Best Super NEWS Watches
Five Minutes With ... : Shepard Fairey On His Latest Collaboration With Hublot (VIDEO)
Andre the Giant and Hublot have more in common than just size. Shepard Fairey has used both as subjects for his artwork. The Obey Giant and Obama Hope pieces will forever be associated with Fairey (and are something of historical artifacts), but he's moved to a different canvas of late: The wristwatch. Last month he released his second collaboration with Hublot, the Classic Fusion Chronograph Shepard Fairey, featuring signature features that have come to be associated with his work C specifically the use of the mandala (a geometric configuration of symbols) and, of course, one pensive wrestler. Following the new release, we sat down with Fairey to discuss the cre...
Interview: The Man Trying To Make A 100% French Watch
When Colin de Tonnac started his watch brand Semper & Adhuc in 2016, he chose as his symbol a reference to the three fates C which might seem like a temptation toward those very same fates by such a young company. But the logo makes sense when you learn about his business model. De Tonnac embraces orphaned movements, extricated from working watches, and gives them a new fate. The last time we wrote about De Tonnac was in 2020. He had just introduced the Instantane, the Inopine, and the Immdiate models, a collection of watches made with Swiss movements. At the time, he expressed a desire to create a 100% French watch. ...
In-Depth: A Primer On Mother-Of-Pearl
Mother-of-pearl is, unfortunately, a turn-off to a lot of watch enthusiasts, although not entirely without reason. If the tendency in designing so-called lady's watches is, at its worst, "shrinking and pinking," a mother-of-pearl dial is C or can be C part of the visual code of the stereotypical watch for the "feminine client," as the industry sometimes puts it. Mother-of-pearl, however, like any other raw material, is as debased or as elevated as the design of which it's a part. While it can fail to rise above the level of lazy clich, it's also a player in some of the most beautiful watches in the world C and though it has a reputation for fragility, it is in its natural form, one of the t...
2021 Was The Year Of New Watches
The working thesis for this holiday-season version of Point-Counterpoint pivots around a single question, to wit: Is this the year that interest in modern watches finally eclipsed interest in vintage watches? With scarcity at retail, skyrocketing secondary-market prices, and ever-higher hammer prices for many of the most popular new watches, I have taken the Yes position. The inimitable Jack Forster has taken the opposing position. We invite you to read both pieces, and let us know your thoughts in the comments sections. The charm of old good things is a big part of what got me interested in watches in the first place. I believe experiencing the watches from earl...
The Tissot PRX vs. The Chopard Alpine Eagle
It's easy to forget that the stainless-steel-sports-watch-with-an-integrated-bracelet format isn't owned by any particular brand. Any manufacturer can do it, and many do C although some manufacturers are so strongly tied to the design that it might seem like they've become synonymous with this category. The Royal Oak has come to define Audemars Piguet in recent times, and to a lesser degree, the same can be said about Patek Philippe and the Nautilus, especially given the constant stream of media attention the watch has received lately. These are indeed fantastic executions of the formula, but look beyond that pair of Insta-famous stainless steel integrated bracelet watches and feast your eye...
Our Fav No-Hype Watches Of 2021
This week's episode is the last for 2021 and it focuses entirely on our favorite accessible no-hype watches. I asked Nora, Jack, and Danny to prep a list of their favorite watches of 2021, but there is a catch ... any selection has to be under $5,000 and available at retail (or via a transparent waitlist, supply chain being what it is). From less than $100 on a 2000's throwback to some of the year's coolest watches, it just goes to show you C and us C that expensive watches can be cool but not all cool watches need to be expensive.? So, did we miss any low-to-no-hype watches that you've had your eye on? Be sure to let us know in the co...
The Best HODINKEE Stories Of 2021
We did it! We made it to the end of this wild year. And we're proud to say that we now have more HODINKEE readers than ever before. Thanks so much for rocking with us during these 12 eventful months as we covered everything from the 5711 farewell tour to the cicada apocalypse. It's been exciting, challenging, and fun for us C and, we hope, for you too. ?To mark the close of 2021, we huddled as a team to select and rank our favorite stories of the year. They're not necessarily the posts with the most views (that would be this one) but rather the stories we feel brought out the best of us.?We'll be counting them down every day for the next two weeks. Do you have a strong opinion to the contrar...
