I did some journalism, too, to try and buttress my keyboard-warrior qualities with, you know, facts, or at the very least, original1 comment from the brand in question. I know it’s not the norm, but to spare most of you I have at least done the decent thing and hidden the more professional content behind the paywall. Enjoy!

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Come and see me at London Watch Week next week!

Before we get to the Barrelhand stuff, I need to tell you: together with my podcast co-host Tim Barber, I have been putting together a few talks for London Watch Week. They’ll be taking place next Friday and Saturday (June 5th & 6th). If you’re around please come and say hi (and stay for the talks…!)

On Friday, I’ll be sitting down with Bremont CEO Davide Cerrato to ask him how that’s all going, and on Saturday I’m going to be bringing together some of the indie brands exhibiting to hear about the reality of their lives right now. Then later on I think Tim and I are going to sit down and have a bit of a debate with a few of our more outspoken friends in the media. It should all be good fun, and we’re going to record it all so if you miss it, we’ll have it in podcast form later in the summer.

You can find out all about London Watch Week here.

At that price, it should include a trip to the moon!

I did something yesterday I very rarely do; I got involved in the comments below an article. Specifically, Hodinkee’s write-up of the Barrelhand Monolith, which officially launched yesterday but has been around for a little while under the radar. For reasons of space2 I’m not going to go over the watch’s basic details, but it is worth familiarising yourself with them, either there or on the brand’s website.

I’ve spoken to Barrelhand co-founder Karel Bachand a few times, for articles that have already come out and for one that you’ll read in Esquire later this year. I like what he’s doing but I have no other vested interest; I’ve never done any work for Barrelhand or taken any money from them for any reason. I’m coming out to bat for them purely because I believe in what they’re trying to do.

This is also something of a pent-up frustration on my part, and comments below the Hodinkee article were the straw that broke the camel’s back. I know better, but sometimes you have to take the bait. Specifically, we’re talking about the number of comments that go along very similar lines under so, so many new watch releases:

“How much for a Sellita movement?”3

There is a saying: a little learning is a dangerous thing. In many ways, the internet and social media have transformed watch collecting and enthusiasm for the better, but they have also been a live demonstration of the veracity of this phrase. It is great that so many more people know about watches, but having some clue4 about the unit cost of a Sellita SW300-1 is not even close to being all the ammunition you need before you are prepared for a conversation about what constitutes value in a watch.

Share

I expect some reactions to this piece along the lines that I too have somehow been duped by a persuasive brand, taken in by a romantic story or am somehow in the pocket of the manufacturer. This is partly why I have chosen this particular time to take a stab at this response, because there could hardly be a less likely brand to be paying off journalists. Yes, there is a romance to it, as I’ve already admitted, but I really am clear-eyed about what’s going on here.

I am not, necessarily, coming out and saying that $9,750 is a bargain price for this watch. It is more than I’ve ever spent on a watch, and if that was my budget today I’d be very tempted by a lot of mainstream offerings. What I am here to achieve, if nothing else, is an end to the knee-jerk, unthinking response that the Monolith and so many other watches receive. I accept I might be preaching to the choir, but the advantage of having one’s own platform is that I can write this instead of ranting and raving in the comments section. I trust you will all link to it every time you see this kind of remark in future.

The waters are made murkier by the fact that there are absolutely brands out there using Sellita movements, doing relatively little to them and charging a generous mark-up. Mainstream watchmakers invested millions in marketing the concept of in-house movements, demonising perfectly reasonable alternatives that are tried and tested, reliable, serviceable and so on. This gave enthusiasts a misplaced sense of snobbery towards third-party movements, which is doubly hypocritical as so many big brands use ETA or Sellita clones anyway. But I digress; the point is that in a lot of cases, the movement really isn’t the story; value can be found in many other places.

You don’t have to take my word for it. I rang up Karel to ask him directly how this price makes sense. Let’s see what he had to say.

Read more

I would love to know your thoughts on Blancpain. This isn’t the first time I’ve ventured my opinions and it won’t be the last, but I am starting to come round. Tim Barber and I talked about Blancpain on The Watch Enquiry last year, too.

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Is Blancpain On The Up?

This week, Subdial is hosting a curated exhibition of neo-vintage Blancpain at its clubhouse in London. Sounds about right, doesn’t it - but this is in partnership with Blancpain itself, which makes one hell of a difference.

This doesn’t really need to be a post about the mistakes and missed opportunities that got us to this point. We are all aware of the status quo, which is that Blancpain does not operate at anything like the right level commercially and culturally given the underlying quality. We know that the brand has an almost uniquely bipolar personality, with the Fifty Fathoms and Villeret collections appealing to very different demographics, drawing on very different eras of history and requiring very different retail and marketing strategies.

It is also nothing new to observe that Blancpain’s watches of the 1980s and 1990s are as under-appreciated and undervalued today as they were impressive and brave in their time. Neo-vintage Blancpain is more fashionable than it used to be, but has not exactly taken the auction scene by storm in the way it would need to for perceptions to really change, or for prices to really take off.

What I’m asking is whether things might be changing. That is a lot to put on one small pop-up exhibition, I realise. There has been no drastic overhaul to the current product line-up, no re-brand, no interviews with CEO Marc Hayek that would indicate a new strategy at work or even a willingness to discuss any of the above and consider a new strategy. So you might well think me crazy. But everything starts somewhere; last year’s Grande Double Sonnerie is generally cited as evidence Blancpain is on its way back, but in isolation a highly complicated watch, even one as impressive as that, isn’t doing the job unless the brand around it starts to behave differently. That might sound churlish - really it is a great watch - but there you have it.

Share

I went along to the Subdial exhibition before it opened to the public, and sat down with Blancpain’s historian Jeffrey Kingston. Having had the advantage of already reading Esquire’s interview with him, I was prepared for (and received) some of the same anecdotes, but I won’t repeat them all for you. What I did have is a conversation that finally, after all these years, changed my perception of Blancpain from 1983-1993. I think the exhibition, and the thinking behind it, can communicate that same perception to a wider audience. The billion dollar question, I suppose, is whether it can transform the fortunes of Blancpain today.

Below the paywall I also get into questions of historical accuracy and offer my advice to the brand, should it be interested in hearing it.

