The lack of watch fairs and face-to-face watch showings meant that I saw fewer watches in the metal in 2020 than I had done in the last 10 years. But this lack of face time didn’t stop me salivating over a few key pieces that shot straight to the top of my wish-list. These were my three favourite watches of 2020. Glashütte Original Sixties Blue Annual Edition The burnt orange and forest green iterations of this watch were already provocatively sexy. But the glacial glory of this pale blue version is truly mesmerising. The shift in colour on the sunray-finished dial is achieved by first building a base colour through a galvanic coating process, before several layers of different coloured lacquer are applied. Completing the package is the brown-grey nubuck calfskin strap. Nubuck, as you may well know, is essentially top-notch leather that’s buffed on the outside, to give a slight nap to the material that produces a velvet-like surface. I’m increasingly drawn to it as strap texture for its effortlessly relaxed quality that make it the wrist-bound equivalent of a comfortable pair of desert boots. Here it’s employed in particularly ingenious fashion to riff off that iceberg of a…
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