Introducing the Vacheron Constantin Traditionnelle Complete Calendar Open Face
Vacheron Constantin's Traditionelle Complete Calendar is one of the very few examples of the complication made by an haute horlogerie manufacturer these days C so much so that it's something of a signature complication for them. The complete calendar shows the day of the week, the month, and the date (usually with a pointer), and also the moonphase; the closely related triple calendar is identical but omits the moonphase. The triple calendar is available from Vacheron in a hand-wound model, in stainless steel, in the Historiques collection (the Triple Calendrier 1942) and the?Complete Calendar is currently only available in automatic watches, including the Traditionelle Complete Calendar and...
Exploring Aspen's History With The Hublot Classic Fusion Aerofusion Aspen Snowmass Limited Edition
Mounted on the wall, just to the right of the entrance to the Silver Queen Gondola in Aspen, Colorado, is the massive Hublot Big Bang watch-clock that lets skiers know how many runs they can squeeze in before the gondola shuts down at 3:30 PM and the aprs-ski revelry begins. There are eight other supersized Big Bang watch-clocks perched around public spaces throughout the ritzy ski town. Hublot is the official timekeeper of Aspen, a partnership that launched in 2019. Like most industries, the pandemic took a massive toll on ski-related travel and tourism, but now that the lifts are running again and the town is alive with folks from all over, Hublot is hono...
Road Trip With Nissan Skyline and Seiko SRQ029
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cole Pennington (@cole_pennington) I remember the exact moment in 2016 when I snapped that picture on my cell phone and posted it to Instagram. I was sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven just outside of ??Utsunomiya, a small Japanese city known as the birthplace of gyoza. Earlier that morning I picked up a modified Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R that I had rented for a grand tour of Japan's most famous mountain roads. Days before that I had bought a watch just for the trip: A Seiko SRP775, you know, the "Turtle". The Skyline I bought wasn't a GT-R, the tricked-out ...
A history of the character watch
The character watch is simple enough to define (although Danny Milton and I had a good time arguing over it, earlier this week). It's simply nothing more, nor less, than a watch with a cartoon or other character on the dial, and although I can't look at any character watch that doesn't have moving character hands without feeling disappointed, the truth is that there are millions of character watches that have conventional watch hands. As a matter of fact, the very first documented character watch, which had the comic strip character Buster Brown on the dial, was such a watch Canimated? character watches, which have characters with moving character hands, didn't show up until 1933, when the f...
Robin Swithinbank Shares His Thoughts On Dubai Watch Week
Imagine if you will, youre at Dubai Watch Weeks chi-chi Cipriani pop-up, and who do you see noshing nonchalantly on gnocchi and chatting idly in the midday sun but Jean-Frdric Dufour and Fran?ois-Paul Journe.Such is the unbound informality of Dubais biennial micro-fair that for the seasoned visitor, this little mise en scne wouldnt have done much to surprise, even if it did leave intrigued diners to pretend we werent talking about what it was the industry overlords C one corporate behemoth, one all-conquering indie C might be talking about. (The burrata? The wisdom of wearing a jacket and tie in 90-degree heat? Whether Francis Ford Coppola could be persuaded to make a film about Dufo...
The Case For Better Watch Storage
Watch storage is a problem with myriad solutions. A dresser drawer would be one option. Another would be a burly built-in safe with biometric locks and a fleet of winders to keep your watches wound and ready to wear. My current fix lies somewhere in the middle. It's simple, flexible, and low-profile, offering ease-of-access without sacrificing security. Over the years, I've tried using the original boxes (a pain for access and for storage, no real improvement in security), watch rolls (I've found these are good up to 4-5 watches, but have never liked how the watches touch when the roll is rolled up), and inexpensive display cases...