Read more

Q: What has eight sides and went pop this week?

A: The resale value of this MAD Paris x Browns Royal Oak

Doesn’t really work, does it? But still. I’m surprised no-one has brought these up, actually, at least not specifically. If you’ve got one, do write in. I’ll give you £350 for it.

We are of course talking about the the Royal Pop - which I have to say, puts me in mind of King Charles III as much as it summons connotations of pop art or the Pop Swatch. Maybe if they send him one he’ll wear it on his next state visit. He is at least someone who could credibly wear a pocket watch, although I’m not sure he’s in his Labubu era. On which note (pocket watches, not Labubus), someone sent me this recently. I’m sure it’s been doing the rounds, but I’ve been educated. I think I’m a “single Albert with drop” kind of chap. You?

Below the paywall you will find my full thoughts on the matter, or as I should call it, the top talking shop for the Royal Pop drop, no slop, to mop up before you cop. (That’s right, my debut album of horological rap, Bet Geneva Saw That Coming, is out later this year). Then, because we need something else to talk about, I have a palette cleanser of positivity in the form of eight great things I saw just in the last few days. Enjoy!

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Pop Goes The Royal Oak

What makes my head spin is that watch brands like Audemars Piguet have spent years insisting on their own seriousness. The Royal Oak is to be treated reverentially at all times. And now this. Nevertheless, I want to approach it on its merits, and my thoughts on it continue to evolve. This is my current take, maybe my best take and in all honesty hopefully my last take.

The Royal Oak and the Speedmaster are totally different things, and not just in the ways that are obvious. They don’t play the same role in their partnerships with Swatch.

The MoonSwatch borrowed a lot of Speedmaster DNA, but because it used quartz chronograph movements, it has a significant point of difference. Also the Speedmaster has never been produced in bright block colours. The Royal Pop takes the exact proportions, textures and details of a Royal Oak - the only missing element is the integrated bracelet. You can argue that the bracelet is the sine qua non of a Royal Oak but for me, AP has given away a bit too much.

That also matters because the Speedmaster’s identity is about more than its looks. It’s mechanically interesting and has a place in tool watch history that turned it into an icon. It’s a good piece of design but not objectively better than others of its era; if the Longines-Wittnauer, thought to be a ref. 235T, had been selected by NASA, it would enjoy the same status today1. But the Royal Oak is an icon by design. The choice of stainless steel was bold, but its real strength, its essence, is its looks. AP has proven you can do a lot to that design identity without breaking it, but I still think it’s more dangerous to loan it out. I guess what I’m trying to say is that something that looks like a Royal Oak is a lot closer to a real one than something that looks a bit like a Speedmaster.

I’m not trashing the RO: it’s an enormously important watch, a real moment in design history. I’m also not saying the movement, or the case/bracelet finishing, or all the other points of build quality don’t matter. Just that they don’t matter as much as the look of the thing. made another good point in saying that the Royal Oak’s appeal lies in its exclusivity - and building on his post about ‘aura’, which is well worth a read including the continued debates in the comments, I feel like the Royal Pop is a signifier without its sign, or however Roland Barthes would have put it; the visual impression of a thing but separated from the substance, cultural currency and so on. (I did not really get on with structuralism at university; I could see that Adorno and Althusser and all the rest of them were onto something but found it terminologically extremely dense. These days I feel it comes up a whole lot more often than Shakespeare’s sonnets or Beowulf, though.)

Share

In no particular order, here are my other thoughts on the collaboration.

• Audemars Piguet has done enough ceramic Royal Oaks already that if it had launched these eight designs itself, our reaction would not have been substantially different. I mean, the same people who are angry about the Royal Pop would still be mad, but look at them. Swap bioceramic for real ceramic, Sistem 51 calibres for AP movements: can you really tell me that’s such a crazy idea? I will concede that some of the colour combinations are a bit much, but that’s haggling over the details. I have also seen first-hand how AP is developing its capacity for multi-coloured ceramics; there could be much poppier waters ahead.

Read more

Leave a comment

What I have found time for, because how could I not, is the now-confirmed but as yet unseen collaboration between Audemars Piguet and Swatch. Well done all who’ve seen it for not leaking - although as I mention on the episode, in the age of generative AI it almost doesn’t matter.

I have a few thoughts, predictions and laments on this subject; I suspect next week I’ll have to talk about it again but after that maybe we will move on. There is a tenuous parallel with the Baltic x SpaceOne, which has been unfortunately overshadowed by a watch that hasn’t even been seen yet, but you’ll have to listen to find out where I’m going with this particular thought.

Elsewhere I feel compelled to give the briefest of mentions to Ming’s ‘Peep Show’, and have an oh-so-predictable update on the Swatch Group AGM which took place today.

Subscribe now

Links discussed in today’s episode:

• AP x Swatch is confirmed

• Baltic x SpaceOne is terrific

• Ming is hitting the mark again

• Swatch Group’s board is entirely predictable

Share

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you back here next time for more.

Chris

Listen to the podcast anyway, if you haven’t already - there’s some stuff that hasn’t gone out of date yet, from La Joux-Perret’s production increases to Swatch Group boardroom drama and my less than fawning take on Naoya Hida’s new chronograph.

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Is this supposed to be funny?

When it gets to Wednesday afternoon and I still don’t know what this newsletter is going to be about, I start to get the jitters. There is still time, as I write this, for fate to provide eleventh-hour inspiration - maybe LVMH will buy a brand, or another young genius will emerge, hermit-like, from his atelier with a five-dimensional tourbillon. Failing that, one of my esteemed peers in the fourth estate might do me the courtesy of writing something daft, that I might disagree with it at length. Still time for that, too, but lately I’ve found that far too many writers seem to have their heads properly screwed on, or that I’ve read, and disagreed with, all the bad takes before.

So if you are reading this, you know that hasn’t happened. Or worst of all, it happened too late - many has been the Thursday evening when, 3,000 words down, I’ve flipped Instagram open to see with dismay the entire watch universe obsessing over an incredible launch or juicy breaking news.

I keep hardly any ‘break glass in case of emergency’ draft stories on hand, and the last few weeks have been too busy for me to research something meticulous, interview anyone extraordinary or travel anywhere diverting. My apologies.

