No products in the cart.
Best Super NEWS Watches
Well, it's been a hot minute (over two years) since we last broadcast Friday Live, but we are BACK. In the spirit of the season, we thought it would be fun to bring back the niche broadcast to all you watch-loving folks while things are a little bit well, weird.? This time around we are going to do things a little bit differently. First of all, we have a host! And it's me, Cara. And each week I will have a new guest. Second of all, we are broadcasting it via Instagram Live like every other mom/influencer/fitness instructor/CEO you follow right now. Third of all, we promise to only bring you positive news and watch-related stuff because that's why we are here afte...
Watch Madness: The 2020 HODINKEE Talking Watches Tournament, Day 5
It's Day 5 of Watch Madness, and as you'll see in the bracket below, we have our first results: Messrs. Ansari, Kim, Rashidian, Stein, and Feresten have survived Round 1 and earned a spot in Round 2. Congratulations, gentlemen. If we've learned anything so far from this little exercise, it's that each and every episode has its ardent fans C?and some of those fans are really, really enjoying this. Shout out to reader "bazamu" in particular for this gem in the comments section from Day 2: "That said, the cheese knife showed me that no team has a higher gear than Goldberger and I think he has the firepower to beat Mayer 2's extended run time and laundry list of quot...
Introducing: The New TAG Heuer Aquaracer GMT
Dark as the night and blue as the day, TAG Heuer has released a new Aquaracer GMT for 2020, replete with a blue and black 24-hour bezel. A new addition to the collection, this watch bears some similarity to another GMT watch we have come to know and love, but TAG Heuer has injected the Aquaracer water-sport DNA into this watch in a way that differentiates it in terms of overall functionality. What's good for the jet set is good for the jet-ski.? Initial Thoughts This watch takes all of the GMT functionality C the aluminum bi-directional 24-hour bezel and the ability to track multiple time zones C and pair...
In-Depth: The Bulgari Octo Finissimo Automatic Satin-Polished Steel
If you're interested in watches and the socio-anthropological significance of precious and non-precious metals, this is a great time to be alive.?Steel was, for most of the history of watchmaking, an unusual metal to use. Watches were, until the advent of mass production methods in the mid-1800s, rather precious and often unique objects, and even when stainless steel began to be mass-produced in the early 20th century, it took some time for steel-cased watches to become common (the preferred case material for a good watch was gold, or gold over some base metal). Steel, therefore, was a metal considered practical but not precious, and its use was largely confined to watches intended for some ...
Best of Watchville: Remembering The Ikepod Megapode
In today's installment of Best Of Watchville, I'd like to draw your attention to Quill & Pad, whose Martin Green reflects on a watch that has become one of his favorite travel timepieces, the Ikepod Megapode.?The Megapode is the largest of the watches made by Ikepod and its most sophisticated to date. Designed for use by pilots, it has scales for making on-the-fly calculations in a cockpit matched with a design that is unmistakably Marc Newson's. I'd wager that most readers of HODINKEE are familiar with Ikepod, the watch marque co-founded by Newson in 1994 and?which the London-based designer subsequently left to pursue work o...
Hey Gang! Were officially back with your favorite live-streaming watch talk show, FRIDAY LIVE! Over the next few weeks (months, years.?) were going to be bringing you the same fun content we brought to the old show, but now on a new format: Instagram Live. The good ol' days. In todays show, I brought on my esteemed colleague and host of HODINKEE Radio Stephen Pulvirent. Together, we covered a few highlights from the site this week including "Watch Madness" (our Talking Watches tournament) and the ever-enlightening comment section.We also debuted what will be a weekly recurring segment: Things That Made Us Smile. In these c...
Sunday Rewind: How The (Tudor) Straps Are Made
Fabric straps can sometimes seem like the go-to budget solution for your favorite tool watch, but like donuts and James Cameron movies, they are not all created equal. In this special edition of Inside The Manufacture, we bring you to Faure, the Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert-based manufacturer of some of the world's finest fabric ribbons.? Faure's clients include Christian Louboutin and (duh) Tudor, as the French brand creates the fabric NATO-adjacent straps that have been found on Tudor watches for the past few years. Far from your garden variety nylon NATO, these Faure straps are made using old-world technology. Click the link below...