The G-Shock Frogman Borneo Rainbow Toad Reviewed By A Frog Professor
Meet Professor Indraneil Das. He likes to go by Neil. He's a Professor at the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation, Universiti of Malaysia Sarawak. His field is herpetology (which means he studies amphibians), and in 2011, he rediscovered the Borneo Rainbow Toad C a species thought to have been extinct since 1924 C in the tall trees of Gunung Penrissen. The discovery of this reclusive rainbow toad caused quite a stir, and not only among herpetologists. It also inspired the designers at G-Shock to create the Frogman Borneo Rainbow Toad Limited Edition, a rare watch created to celebrate the rare amphibian. As we were considering who s...
Just Because: My Trusty Old Grand Seiko Is Still Shockingly Accurate
When I buy a mechanical watch, I know what I'm getting into: I have no illusions of quartz-like accuracy. I have a phone. You have a phone. We all have a phone. If what I'm buying is not a straight-up certified chronometer, I hope merely for reasonably good timekeeping and to be spared the sinking feeling that arises when one senses he's purchased a lemon. But every once in a while, a watch sneaks up with such impressive accuracy that I won't shut up?about it. This happened the other day when I broke out an old friend, my Grand Seiko SBGM221, from its safety-deposit-box-sized cell. Accuracy is well wo...
Last night marked the U.S. premiere of The Matrix: Resurrections, the fourth installment in the Matrix canon, which brings Keanu Reeves' Neo back to the silver screen. I was in San Francisco to attend this first screening C and after a party complete with a fireworks display over the Bay C which had a star-studded turnout of attendees including Reeves himself, Carrie-Anne Moss, Neil Patrick Harris, Jonathan Groff, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, among others. Director Lana Wachowski introduced the film on the front stage of the historic and exceedingly deco Castro Theater. The entire street was shut down for the event, and the building was lit up by projected images of green Matrix code in motion. ...
The Best Watches From Goodwood Revival 2021
It's not the money that draws out interesting watches at the Goodwood Revival, although there's plenty of dough flying around. Racing isn't cheap, and racing rare, 50-plus-year-old cars that are worth tens of millions of dollars and need extensive maintenance is particularly pricey.? I thought I was living the high life by arriving in a helicopter (not mine, of course) when I looked over at the landing site nearby and saw a Sikorsky S-92 (a $27 million helicopter) parked nearby. As it turns out, Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll flew in on it. Nevertheless, the appreciation of old things C and bygone times C is a democratic affair at the Goodwood Revival. Ever...
New Vintage Watches In The HODINKEE Shop
To view the entire current selection of vintage watches available in the HODINKEE Shop, click?here.Questions? Send us a note, or let us know in the comments. Want to sell your vintage watch through the HODINKEE Shop? Click?here. Want to sell your pre-owned watch? Click?here. This Week's Vintage Watches Today is the day we round out a remarkable year for vintage watches in the HODINKEE Shop. The vintage team is going to take a bit of a listing break around the turn of the new year. If you have an alarm set for 11 AM EST every Wednesday, feel free to keep it on. We will still bring a vintage-themed article to your HODINKEE Apps and HODI...
Seikos New Collab With Rowing Blazers Is A Stroke Of Genius
In 2005, two young preps C Jack Carlson and Eric Wind C met as incoming Georgetown freshmen. Carlson was a coxswain on the crew team, and he talked his new chum into trying out. Wind lasted exactly two days. But the duo stayed friends through college and after, when their careers diverged. Wind became a Palm Beach vintage-watch dealer of great renown. Carlson founded a clothing and lifestyle brand called Rowing Blazers, based on his 2014 coffee table book of the same name. The book had its release party at the old Ralph Lauren store on Fifth Avenue (an event Wind covered for HODINKEE, with an epic edition of Watch Spotting) and celebrated the sartorial stylings o...
The Grald Genta Icon of Time Sale At Sotheby's
Sotheby's C?fresh off selling what some experts deemed "the best Patek Philippe ever" C has just announced a heavy-hitting slate of auctions to start 2022, all centered around the legacy of watch designer Grald Genta and headlined by the sale of a unique two-tone Audemars Piguet Royal Oak ref. 5402 from Genta's personal collection. Grald Genta's personal Audemars Piguet Royal Oak ref. 5402 One hundred of Genta's original watch designs, drawings, and watercolor paintings have been sourced from his estate, now overseen by his wife and business partner, Evelyne Genta, and will be up for grabs during three separate auctions in G...