I’m going to fall back on talking about The Fourth Wheel itself, at least to start with. I used to describe this newsletter as a publication that liked to gently mock, or tease, the watch industry, because for almost as long as I have been writing about watches, I have been aware that it is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and the most deathly serious environments in which to operate. Leaden earnestness, Jack Forster called it only a few days ago.

I know that a lot of you enjoy the sarcastic asides, the silliness, the bad puns and the dad jokes at least as much as any semblance of serious journalism. I am also acutely aware that they have dwindled drastically over the last year, maybe two. Consider this an apology, but as I mused on an explanation, I began to wonder whether it’s entirely my fault.

Certainly you might think that The World At Large makes it hard to be funny, but I don’t think that’s it. Watch enthusiasm is still a bubble, even when war and tariffs intrude, and the luxury industry could teach the Titanic’s string quartet a thing or two about carrying on regardless.

I should say, by the way, that I also know the danger of describing yourself as funny. It’s worryingly vain territory at the best of times, and I would never presume to label myself as anything other than a straight-down-the-line journalist. But sometimes, I might dare to suggest, I have my moments.

Partly, I have felt The Fourth Wheel growing up. What began as an unfiltered stream of reactions to the events of the past week has become something a bit more polished - or at least, something a bit more varied. I don’t think I could have sustained that for ever; you would find yourself inhabiting a persona, forced to constantly rail against everything, and that’s both exhausting and insincere. As a result, I’ve had to let a few tempting takes pass me by, and that’s probably been to everyone’s ultimate benefit.

But mostly, the problem lies with the target material. It’s not me, it’s you, watch world.

Read more

Leave a comment

I begin, however, with a few minutes on the Met Gala, but don’t let that put you off. It dominates the horological media sphere for about 24 hours, and since that coincided with the hours in which I was recording, I decided to give it just a few minutes of my time. Don’t worry, I haven’t descended into ‘who wore what’ - but I also don’t think that ignoring it, and similar phenomena, is going to get us anywhere either. It’s here to stay and it provides insight into the thinking of the people running our favourite brands. Plus we have some fun talking about Mark Zuckerberg’s ongoing quest for a personality.

Subscribe now

The lead item this week is Swatch’s next collab, which is being heavily teased and may, or may not, leak at any time. So I wanted to get a prediction out there just in case, even though I know it will be hilariously wide of the mark. At parent company Swatch Group, those pesky investors just won’t keep quiet, and with the group’s AGM next Tuesday there has been a flurry of stories in the business press about reform at board level. As well as relaying the bare facts of the news, I spend a few minutes analysing what this might mean for the brands, i.e. for people like us who care most of all about the watches they produce.

In terms of new watches, it’s a tale of two halves as I confess myself perfectly pleased by Baltic and Tudor, both of which brought out motoring-related watches, and find deal-breaking gripes in the new launches from Naoya Hida (one of them, anyway) and Moritz Grossmann’s new Tefnut.

Last but not least, did you know that La Joux-Perret is on track to grow its movement production by 50 per cent in the next two years? Better still, by the time its new factory is online, it will be making a colossal 40 times as many calibres as it was in 2019. Recent investment from LVMH is, it would seem, having an immediate result.

Links discussed in today’s episode:

• Mark Zuckerberg at the Met Gala

• Ethos Foundation urges change at Swatch Group…

• …as does ISS (no, not the International Space Station)

• My coverage of Steven Wood vs Swatch Group in TFW

• Swatch’s Social Teasers

• Naoya Hida’s new releases

• The new Moritz Grossmann Tefnut

• Baltic x Tour Auto 2026

• Tudor’s Black Bay Chrono Carbon 2026

• La Joux-Perret’s new factory plans

Share

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you back here next time for more.

Chris

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Close but no cigar

It is inevitable, after such a torrential downpour of new releases1, that just two weeks hence, as we are still wringing out our clothes, some of the best stuff has not received the credit it deserves. It is also totally understandable; it is a question of bandwidth, both on the part of media outlets and those trying to keep up in their spare time - but it is also a question of algorithimic filtering. The platforms that now make up the primary means of discovery for just about anything in our lives are designed to focus in on anything that looks popular; if you’ve seen and liked a few videos of the Parmigiani Chronograph Mysterieux, you’ll be served more, at the exclusion of other things.

Your experience may vary, therefore, but to me it felt like - as usual - a handful of watches and brands dominated the conversation at Watches & Wonders. Naturally, those were Rolex, Patek Philippe, Tudor and Cartier, with Parmigiani the year’s breakout star and honourable mentions for Vacheron Constantin and probably Zenith. Within that list, a few models dominated even further: the Nautilus, Daytona, Monarch, the aforementioned chronograph and the Overseas Cardinal Points.

Now, most journalists will have earmarked a number of watches as worthy of revisiting once they have time - so my yardstick of appreciation after just two weeks is not to say we, or they, are all lunkheads for overlooking such interesting creations.

It also dawns on me that there are two types of under-appreciated watch. One group, which is what I really want to look at today, is the watches that could very easily have been stars of the show, but for one reason or another were pipped to the post. The other group is those watches that represent solid value or do something commendable but aren’t necessarily headliners. Often they simply aren’t made by brands with enough marketing firepower to break through the noise.

In that category I’d like to tip my hat to Grand Seiko, whose SBGY043 above is just lovely in a low-key way (as, perhaps, all the best GS watches are). And, in fairness to me, quite a few of my top picks fall in this bracket too: Frederique Constant’s world timer, Raymond Weil’s anniversary chronograph - basically anything affordable. I’d also like to mention Parmigiani’s anniversary-edition update to the Toric Perpetual Calendar, which isn’t really on the same wavelength as these others, but it fixed something that I singled out in my review last year as one of the only drawbacks to the Toric2: the finishing. With a new clous de Paris surface treatment, it is to my eye significantly improved. Given everything else going on at Parmigiani this year, it’s no wonder that has been largely unnoticed, but it registered with me.

Today, though, is all about the other group. Watches with a strong claim to be headliners that had to settle for a lower billing. I’ve got three candidates.

TAG Heuer Monaco “Evergraph”

This seems as good a place as any to start. The Evergraph arrived with no shortage of hyperbole, and while that alone hardly marks it out from the crowd in any given year, it seemed deserving of at least a reasonable amount of hype.