HODINKEE Radio: Episode 85: Howie Kendrick & Revisiting The Tudor Black Bay GMT
Subscribe to the show: (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, TuneIn). Already heard it once or twice? Please leave a short review, and tell us which guests we should have on! We're super excited this week to be bringing back a HODINKEE fan-favorite (and someone I'm always excited to talk to), Mr. Howie Kendrick. When we recorded Talking Watches with Howie back in the summer of 2016, he was playing second base for the Los Angeles Dodgers, but by the 2018 season, he had moved across the country to ply his trade with the Washington Nationals. Last year, he had quite the postseason, leading his team to victory with an epic extra-innings gran...
Best of Watchville: Deployant's Watch Photography Initiative
In today's installment of Best Of Watchville, I'd like to point you toward a project you can participate in that's happening over on Deployant.?As many of us find ourselves housebound during the COVID-19 quarantine, the enthusiast site has invited watch collectors to brush up on their watch photography and submit the results for the chance to be published. The story, written by Peter Chong, also mentions that there will be at least one prize. It's been my experience over the years that watch collecting and photography are hobbies with quite a bit of overlap, so there's a good chance that many readers have at least some camera gea...
Watch Madness: The 2020 HODINKEE Talking Watches Tournament, Day 6
Now that you've had the weekend to catch up on your backlog of TW episodes, we're back with all-new matchups on Day 6. As you'll see from the bracket below, Mario Andretti has moved on to face John Goldberger; John Mayer, Part 2 goes up against Jason Singer; Pras faces Moki Martin; and Ren Beyer goes head-to-head with Alfredo Paramico. Heavy hitters abound. As a reminder, you can still vote on Day 4's matchups here and Day 5's matchups here. Scroll down to cast your votes for today's matchups, and tune in again tomorrow as we present four more 2nd Round matchups?in the C Region. ...
In-Depth: The Eerie Beauty Of The Apple Watch Solar Face, And The Anatomy Of Nightfall
There were 10 basic Apple Watch faces when the Apple Watch launched in 2014, and since then, the number has increased significantly, to put it mildly. Today, there are 31 groups of faces, which range from Activity to X-Large, and if you include all the variations in each group and then add in all the possible permutations of colors and complications, you get a total which is, if not too many to count, certainly laborious to calculate. Indeed, if you like the Apple Watch at all, you can probably find almost anything to suit your mood or a change of taste (and if you want to add in the number of different experiences you can create with all the possible strap variations, the number becomes tru...
Watch Madness: The 2020 HODINKEE Talking Watches Tournament, Day 7
The headline news: Alton Brown, Fred Savage, Matt Jacobson, Josh Bernstein, Gary Shteyngart, and Keegan Allen have emerged from the first round, setting the table for some tough second round tilts in the C Region. Today, for the first time, we'll revisit the Eric Singer and Alan Maleh editions C two early episodes representing distinct approaches to collecting. As we near the halfway point of Watch Madness, the matchups only continue to get more and more interesting...Don't forget, you can still vote on Day 6's matchups here.As always, scroll down to cast your votes for today's matchups, and tune in again tomorrow as we present four more 2nd Round matchups?in the D Region. ...
A Week On The Wrist: The Omega Seamaster Diver 300M
The Omega Seamaster Diver 300M, in one form or another, has been around since 1993. But of all the various iterations over the decades, the most recent example with a polished ceramic dial, ceramic bezel, and Co-Axial caliber 8800 may be the one that's finally found its footing. It's a watch that feels like it took 26 years to get right. Past designs teetered back and forth between a luxury watch and a tool watch over the years, and it was an absolute commercial success, but it never had a unanimous vote from the enthusiast community. If it weren't for the on-screen endorsement by Pierce Brosnan C the suavest Bond of them all C would the watch have hung around in...
Not all brands evolve in the same way. Some are able to maintain a particular character for a century or more, some find new avenues of expression and split in different directions, and some become almost unrecognizable as they shift and change. To me, Roger Dubuis feels like a great example of that last archetype. When the legendary watchmaker launched his eponymous brand in 1995, the watches reflected a lot of the aesthetic cues and watchmaking tropes that he'd cultivated during his time at Patek Philippe, but always with a slight twist and a hint of irreverence. They were nothing like the skeletonized carbon tourbillons you see today. ...
