happened when Colin strolled into the T+T HQ to look at a couple of DOXA watches, with a familiar looking watch on his wrist, with an unfamiliar name on its dial. He was wearing a Sinn 903 Chronograph, which looked a lot like a Breitling Navitimer from across the room but, as he explained, it was one of the unusual effects of the quartz era. In 1979 Breitling saw parts of its company go into liquidation due to bankruptcy, and Helmut Sinn, the founder of Sinn watches, bought the rights to use the layouts of Breitling’s 806 and 809 Navitimer watch dials. This is the story of Colin’s Sinn 903 Chronograph. During the quartz crisis, Sinn bought the rights from Breitling to manufacture the Navitimer, but they couldn’t call it a Navitimer … so it’s identical; it is smaller, slightly smaller in diameter, but it’s exactly the same. There are a few people who just assume that Sinn ripped off the Navitimer, sort of like Steinhart take…
When we see something repeatedly, over time, our brains quickly form habits that enable us to infer what we are seeing, bypassing the need to analyse every bit of information. That’s why we can make perfect sense of a paragraph made up of words that are missing their vowels, and why we can read the time on an analogue watch display that has no hour or minute markers. It’s also what makes Franck Muller’s Crazy Hours watch one of the most delightful pieces in contemporary watchmaking. In the first instant the dial appears perfectly normal, with a series of numerals arranged around its circumference. Half a second later, we realise that it’s anything but normal: the usual position of the numerals is completely jumbled. It’s a visual teaser – sense and nonsense – and a brain teaser, playing with how we habitually read time in a natural, clockwise sequence. Since Franck Muller invented the Crazy Hours complication in 2003 it has (unsurprisingly) become an emblem of the brand that bears his name – just as emblematic as the Cintrée Curvex case that houses these colourful limited-edition models. There can be few objects of any kind that combine grown-up glamour and…
Next Thursday, March 19, at Oscar Hunt Tailors in the Melbourne CBD, we will hold an event called Dive Watch Fundamentals. This is at the request of Oscar Hunt, who, like many, noticed that dive watches are featuring more than ever on men’s wrists in the most formal of places. For example, the Oscars. So, the idea was hatched: “Could your team come and talk to us about dive watches?” Rather than an unrestricted lecture, we thought what might be interesting would be a quick history breakdown of the main brands in the game. Which watch brands are part of the dive watch story? Dive Watch Fundamentals is all about learning the basics on offer from each brand. As well as the design tropes and functions that typify dive watches. Crown guards. Bi-directional bezels. Helium release valves. Water resistance. Legibility. Lume. By the end of this event with a difference, you will know it all. We’ll be doing a brand-by-brand breakdown, including all the icons — the Rolex Submariner, the Omega Seamaster, the DOXA SUB 300, Panerai’s distinctive designs — explaining the role they have played in the development of arguably the most popular style of men’s wristwatches on the planet. …
Blancpain, Rolex, Omega, DOXA … these are the watchmakers we normally associate with being the doyens of creating dive watches. However, as Seiko is keen to point out in their latest trilogy release, the Japanese firm has been deeply submerged in the art form of birthing amphibious timepieces for quite some time too – 55 years to be precise. The three new limited editions in question, called the 1965, 1968 and 1975, aim to celebrate not only Seiko’s first-ever dive watch but also their first decade of creating water-resistant timepieces. But, while the three watches have been very closely styled to pay homage to the original pieces on which they are based, the watchmaker is keen to point out that aside from the retro-styling, both the outer exteriors, as well as the innards of the timepieces, are entirely modern. And chief among these contemporary characteristics is an innovative type of steel Seiko has called “Ever-Brilliant Steel”. According to the watchmaker, this new material, which has never been used in the construction of a wristwatch before, is so-called for its brilliant white hue and peerless level of corrosion resistance. The Ever-Brilliant Steel will be used in the case construction of both…
Emerging watchmakers face the near-Sisyphean task of standing out in a sea of low-budget options all vying for market dominance and social media influence. When William Wood’s founder Jonny Garrett launched a crowdfunding campaign to commemorate his grandfather’s heroics in the British Fire Service, the passion in the story clearly resonated with the thousands of pledgers who wanted to make these watches a reality. In 2020, William Wood’s ‘Valiant Collection’ seeks to continue the tribute to the man himself and fire fighters around the world, all the while being stylish enough to pass under the radar as daily wear. At first glance, the dial isn’t really breaking new ground, but a first foray into mechanical watches for any brand should be glad they can play it safe and yet do so well. The sandwiched luminous layer beneath the matte black dial shines through well in low light, adding even more depth to what is truly a cavernous distance between the crystal and the hands. The William Wood script isn’t too distracting, while the applied helmet logo adds a touch of class to the otherwise tool-orientated design. It would be remiss to ignore the many easter-eggs left as references to classic…