Most brands circulate press releases and launch details ahead of time, but some keep their biggest releases under wraps. Not so with TAG Heuer: we knew this was coming and I for one was excited. I’m a chronograph geek, I’d like to think I have a reasonable understanding of the mechanics involved, and the work TAG Heuer has been doing recently on a technical front - regardless of your opinions of their designs or pricing strategy - has been solid. Rolling out a new family of calibres for the 60th anniversary of the Carrera in 2023 - the TH20 base - was the beginning, and since then it has got the carbon hairspring into a production watch, added some fun sidelines like the Porsche Chronosprint, and launched its first split-seconds wristwatches. That some of these accolades came about with the help of outsiders like Vaucher is not, in this context, a problem: my point is that it has been great to see TAG Heuer making interesting and ambitious watches that do actually work. I have fond memories of the Mikrogirder era, but I don’t think anyone who had to try and produce the thing would say the same. The brand has also been totally upfront about Vaucher’s role, which to my mind lends greater credibility when it talks about the work it has done in-house.

The Evergraph comes billed as a chronograph revolution. It debuts a pair of ‘bistable’ components that replace most of the lever and hammer elements, as well as the column wheel control system, from a comparable conventional chronograph. I’m not going to give you a thousand words on how it does what it does: I’ll give you a very brief version and recommend Mark Kauzlarich’s and David Ichim’s write ups respectively.

Read more

Leave a comment

In this week’s episode I touch on Anoma’s A1 core collection, i.e. the news that the brand is moving away from drop-based launches to maintaining something close to a permanent stock (if they don’t all sell out like a drop, that is). I explain how the House of Brands1 (that’s what we’re calling Breitling, Universal Geneve and Gallet, if that wasn’t on your radar) is going to be run, and address a little tiny room-based elephant when it comes to UG.

I also discuss the news that Timothee Chalamet has invested in Urban Jurgensen and what that might mean, and wax lyrical over the bright, preppy, Marc Newson-designed travel clock for Jaeger-LeCoultre. I think we have just about reached the point where the words ‘travel clock’ don’t summon cruel memes, and this is one I would love to own.

I also forgot (post-W&W, you see…) to touch on the latest FHS export statistics, the real standout - and potentially troubling, with the caveat that this is just one month’s worth of data - fact from which was that watches in the highest price bracket the FH tracks were down 0.5 per cent. Yes, that’s basically flat, but flat is not good news. On a side note, the FH could really do with adding a segment for watches at CHF 10,000 and above, since that’s where all the profit is coming from anyway. But I digress. See you back here next week for more news, and see you on Friday for this week’s newsletter.

I’ll be giving a little time to some of the overlooked watches from W&W, because (to really torture the metaphor) at any buffet, there are always dishes that might not appeal at first sight yet prove both delicious and nutritious. Ok, I’ll stop. Take care out there.

Subscribe now

Links discussed in today’s episode:

• Anoma A1 Core Collection

• Timothee Chalamet invests in Urban Jurgensen - it even made Yahoo News!

• Universal Geneve’s boutique-in-waiting

• Jaeger-LeCoultre x Marc Newson

• FHS Stats for March (not actually discussed in the episode, as mentioned!)

Share

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you back here next time for more.

Chris

If you missed this week’s podcast, it was a good one, modesty be damned, and is also the only place I’ll be detailing my favourite releases from the fair. And yes, it’s video too.

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Ask Me Anything

I have a couple of questions… Amateur Hour Watches

1. At watches and wonders brands have four potential audiences - retailers, media, high value clients, public day punters. In general how would you assess the importance the brands put on each of these? Does it vary by brand? How has this balance changed?

In simple terms, the hierarchy goes: clients, retailers, media, public. And judging by the posts from the weekend (I’d left by then, naturally) there’s quite a big gap between media and public. Those first three are privileged groups, with varying degrees of VIP access, while the public has to queue up and pay for everything. Sorry to be so blunt but we do know how good we’ve got it in the press corps.

Obviously, some brands have different levels of retail activity; if you do most of your business direct, you aren’t reserving your 9am appointment on day one for Brian Duffy, CEO of Watches of Switzerland. But as a rule, money talks, and if you represent potential sales, you’ll find yourself behind the velvet rope.

This leads to some interesting little sub-dramas within that hierarchy. I can only really speak to the media side of things, but things do vary brand by brand in terms of their approach to different elements of the media. Only today I’ve seen complaining on Instagram that some brands wouldn’t allow him onto the stand on account of being an influencer. By contrast, there are a few brands that gave some influencers - Adrian Barker, Justin Hast1 - advance access to watches so that they had video content ready to launch on day one. That’s the kind of prestige treatment that used to be reserved only for the top specialist media, or big-name titles like Vanity Fair or the New York Times. YouTubers (or Instagram/TikTok personalities) didn’t used to get invited on the press list, like I and my peers who came up writing for newspapers and magazines, but now a few do. The issue is partly brands being slow to adapt, wary of change and sceptical of platforms they don’t fully understand, and partly an erosion of the definitions on all sides.

For example, most retailers are now creating content for their own online channels. The Subdial guys were out there creating content like press, and even turning up in some press presentations - which was cool! Also, a lot of influencer content is nakedly pay-to-play, which changes your relationship with a brand. I met one Instagram content creator who was totally unabashed about the number of free watches they received for their coverage, and for the first time in my life, one indie brand said quite matter-of-factly that we should discuss media rates, i.e. how much they would pay me to feature their products. For the record, as if you guys and girls don’t already know it, that’s a non-starter with me.

2. Thoughts on the Universal Geneve launch?

Oh, so many thoughts.