The Value Proposition: The Detroit Watch Company M1-Woodward Moonphase Exhibition
Patrick Ayoub is a Detroit-based designer who started in the automotive field in 1985 with BMW, in Munich, before moving on to run Volkswagen's advanced studio in Dsseldorf. After opening and running a design studio in Spain for SEAT (a Volkswagen-owned marque), Ayoub was offered the chance to return to North America and work for Chrysler. About 17 years ago, Ayoub followed his passion for watches and began taking on horological design work on the side. In 2013, together with his wife, Amy, who is also a designer, he founded Detroit Watch Company, pursuing the dream of creating a watch brand of their own. Today, Patrick and Amy Ayoub conceive, design, and assemble all of their watches in th...
The very existence of titanium offerings from Patek Philippe is one which sparks a lot of commotion in the collecting and auction world. Patek produces titanium watches in extremely small numbers, which generally, if not always, results in wholly unique offerings.?The only known Sky Moon Tourbillon in titanium sold at Sotheby's in 2014, and, of course, the titanium 5004 and 5208T-010 each sold at Only Watch at massive prices.? Christie's Hong Kong has two auctions coming in July and November showcasing a single-owner collection highlighted by two ruby-set watches and one unique piece titanium Patek Philippe watch, among other notable examples in precious metals. ...
Watch Madness: The 2020 HODINKEE Talking Watches Tournament, Day 8
Welcome to Day 8 of Watch Madness! Today, we're finishing up Round 2 in the D Region, where four episodes will move on to the Sweet 16. As you can see below, Morgan King, Howie Kendrick, Bethenny Frankel, David Williams, and Roger Smith were victorious in the 1st Round, and Jean-Claude Biver, Kevin Rose, and J.J. Redick will see their first action of the tournament. How do you choose favorites here? We have no idea. That's your job.As a reminder, you can still vote on yesterday's matchups here.Scroll down to cast your votes for today's matchups, and tune in again tomorrow as we kick off the Sweet 16 Regions A and B. 2nd Round: D ...
Watch Spotting: Wizards-Era Michael Jordan Sporting An A. Lange & Sohne Datograph
Michael Jordan's career didn't end with that magical game-winning midrange jumper over Bryon Russell in the 1998 NBA Finals. He wasn't always a Chicago Bull, although some may argue otherwise. His Airness made a comeback in the 2001-2002 season, playing two seasons in the nation's capital with the Washington Wizards. You might be asking yourself why I am taking the time to shed light on this oft-forgotten chapter in the story of arguably the greatest basketball player of all time. Well, at least one reason is because, without it, we would never have spotted this very cool watch on his wrist. When last we saw Michael Jordan here, he wa...
Hands-On: The Bremont Argonaut
In a time where a good portion of the mindshare of watch enthusiasm is directly invested in a small stable of un-buyable watches, anything outside of the norm can feel like a breath of fresh air C no less to someone in my line of work. As great as all of that unobtanium may be, the endless fervor for that much-loved metal has led not only to copy-cats but also to full-on trends that follow various aspects of some of the world's hottest watches. As an attempt to simultaneously focus on something outside of that world while still connecting with many of my preferred watch design cues, I give you something thankfully different. It does not have an integrated bracelet, it does not have a blue di...
Watch Madness: The 2020 HODINKEE Talking Watches Tournament, Day 9
As the field narrows and we move closer to crowning your favorite Talking Watches episode, it's nice to be reminded that each and every one of these episodes is special. As reader "gregcarrara" commented yesterday, "There are really no winners or losers...everyone on Talking Watches has been awesome...if you love watches and collecting, everyone featured has been interesting and fun...I hope the series continues for a long time!" Hear, hear gregcarrara C?we concur on all fronts!But back to the matter at hand: the first four of eight Sweet 16 matchups. In the A Region, we have Mayer vs. Kim and Ku vs. Feresten, while in the B Region, we have Goldberger vs. Mayer 2 and Martin vs. Paramico. All...