INTRODUCING: The Sinn EZM 12, a German Design Award-winning watch for the sanitary conscious
Editor’s note: When this landed in our inbox with imagery of surgical scrubs, a soapy petri dish and a headline along the lines of ‘finally, a super-hygienic watch for medical personnel’, we recoiled. It seemed opportunistic, given the obsession the world currently has with personal — and professional — hygiene. So I called a few friends who work at a hospital. An orderly, a doctor, a surgeon. I asked them what they thought. They all wanted to know more. What makes the watch less prone to contamination? I realised quickly that this was a review worth sharing. There was no sense from them that it was a marketing stunt from Sinn, especially considering the many and material ways that it will appeal to the sanitary conscious. German powerhouse Sinn have a surprisingly recent history of making watches for those who need them. Founded in 1961, an absolute baby in horological terms, their tool-oriented high-contrast watches for pilots and divers have gained a significant following and, like some other well-known German brands, they have managed to eke out a place of their own at the top among the Swiss. Now, with more focus than ever on the medical professionals who are saving lives…
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Last week’s Celebrity Death Match was an absolute juggernaut, as we pitted Jay–Z’s watch collection against Drake’s in a hip-hop heavyweight showdown. And while Hova clearly decimated Champagne Papi’s collection, this week’s fight to the death is set to be one for the ages. We’re really ramping it up a notch, swapping out spitting bars for picks and guitars, facing off two of the foremost collectors in the world – John Mayer and Ed Sheeran. I should preface this bout of CDM by saying that both Mayer and Sheeran are the real MVPs of the watch world – both their collections are powerful enough to give you a figurative black eye. But there can only be one winner in this death match, so like last week, we’ve split the main card into four categories. Let the games begin. Dress watch to die for: John Mayer – Patek Philippe Ref.5971P-001 You knew Mayer was going to come correct in this category … the man has always been about the unparalleled classicism of Patek, and this watch exemplifies why. Not only is the 5970 widely regarded as one of the best watches ever made, but by adding a full baguette diamond bezel…
DOXA’s revival is something easily missed if you’re not paying close attention. Vintage-inspired or re-issued dive watches aren’t exactly selling for double the retail price due to lack of supply, but this DOXA SUB 200 isn’t just another trendy microbrand with an aesthetic and a good marketing team. When determining the legacy of a watchmaker, the first place to look is their innovations. With DOXA, you don’t need to look far. For instance, the first unidirectional diving bezel in 1957, already a home run for the brand without taking into account their collaboration with Rolex in developing the first ever helium escape valve in a wristwatch. Quality, pedigree and affordability seem to be the key themes for DOXA still to this day. At Baselword 2019, the DOXA SUB 200 was released as a modern interpretation of the DOXA of old, trading its dive-professional focus (features of which are still available on other models) for a modern crowd who crave to feel as adventurous as Jacques Cousteau. The dial Though DOXA’s vintage flair is anything but subtle, the dial comes across as strikingly modern in comparison to its 1950s counterparts. The applied indices are restrained and clean, while the matching-width hands…
I don’t know how many times I’ve introduced a new segment, column or series on Time+Tide over the last six years. But I’d be prepared to bet that at least half the time, I’ve opened the post about it with these words: “Sorry, this took a long while to get to you. Good things take time.” Good things take time, and also the time for that thing has to be right. Time+Tide has primarily dealt with well-established brands as our daily remit. But little by little — and with two editions of NOW Magazine under our belt, with both bursting at the seams with smaller brands — our eyes have been opened to the creativity, the ingenuity and the excitement building in the independent and microbrand space. If there’s such a thing as a punk rock attitude in watchmaking, it lives here. And, it turns out, punk music is pretty damned popular. This was proved beyond any doubt with our recent ‘Watch & Act!’ World Watch Auction in aid of the Australian bushfire crisis. We had microbrands like Baltic, Farer, Bausele, Lebois & Co and our very own Nicholas Hacko pulling winning bids that were two, three, six-and-a-half times their RRP. It…
A crisis can often prove the catalyst for change. Amid the chaos, we’re forced to rethink how we do things — often with positive results. The First World War, for example, had a radical impact in redefining civil liberties, race relations and women’s rights. It’s way too early to untangle the full impact of the coronavirus on the watch industry. But there are signs the pandemic could push certain brands to reconsider their stiff resistance to e-commerce. Watch brands have always maintained a heavy reliance on selling through bricks and mortar stores. Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that third-party retailers account for some 90 per cent of Swiss watch sales. Direct online sales offer the alternative approach. Yet while some watch groups — notably Richemont and LVMH — have embraced online retail, most have only taken tentative steps into the virtual world. A report last year from the online marketing consultancy Digital Luxury Group found that only 40 per cent of luxury watch brands are presently offering direct-to-consumer e-commerce. In fact, online sales of luxury watches account for less than 5 per cent of all sales, according to The Mercury Project, a data-driven consulting company focused on the watch and jewellery industry. Three conspicuous…