• The biggest question mark over the whole thing wasn’t how good the watches are but how clearly the brand positioning and identity was communicated. Breitling, sorry - House of Brands - had three years to prepare the landing site, so nobody should be surprised at the price bracket. The “Couturier de la Montre” tagline - which translates literally as “dressmaker of the watch” is relatively new messaging and this is the element that I think will take time to sink in, although they laboured the point pretty hard; the watch offering is structured under headings like “pret a porter”, “capsule” and “couture”. I get the basic idea: you’re stylish, European and sophisticated. It might be my ignorance but I don’t remember ever hearing the phrase in relation to UG when discussing its heyday; one problem I can foresee is that even among wealthy audiences, not everyone is familiar and comfortable with the language of high fashion. Anyone who’s been to a watch meet-up knows that the most jaw-dropping pieces can often be found on the wrists of guys who dress very conservatively. It’s good to have a confident sense of personality but this feels like an identity that could alienate people. On the other hand, it positions a new luxury watch brand as adjacent to companies like Louis Vuitton and Chanel, which is smarter than positioning yourself next to struggling giants like Blancpain and Girard-Perregaux. Given that UG’s core collections are descended from down-to-earth tool watches like the Compax and Polerouter, we’ll have to wait and see if the language feels forced, or if it’s toned down a bit now that the big reveal is out of the way.

• If you strip away the language of fashion, the UG offering follows fundamentally the same template that Georges Kern outlined when he took over Breitling: that is to say, a number of product verticals each with a distinct offering at a certain price/quality category. It’s effective for mainstream volume brands but I wonder whether it’s a one-size fits all strategy.

• The phrase “show, don’t tell” should be circulated in 50pt font throughout the House of Brands. The launch was a masterclass in hammering the message home. Whether the message is right or wrong is irrelevant (to this point) - there was just too much message.

• As I have already mentioned on Instagram and in the TFW chat, the presentation of the watches was poor. Potentially good or even great products were dirty, dusty, and badly lit. Security concerns (understandably) meant attendees couldn’t handle the watches, which meant it wasn’t possible to see the movements that the UG team was so proud of, or demonstrate the Cabriolet’s revolving case. I had to persuade one of the senior team to show me the Polerouter calibre. There were so many ways to fix these issues and put on a launch that would have left us all seriously impressed, but if you were there to assess the watches it was very hard to come away with a firm answer. All the money and time had gone into the set-dressing for the keynote speech(es) and presenting the actual watches felt like an afterthought.

• Georges Kern working the room before and after was appreciated. It’s nice to see CEOs who are approachable, and not afraid to answer questions on the spot from journalists, even going back and forth on fine details without becoming defensive.
  
  

  

• I personally liked the Polerouter in steel with a hard stone dial, above, the Compax in its simplest form, and the Disco Maxi and Dioramic, albeit not for myself. The Cabriolet was the most intriguing model in the main collection; I think the idea of including it was a good one, but the typography is going to date too quickly.

• So many people are hung up on the comparison between vintage UG and modern. I can’t emphasise enough that even though the rebirth has had a team of midwifes from the collector community, the target market is not vintage UG collectors, and nobody is going to be weighing up an old Polerouter against a new one. It’s just not the same customer.

• An unfortunate consequence of Gerald Genta’s prolific career and post-2016 beatification is that these days, his legacy feels somewhat commodified. I mean no disrespect to his original work, but we need to find a way to honour it without it becoming exhausting. I’m all for giving him the credit he deserves, and didn’t get at the time, but over the last few years we’ve tipped too far the other way and now there’s a slightly embarrassing level of adulation whenever one of his creations is mentioned. It would certainly help if there were any other designers to venerate, but compare the way Patek Philippe handled the anniversary of the Nautilus, or the fact that it is possible to talk about the VW Golf without opening a new shrine to Giorgetto Giugiaro every time you do so (who I just learned also designed a new shape of pasta. Now that’s cool.)

3. I think we get the discussion of what a watch “should” cost all wrong. Since a watch’s price is generally set before its designed, it is based on its expected positioning and this then drives the design. Therefore I think we should stop saying ‘this watch should cost X’ and start saying ‘for this price the watch is missing Y’. Thoughts?

I think what you describe is accurate for most mainstream brands; a lot of low-volume indies price their watches slightly differently. I think when reviewers - at least, when I review watches I do this - compare new products to their rivals, this is close to what you’re asking for. But the problem you have, whichever way you frame the statement, is that a lot of what governs a watch’s retail price is either intangible, i.e. it’s brand-related, or it’s structural, i.e. they have to consider whether they’re giving a margin to a retailer, distributor or not. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say “for five grand, I expect to be buying this from a multi-brand department store, not direct from you,” but those are the economics behind the scenes.

If a brand is doing its job properly, it should at least be able to defend its pricing with recourse to hard facts: you may well say “for fifty grand, the Omega Constellation is missing a seconds hand”, but Omega can say “find me another METAS-certified solid gold dress watch on a bracelet,” and of course, you can’t. You can decide that Omega’s opinion of how much those attributes are worth is grossly inflated, but that’s your prerogative, and if they haven’t convinced you, that’s a problem with their marketing. That’s an extreme example chosen for a laugh, but what I’ve found is that brands are actually very careful not to make watches that are identically specced to a competitor - which means the ‘it’s missing Y’ construction can always be rebuffed with ‘ah, but it’s not the same’ - and all we can do is decide where that response sits on a spectrum of ‘total bullshit’ to ‘credible justification’. TL;DR - positioning is more fiddly than it first appears.

Chris, the highest-end indies / small producers have been a guaranteed profit game for the last couple years. Seeing Ferdinand Berthoud and the new Lange Lumen come out at €383K and €550K respectively, are the manufacturers catching up to that game and trying to capture secondary market profit for themselves, or is this just where the market is and those two watches will actually trade above retail in secondary market too? - Jith

The question of ‘leaving money on the table’ is one that has come up time and time again since the pandemic turned independent watchmaking from a niche folly to a fast-track for flippers. (I exaggerate, but not by much). It’s a delicate one.

Anecdotally I’ve heard collector gripes concerning the likes of Roger Smith, whose prices are said to have risen dramatically in recent years2 . And I expect we have all heard stories about prices going up while you’re on the waiting list - that seems to have been a Lange thing, among others.

I can see the various pressures on makers; it’s not just about capturing profit, but keeping up with the competition. If others are doing it, you’ll be forced to follow suit, lest your products slip into a different price category altogether. Of course, some brands opt to keep prices under control and pitch their customers on value for money, but if you say you make some of the best watches in the world, you are also going to want to be sure that you’re priced accordingly.

Leave a comment

It’s also an increasingly expensive business, and the lower your volumes and more inflexible your overheads, the more aggressively you’ll be squeezed by recent economic shifts. But let’s not pretend for one minute that there isn’t a healthy margin built in - top-line Lange models are now regularly more than half a million; last year’s Saxonia Minute Repeater was €750,000! I suspect that the top end of the market is displaying the same behaviour as the market overall, just in a more exaggerated way: making more and more of its profit from fewer and fewer customers3.

