The first ever Australian Hublot boutique in Sydney offers an exciting future
It’s been a very busy month in Sydney’s watch retail space with a number of brands opening their doors, and an exciting Swiss brand has entered the fray with the first ever standalone Australian Hublot boutique in Sydney. Located in the heart of Sydney on King Street, the new space embodies the brand’s motto of “The Art of Fusion”, blending marble and glass in the form of alchemy that only Hublot has mastered. Throughout the boutique, the walls are covered in mirrors and pop-art, expressing a playfulness of light and space that is also expressed in Hublot’s watches, especially through their use of different case materials. The new Sydney boutique also features a private suite for VIP entertainment, which aims to reflect the values of Hublot, which CEO Ricardo Guadalupe describes as “a young, dynamic and contemporary brand”. Most importantly for fans of the brand around Australia, however, is the watches that will be offered at the new location. The new boutique will receive priority allocation of some limited edition stock, giving Australian Hublot enthusiasts unparalleled access to the brand, never before seen in the country. Hublot are also working on a special edition Sydney watch, which will only be…
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Never has a watch encapsulated the phrase “one watch to do it all” more than the Seiko Astron series. Here is a timepiece with an accuracy rating of ±15 seconds per month and a power reserve of no less than 6 months, that can also do the following: Automatically adjust the handset position alignment Host a day display and a day-date display with daylight saving time Dual-time function An “in-flight” function that pauses the watch’s GPS signal reception An overcharge prevention function A perpetual calendar complication that is accurate to February 28, 2100 Power reserve complication A power-saving function A satellite acquisition status display function The ability for time zone adjustment by receiving GPS signals from satellites An automatic time-adjustment function And finally, a world-time function that is good for 40 different time zones All this technical prowess is possible thanks to the Astron series being solar powered by Seiko’s innovative and powerful Calibre 8X53 movement. The extreme bandwidth of the watch continues when you take into account the 200 metres (20 bar) of water resistance and an incredibly comfortable and versatile silicone band that features a tri-folding, push-button deployant clasp. Perhaps the only thing that lets the Seiko Astron…
The first major awards ceremony in 2020 for film and television, the 77th Annual Golden Globes, was held yesterday at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. I was keeping my eye out for any notable timepieces on the wrists of the attendees and I spotted a few of the best watches of the 2020 Golden Globes. Here are the top six: Ellen DeGeneres and her Patek Philippe Reference 5271P Perpetual Calendar Chronograph Ellen, as we know, is a mega collector of watches with a mixture of modern and vintages pieces from Rolex and Patek Philippe. Ellen received the Carol Burnett Award and on her wrist was the Patek Philippe Reference 5271P Perpetual Calendar Chronograph. She has owned the watch since 2018. In addition to the complications of a perpetual calendar and chronograph, the watch features 58 baguette diamonds on the lugs and bezel, and the folding clasp has 22 baguette diamonds. Taron Egerton and his Montblanc Star Legacy Automatic Taron Egerton took home the Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy for his portrayal of Elton John in the bio-epic Rocketman. Egerton wore a Montblanc Star Legacy Automatic in stainless steel, featuring a white dial…
2019 was a full-on year here at Time+Tide — we launched Australia’s premier watch club, the second edition of our magazine, NOW Issue 2, became the official distributor for DOXA watches in Australia and New Zealand and launched our very own online store, the Time+Tide marketplace. We also, rather obviously, wrote a shedload of stories for what was a very important year in watchmaking. And now I’ve got to whittle down the 1000+ posts and give you my five favourites … so here they are: MY WEEK WITH: The Girard-Perregaux Laureato Chronograph, and how I got completely turned around to loving it Andrew’s weeklong review of his personal Girard-Perregaux Laureato Chronograph was one of my favourite horological reads of 2019. In a past life, I worked for an Authorised Dealer of GP as a salesperson, and it used to confound me how ignorant people were to both the Laureato and Girard-Perregaux itself. Here is a watch that was conceived in the golden age of luxury steel sports watches with an integrated bracelet and, crucially, released a full year before the aristocratic Patek Philippe Nautilus. And Girard-Perregaux has been around since 1791, making it one of the oldest watchmakers on the planet.…
Weekends in Melbourne can mean several things: overpriced brunches with mates after a boozy night out on the town, hikes up the Dandenong Ranges’ unendingly popular “1000 steps”, day trips to the Peninsula Hot Springs and, if you’re a watch enthusiast, donning that special timepiece in your collection that wouldn’t dare see the light of day between Monday and Friday. For this Saturday and Sunday, I wore my ’66 Rolex GMT-Master ref.1675 “Pepsi” and went out in search of what other like-minded individuals had decided to attach to their wrist, and this is what I found out in the wild: Riley’s Rolex GMT-Master II Ref. 116710LN Riley always had his eyes set on Rolex’s gorgeous GMT-Master II Ref. 116710LN, and much like our fictitious “Clairvoyant Collector”, he had an inkling at the beginning of 2019 that Rolex may well discontinue the “Green Arrow”, as it housed the older Calibre 3186 movement, which had since been superseded by the Calibre 3285, first released in the Rolex GMT-Master Ref. 126710 BLRO “Pepsi” back in 2018. Riley frantically contacted Authorised Dealers across the country, keen on securing the Oystersteel Professional model before it was too late. But alas — much to the surprise of,…