Media and watch collaborations: in theory, they should be a match made in heaven … and, let’s be honest, they almost always are. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, considering the people behind these industry hybrids are writing, reviewing and critiquing myriad watches every single day. We should know what’s best. And it turns out, we often do. Trouble is, though, there’s been more than a few released in the last couple of years, so narrowing down which ones are best can be hard. But that’s exactly what we’ve done. The crew at T+T, after an exhaustive conference call that lasted far longer than it should, have whittled down all the media/watch collaborations in recent memory, and chosen our favourites. Enjoy. Andrew McUtchen – TAG Heuer Limited Edition Carrera Skipper For HODINKEE What an atomic drop this was, and one of the few times a watch has been significantly bulked without blowing it. The original ‘Skipperera’ from ’67 — so named for its Carrera case — was only 35mm, and the Dink version clocked a more modern 39mm, with a domed sapphire crystal instead of the plexi on the original. The tri-colour layout of the regatta countdown sub-dial is where it’s…
We are only three months into 2020, and G-Shock have already been going hard — really hard. That’s right, not only have they released dozens of new watches across a range of different collections since the beginning of 2020, but many of those are pretty remarkable in their own right, some tracking heart rate or surf beach conditions, with others paying tribute to Kung fu legend Bruce Lee or representing streetwear label KITH. There is genuinely something for everyone, so let’s take a look at five of the coolest 2020 G-Shock watches. G-Shock X KITH GM-6900 Life is good when you look through rose gold tinted lenses. And that is exactly what we’re seeing with the new Casio G-Shock X KITH GM-6900, a collaboration between Casio and the streetwear retailer. The rose gold tone metal case is eye-catching, and it also has options to swap out different straps to easily match to your outfit. This one gets a rose gold medal. G-Shock GBD-H1000 This is an important watch in the G-Shock lineup because it would be making a play at the currently booming smartwatch market. That’s right, this watch has an optical heart rate sensor, a tri-axis accelerometer, pressure and…
Well, the results are in for the inaugural round of Celebrity Watch Death Match, and everything is coming up not just roses for Jay-Z, but “Rose Gold Concepts”. Which the man himself raps about in ‘Summer’ from the Everything Is Love album, a reference to his Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon Chronograph in 18KT Rose Gold. Hove smashed Drizzy across four categories by three winning watches to one, though things did get tight in the ‘Modded & Murdered’ category, where he prevailed with a margin of just six per cent, his Franck Muller modified Rolex just beating out the murdered and iced Nautilus. Dress watch to die for: Result: 87% for the Jaeger-LeCoultre and 13% for the RM. So there you have it, vindication for yours truly. Jay-Z’s Jaeger-LeCoultre Grande Reverso Ultra-Thin Tribute to 1931 Pink Gold Ref. 2782521 is such a good thing, as opposed to that fully iced-out, ladies RM with Cuban bracelet … talk about extra. Modded and murdered out mayhem: Result: Oooooh, just 6% in it, with Patek netting 43% vs 57% for the Rolex. A closer result than the blowout in the dress watch showdown, but still, let history show you were with me – I was on the…
George Daniels is almost universally recognised as the greatest watchmaker of his lifetime, and even if you haven’t heard of him, you might have seen evidence of his work on the dial of millions of Omega watches around the world — the words CO-AXIAL. His most significant contribution to watchmaking was the development of his co-axial escapement, the first serious step forward in watchmaking in more than 200 years, and was first put to work in the Omega De Ville Co-Axial Escapement Limited Edition. That’s right, not much had changed in two centuries before Daniels began his work. His co-axial escapement was important because not only did it improve the accuracy of a typical mechanical watch, but it also vastly improved the mechanical efficiency of the movement so that it would need less regular servicing. Legend has it that Daniels woke in the middle of the night with a complete picture of what the escapement would look like, but really it was the cumulative efforts of 20 years of work that led him to develop his invention. In essence, the co-axial escapement was successfully able to eliminate almost all friction between the pallet fork and the escape wheel, an improvement on…
When it comes to the dress code for our post-apocalyptic future, the Mad Max films wrote the rulebook. Essentially, what they prescribe is an “anything goes” approach involving heavy use of asymmetrical shoulder pads, harnesses, gratuitous cargo pockets and lots and lots of leather. The presumed rationale behind such get-ups is that, when you’re trying to survive in a dystopian wasteland, you wear whatever you can scavenge. But I reckon something else is going on here, too. When your circumstances become truly outlandish, the standard rules no longer apply. Forced to become more open-minded as life takes an unexpected turn, the conventional is replaced with the left field. Given that we’re all now adapting to unfathomable times ourselves (way to go, COVID-19), the decision to re-release the Hamilton Pulsar is perfect timing. The world’s first electronic digital wristwatch was presented to the world on May 6, 1970, in a press conference at the Four Seasons in New York. With no moving parts and an LED digital display illuminated at the touch of a button, the watch was like something out of science fiction. Which, in fact, it was — the Pulsar Time Computer’s idiosyncratic design was based on a concept clock…