As for whether these kind of watches will still trade above retail, let’s look at some data, shall we?

Data on Ferdinand Berthoud is scarce, as the volumes are so low, but the models that have come to auction at major houses have consistently surpassed their estimates by significant margins since 2022. But that’s only a handful, and auction are notoriously unreliable indicators. Marteau sold an FB2 RE.1 in its first sale last year for $301,053 according to Everywatch, which I bring up purely because Marteau’s model is relevant when we talk about ‘leaving money on the table’ in that it returns a percentage of the hammer price to the original maker. That’s a watch that retailed for around $230,000 in 2020.

Grand Lange 1 “Lumen” models seem to have hovered around the $100,000-125,000 mark at auction for the last few years (either reference 117.035 or 139.035) and Datograph “Lumen” models (405.034) have hammered for between $160,000 and $250,000 in the last four years. The Lange 1 Lumens retailed for around $75,000-$80,0004 at launch, while the Datograph Up/Down Lumen in platinum cost approximately $110,000 new in 20185 so in six years, that has seen a significant increase. Again, those figures are courtesy of Everywatch’s auction tracker. Looking at dealer listings, the spread on Datograph Lumens in the last six months has ranged from $215,000 to $294,000.

A Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold “Lumen” - aka just about the most desirable combination in the Lange universe - retailed for approximately €620,000 at launch in 2024. That’s roughly a sixfold increase on the 2018 Datograph Up/Down Lumen’s launch price, just six years later, but it’s a different beast entirely, adding a perpetual calendar and tourbillon; it was also four times as limited (50pcs vs 200pcs). One has come to auction so far, in 2024, and it sold for $635,000, or basically exactly retail price, when presumably demand would have been at its highest and waiting lists at their longest.

That’s just one single sale, though, and obviously each individual reference is so limited in number it’s hard to find apples-to-apples comparisons. There is one listing for last year’s minute repeater on Chrono24 but it’s POA and uses a stock image, so I doubt it’s real. We need more time to see how these mega-budget models are going to depreciate or appreciate.

But maybe there are some other metrics that could help. One question I wondered about was: how many A. Lange & Sohne watches have ever changed hands for more than half a million dollars (that we know about)?

Read more

Don’t expect this to become the norm just yet. But seeing as this week’s news is entirely concerned with new products, and for once I happen to have a phone full of images, I thought I’d throw a few of them together so you can see what I’m talking about. It’s rough and ready, I know that. There is also a chance I’ll have messed it up in some small but important way, because it was a last-minute decision. But if you liked it, hit that button, leave a comment, share it in your WhatsApp groups and so on.

Share

This run-down of my favourite watches from W&W splits into two groups: updates to existing models and watches that do something more substantially new. It’s a loose division but a useful one; a huge amount of what was shown in Geneva belongs in the first category, but that’s always the case and as I say in the episode, to expect otherwise would be unrealistic.

I missed a couple of watches out by accident: I probably should have mentioned the Bulgari Octo Finissimo 37mm and Girard-Perregaux’s minute repeater. The latter had probably the best hand-finishing on a ‘mainstream’ watch that I saw all week, for what that’s worth. Apart from them, though, I think the list is pretty good. It covers brands big and small, old and young, expensive and relatively affordable. Tudor and Rolex both get a mention, as do IWC, Oris and Bremont, but the brands I dwell on longest are Parmigiani, Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Chopard and Ressence, which probably says something about where the balance of power and influence rests at the moment.

There will be more to say about many of these watches - hopefully some more in-depth reviews, and certainly some more work to be done around what the year’s watches tell us in a larger sense. The industry is obsessed with power reserves, and micro-rotors, and platinum: the latter is probably easiest to understand, given its position at the top of our perception of luxury but relatively low price against gold. But for now, let’s enjoy a good old fashioned list. Some of them boast innovation, others beauty, and some of them just sparked joy. I wonder how many are on your own lists too.

Leave a comment

This week’s newsletter is a stream-of-consciouness list of my reactions, hot takes and first attempts at analysis. Over the coming weeks I’m sure more will follow as I start to digest it all. On Tuesday, the podcast will be dedicated to the ten watches that most impressed me from W&W and its surroundings, and next Friday’s newsletter will be an AMA - the twentieth! - so please, send me your questions.

Also - 200 issues! I’ll figure out how to celebrate it another time…

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Watches & Wonders: what I liked, learned and loathed

1. My phrase of the week was “people-pleasing”. More than ever, I sat in presentations to be happily told that ‘finally, we have listened to the fans’ (I paraphrase slightly). This could be adding a micro-adjustment clasp, a 37mm model, slimming down a staple, or producing precise combinations that have been absent and much requested on social media. Certainly I don’t think that’s actually how most brands run their product development, but it was a telling narrative: against a challenging economic and commercial backdrop, the subliminal message seemed to be “we are making what people want”.

2. Equally and just as importantly, there seemed to be fewer really disagreable pieces.2 I saw plenty I wouldn’t buy with my own money, but far fewer pieces for which I couldn’t see a market at all.

3. Patek Philippe did not bungle the 50th anniversary of the Nautilus. A lot has changed in the last decade. It doesn’t matter one bit that AP put ‘50th’ on the automatic rotor already - big deal. Coming out with two sizes was a good move.

4. Rolex, by contrast, normally the safer pair of hands, didn’t quite get it right for 100 years of the Oyster. I think the two-tone OP with ‘100 Years’ replacing Swiss Made is good evidence that the previous policy of not really marking anniversaries was the right one.
   