Some watches take the world by storm the moment they are released. Some, however, take a little while longer to be appreciated. The true significance of the Universal Genève Polerouter, first released in 1954, and its subsequent offshoots are still in the process of being properly recognised. Not only was it the first really significant design to exit the pen of Gérald Genta (who would go on to design the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Nautilus before overhauling Bulgari’s product offering and launching his own brand), it was a trailblazer upon its release. And still, to this day, the Polerouter is often cited as the inspiration for many modern watch designs. With so much going for it, it’s not hard to see why. The first thing that is likely to strike you about the Polerouter are those graceful bombé lugs that look like the slinkier, sexier cousin of the lugs you’d expect to find on an Omega Speedmaster (a watch that would not hit the shelves until the Universal Genève had been on the market for the best part of three years). What is less immediately apparent about those lugs, however, is the space between them. Although…
Making the right choice for your left wrist is never easy. But at least your options are generally curtailed by the size of your budget. That isn’t a problem for soccer deity Cristiano Ronaldo. That’s because the Juventus superstar is satanically rich. According to Forbes magazine, Ronaldo was soccer’s highest-earning player of the last decade, pocketing a colossal 548 million pounds ($A1.033 billion) during the 2010s. How do you tackle the stern challenge of spending all this loot? Well, Ronaldo was recently spotted at the 14th Dubai International Sports Conference wearing the Rolex GMT-Master II Ice (ref. 116769TBR), a timepiece made with 18k white gold and 30 carats of diamonds. It’s the most expensive watch that Rolex has ever offered to the public. The price tag: a cool $US485,350 (a touch under $700,000 Aussie dollars). The reason for the hefty price is largely due to the fact that every square inch is smothered with a shit-ton of diamonds. The 18k white gold case and lugs are festooned with 79 round diamonds. The bezel (18k white gold too) is studded with baguette-cut diamonds, while the dial gleams with ripples of smaller honeycomb-set diamonds. More — yep, you guessed it — diamonds are…
Editor’s note: Rolex is probably the strongest watch brand on the planet, but as well as their worldwide fame and popularity, they make incredibly reliable and robust wristwatches. One key part of their success at consistently producing hard-wearing watches is the quality control at their factory, ensuring that every timepiece that leaves the building has met their strict standards. As a result, it’s an incredibly rare moment when a Rolex is found with any mistakes, but that is exactly what happened when an Air-King popped up with a very unusual dial. It’s a modern-day escape from Alcatraz, where the escapee is a defect on a watch that makes it to market, and Alcatraz is the Rolex manufacture. That, I suspect, is flattering Alcatraz. Because, the fact that a modern Rolex with a defect you can actually see even exists is unthinkable to the point of immediately being suspected as a hoax. But here it is. Not only does a ‘double nine’ Rolex Air-King 116900 — with a nine where the ‘3’ numeral should be — allegedly exist in the wild, it’s been captured by Watchfinder & Co., who used the occasion to do a proper exposition on just how extraordinary that fact…
How to define microbrand watches is a conversation topic that has worn out many watch journalists’ tongues. With proposed criteria ranging from price to retail model and everything in between, there isn’t much consistency in how this new phenomenon is received or perceived. Perhaps one thing that can unite the explosion of newcomers that the industry has seen since the advent of crowdfunding platforms is independence. You don’t find micros in a group. They may band together with other micros to pool event resources and widen their audience reach, but they are generally the ones in control of the purse strings and, most crucially, design decisions. Group ownership does funny things to a brand. It can bend them all out of shape and into new shapes that fit the group’s overarching narrative but not the brand itself. Microbrands are not beholden to such nonsense and, so, along with independence, you should expect to find a clean narrative that translates well into identifiable, high-value products trying to offer a lot of bang for your buck. And the best way to do that is to not go too crazy. Depart the beaten path, sure, but don’t beat it to death. Stick close…
Nothing says flex like a solid gold timepiece. Doesn’t matter what sort of gold it is either — yellow, white, pink … if it’s 18k, then chances are you’ve obtained a level of wrist-worn one-upmanship that few can ever hope to own. And 2019 was not shy at all about giving birth to some very, very hot examples of precious metal marvels from a number of different watchmakers. We’d love to mention all of them, but as the title of this story would suggest, the need for summation means that we must choose our five favourites … so here they are: H. MOSER & CIE. ENDEAVOUR BLUE LAGOON It is rare to see one of the industry’s most mercurial brands tapping into the current mass-market trends, but in the case of the H. Moser & Cie. Blue Lagoon that is exactly what’s happening. It seems the wealthiest watch collectors in the world are not, in fact, immune to the industry’s current obsession with teal. Achingly beautiful is the only way we can begin to describe it. Ref No: 1200-0206 / Case size: 40mm / Case material: White Gold / Movement: HMC 200 / Price: $34,850 PIAGET ALTIPLANO The Piaget Altiplano collection…