HANDS-ON: The Bulgari Octo Finissimo 100m in satin-polished stainless steel is simply extraordinary
LVMH’s Dubai Watch Week may have been only seven months ago, but it genuinely feels like it could’ve been last century. Cast your mind back those long, long … long seven months, though, and there seemed to be a general consensus among punters and professional hacks alike that there was one novelty that eclipsed all else. I am, of course, talking about the TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Silver. Kudos to TAG, it is a brilliant timepiece. T+T founder Andrew McUtchen even said that it “might be the perfect watch”. Thing is, though, it wasn’t the best watch unveiled at the boojee event in the desert. Contrary to popular belief, the real MVP was Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo in satin-polished stainless steel. The words “game” and “changer” get thrown about quite a bit in the editorial and marketeering worlds, but mark my words, this watch, cliché or not, is exactly that. In fact, I’m shocked that more folks in our world weren’t shouting from the rooftops upon its unveiling. Here is a luxury steel sports watch with an integrated bracelet, gorgeously finished manufacture movement with a platinum micro rotor and a blend of archetypal visual cues with a real, truly unique…
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At 3am, the world can seem like a bleak place. Staring at the bedroom ceiling unable to sleep, I find myself wrestling with a familiar stampede of anxieties. All the usual suspects are present and correct: the financial headaches, the career regrets, the mounting horror that my “double crown” is, in fact, a nascent bald spot. It seems as good a time as any to properly confront my mortality by agreeing to review the Tikker “death watch”. Because while these moments of nocturnal angst have a tendency to flare up from time to time, tthey’ve become way more frequent of late. The second round of lockdown in Victoria – where we are back in Stage 3 and largely housebound for another six weeks – has proved a vicious kick in the metaphysical knackers. COVID’s capacity for screwing up everything that I’d looked forward to this year has plunged me deep into the doldrums. Increasingly, I catch myself feeling disappointed about the past and pessimistic about what the future holds. The chance to review the Tikker death watch did not exactly present as a very cheery pick-me-up. Essentially, the watch provides an hourly countdown to when you’re going to die. It…
Quartz is the middle child of the watch industry. Born between the talented mechanical genius of the first-born and the innovative technology of the new smartwatch baby. But while it may have had less attention during critical developmental windows as a child – despite being wildly popular at birth – the quartz watch is hitting puberty in the same way Matthew Lewis (who played Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter) did, successfully finding its feet and getting some mojo of its own as a grown-up. So while quartz has typically been thought of as the cheap and cheerful sibling to the serious and expensive mechanical wristwatch, in 2020 there are some wonderful pieces of high-end quartz watchmaking that come with a price tag to match, both vintage and modern. Let’s take a look at a few very special examples. Citizen Caliber 0100 This is a watch that deserves more recognition. After debuting a solar-powered quartz movement that was accurate to within 1 second per year in a pocket watch in 2018, Citizen released the same movement in a wristwatch the following year. This watch has a laundry list of features that should go a long way to articulating why quartz watchmaking…