   Sticking with Rolex…

5. The furore over the ‘Grand Feu’ enamel dial has been my favourite storm in a teacup this week. If you’re not up to speed, the new Daytona has an enamel dial that comprises enamel fired onto ceramic, which is then glued to brass dial plates. It’s described as grand feu by Rolex but technically shouldn’t be, as the definition is traditionally reserved for the act of enamelling on metal. I read ’s latest with interest but did wonder: do we define ‘grand feu’ as enamelling on metal because when these definitions arose, enamelling on a ceramic disc wasn’t really an option? In any case, I agree with the sentiment that Rolex has dispensed with a large part of what makes enamelling sought-after, which is the craft. But it exposes a beautifully irrational aspect of watch collecting: Rolex has by any reasonable measure improved the process of enamelling, coming up with a solution that drastically reduces failure rates yet delivers the same ‘experience’ to the wearer, and the response of the community has been to disparage it for using the wrong terminology rather than applaud its commitment to technical advancement. I totally understand why we prize real grand feu enamel work - the difficulty is the point, to an extent - and of course watch collecting is not rational, but this whole thing is kind of amusing.

   

6. My main point of interest with Rolex was the announcement of improvements to the Superlative Chronometer standard. Or should I say ‘partial announcement’, because although Rolex now says the standard includes more stringent levels of magnetic resistance, sustainability and reliability, but does not say what these levels are or how they are measured. I pushed Rolex for answers and was only told that the standards were sufficient for everyday life. I am also told - this might be news! - that Rolex intends to take all its testing in-house by 2030, moving away from COSC. Aside from the fact that that might actually torpedo COSC in terms of revenue, Rolex being its biggest client by far, I can’t really understand how this will work if Rolex wants to continue referring to its watches as chronometers at all, superlative or otherwise. There was also mention of working with another independent body - not METAS, though3 - so really, the whole thing is clear as mud, but something is happening. I feel like it is tying itself in knots to avoid direct comparisons with Omega, or Tudor, but as Velociphile and others have noted with regards to JLC, coming up with fancy standards but not explaining how they work is pretty much par for the course these days.

Read more

What I’m going to do for you is this. There will be a newsletter at the end of Watches & Wonders - probably on the Saturday morning, as I’ll still be in Geneva on Friday. I’ll put my most immediate reactions on Instagram, but I’m going to revive the somewhat dormant Substack chat for more detailed conversation around new launches. Then there will be a special Ask Me Anything for Issue 201, where I will answer all your W&W related questions - and anything else besides, but I expect our minds will be focussed on what’s new. If I get time, there might be a podcast, but looking at my calendar I would have to record it in the middle of the night at this rate.

If you will be in Geneva next week, send me a message. I can’t promise anything - right now I’m seeing more than 60 brands in five days across a stupid number of locations - but I’m always up for saying hello. Until I become too self-conscious, I’ll probably be wearing one of my delightful baseball caps, so you can flag me down :-)

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

The Renaud Formula

Last week, before Corum’s relaunch - see Issue 198 - and a short visit to Greubel Forsey for the announcement of Naissance d’un Montre 4 / Bonniksen - see News of the Week this week, link below - I went to visit Dominique Renaud.

The visit was arranged a while ago, and unbeknownst to me the timing was auspicious, as a couple of weeks before I arrived, news broke of a new brand - or set of brands, or corporate structure - all geared around Dominique himself. I talked about this on the podcast at the time, and couldn’t really make head or tail of it. You’ve got something called DR Group, a new entity called HHDR (Haute Horlogerie Dominique Renaud) and on an actual brand level, both Dominique Renaud and Renaud Tixier. To confuse things further, DR Group also revealed that it holds a minority stake in Niton, the indie brand launched earlier in the year by Leopoldo Celi (who also works for DR Group, and was my host last week). From now on I’ll refer to Dominique Renaud the brand as DR, Renaud Tixier as RT, just for simplicity.

Edit: About an hour before publication, a new press release announced “the creation of HHDR Group” so from now on I think that is the parent company, not DR Group.

What exactly that was all about is something I got to grips with after sitting down for nearly an hour with HHDR Group CEO Michel Nieto, and I’ll come back to it presently. It does actually make sense, and furthermore might actually be something a lot of other indie brands could learn from.

That news was all quite rightly overshadowed by the announcement of the Pulse60, the first - well, not really, but again we will come to that - watch from DR (the brand). It’s another time-only indie watch with a vaguely contemporary appearance that costs around fifty grand - so why should we pay attention?

To answer that, we are going to end up talking about some quite technical aspects of watchmaking, but it’s worth starting with a bit of context about who Dominique Renaud is - because although the Pulse60 would be impressive regardless, a sizeable percentage of interest in it stems from its maker’s reputation; equally, not everyone could have come up with it in the first place - and what kind of setup he is operating these days.

Read more

Leave a comment

The first is some newly-announced rule changes to the GPHG. I was, as ever, pointed in my remarks when I wrote about the awards last week, so in the interest of giving credit where it’s due, I wanted to applaud these (small) steps towards addressing some long-standing criticisms of the ceremony. There is also one significant rule change that wasn’t mentioned in the press release, and it could really help smaller watch brands. You’ll have to listen to find out!

Second, we could hardly overlook the return of Universal Geneve; as I say on the podcast, this is how you do a brand launch properly. Three years, countless millions and plenty of warm-up marketing set the stage, and with expectations high, my view is that UG has surpassed them. The breadth of the debut collections is impressive, but more importantly so is the ambition and bravery on show within them. I think they have correctly identified a lack of bold personality in mainstream watchmaking between £10,000 and £50,000 and have at least a couple of models that deserve to steal market share.

Thirdly, I wanted to talk about the RRCHF, but acknowledge that in one news round-up, without having seen the watch, I can’t dive as deep as I’d like. Next week I’ll see the watch in person and I’ll be sure to share some thoughts and insights as a result. Also, because I’m an inveterate party-pooper I also sound a note of caution about hailing everything Rexhep does as industry-defining. It’s a lovely watch; it does not re-make the horological universe from the ground up.

Last but not least I was thrilled to be able to revive the New Indie Watch Brand of the Week feature, and with a story of substance to boot. Bonniksen, a storied Danish name long since consigned to the history books, has been revived with care and reverence by two young guns named Jason Chevrolat and Maximin Chapuis, and their debut watch will be the Naissance d’un Montre 4. That is what’s known as doing things the hard way.

This Friday I will have a report from my visit to Dominique Renaud’s atelier, and an exclusive interview with CEO Michel Nieto. Equal parts hardcore geekery and brand strategy, there’s plenty to learn from this one. And Lego, too. That will hit your inboxes at 10:10 UK time - paying subscribers get the full story. What are you waiting for?

Subscribe now

Links discussed in today’s episode:

• The new GPHG rules

• Universal Geneve

• The RRCHF

• Ben Clymer’s write-up

• Bonniksen

• Naissance d’un Montre 4

Share

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you back here next time for more.

Chris

My action-packed week took me first to Dominique Renaud, where I spent a few hours touring the brand new atelier, sitting down with CEO Michel Nieto and hearing directly from Dominique and his colleagues exactly how the Pulse60 works. That, you will read about next week — aside from the ingenuity of the watch itself, they have a fascinating vision for the future of independent brands.

As there was no podcast, I’ve included a couple of shorter items - okay, rants - before the paywall. Behind it, you can hear all about Corum’s re-launch, its new products and my analysis on where the brand will sit in today’s market. I also spoke to advisor Vincent Perriard on the financial outlook for the brand. Paying subs get the whole scoop.

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Jury Duties

Conflict of interest! In the watch industry?! In the GPHG?? I won’t hear it. News that Wei Koh was to be appointed jury president for the awards — the least surprising news since Rolex’s last price increase — has been met with much hand-wringing over what it could mean for the integrity and credibility of these cherished and significant prizes.

I can’t argue with the factual breakdown of the various conflicts that exist between operating a media business, a retail business and if rumour is to be believed, one day soon a watchmaking business, and being a part of a ceremony in which some of the same brands are up for awards. It’s all pretty black and white; you either have conflicts of interest or you don’t, and in this industry we all have them. As others have pointed out, even collectors want allocations.

I’m not here to argue that it doesn’t matter at all, or that Koh’s appointment represents the sudden pollution of a previously pristine pool. Controversially perhaps, I am minded to wait until the awards have actually happened before exploding with righteous scorn. Which is not to say that pointing out the existence of conflicts is wrong. I do think however that across social media in particular, we have as a community shown a firm a desire to have it both ways.

We want to proclaim that the awards don’t matter and vent our spleen that they are so manifestly compromised. We are so animated that Koh has multiple avenues of conflict operating in parallel, yet fail to consider that surely, the more conflicts of interest you have — perversely enough — the less influential any of them could possibly be. If Revolution takes advertising from a pool of ~50 brands, Grail Watch has a dozen collaborative partners past, present or future, and his TV show accounts for another dozen or so… it seems perfectly likely that there could be categories at the awards populated entirely with brands that have a connection to the jury president. What then? We want an expert jury — never mind the president, we have to think of the whole panel — but we don’t want that expertise to have come hand-in-hand with any manner of industry connections. It might be tempting to think the answer is a greater amount of public participation; more votes would dilute any individual’s influence, but then you are asking people to vote on something they haven’t seen and maybe don’t fully understand1. I would like the academy’s votes to be weighted a bit higher, and the gender balance on the jury has never even approached parity, but these are tweaks to a flawed model, not a rejection of the model outright.

Fundamentally, we want an awards show (or do we? I guess that’s a reasonable question at this point, although certainly we the media get plenty of mileage out of engaging with it) and we want to reserve the right to complain that awards shows are flawed. They always are, everywhere.

That said, it would be perfectly possible to set up a truly independent awards ceremony for watches. I just don’t think anybody would pay attention. As I’ve said many times before I think the GPHG should be better, but at this stage I’m not sure it actually can be reformed without losing its establishment status. The irony is that it wouldn’t have the position it does without everyone’s buy-in; if everyone who complained about it stayed away, it wouldn’t exist2, and if every media outlet that lamented its failings ignored it - here I’m as guilty as anyone else - it would be irrelevant. But it has the legitimacy of budget, and spectacle, and longevity. Quality is usually recognised at the end, but the process has become a marketing jamboree. In this sense, the awards feel like a pretty fair reflection of the industry.

What A Bunch Of (April) Fools

I may be in a minority here, and it may not help that I had taken four flights in three days, but I found April 1st a terminally painful day to be on watch Instagram. Like most humans, I enjoy humour3 although there is absolutely no way to write that down without sounding like a maniac psychopath who doesn’t at all. I am surely not alone in finding corporate humour forced and being able to see cynical engagement-farming for what it is, though...

Bremont pioneered the April Fool’s prank press release, and my god was it getting stale by the time they stopped. Yesterday’s barrage of bullshit made them look funnier than Ricky Gervais4. Allow me to provide - a week late, clearly, but please hold onto it for next year - a few pointers to brands, media or influencers looking to unlock their inner joker.

• Don’t acknowledge that what you’re doing is an April Fool. The point is to fool people. Clue’s in the name.

• Don’t do mad shit on April 1st that isn’t a joke.

• Don’t come out with stuff that could very easily be real, isn’t funny and is actually your own personal wish-fulfilment/engagement farming slop. Saying “Breguet made a green Fifty Fathoms haha PSYCH no they didn’t!” is not an April Fool.

• If you are never funny the rest of the year, have a really good think about whether you’re funny now. At least Studio Underd0g has that side of its brand personality to fall back on.

• Quite a lot of real-life watches are ridiculous to begin with. Saying “wouldn’t it be funny if we made a totally useless watch whose functions aren’t practical and make you look stupid” is… close to home. And no, I don’t think anybody who posted this kind of thing did it with the tone of voice that suggested this was the joke.

• Understand that the real humour comes in the comments. Shout out to Anoma, which did at least raise a smile, approached the whole thing with a self-deprecating tone and engaged well below the line. The Thomas Crapper thing was ok as well, if only because it gave new context to a spiral dial pattern.

Great Wisdom From Montblanc

The powers that be at Richemont have clearly been listening to The Watch Enquiry, because after many years of speculation (and our highly speculative chat) we finally have a line of watches with Minerva as the sole brand name on the dial5. It’s the first of our ideas to actually come true, as it seems that at least for now, Jaeger-LeCoultre isn’t declaring independence after all.

I really like the look of this. The Unveiled Crownless - ok, it sounds like the high priest in some kind of arcane ritual, but it’s a handsome one. Measures 41.5mm by 12mm, runs on a 2.5 Hz hand-wound movement (no press pics but Monochrome has hands-on here) and costs - phew - €39,000.

You can read all about the time I visited Minerva’s manufacture here. It’s great: real watchmaking and real passion.

Corum Call

It was snowing in La Chaux de Fonds — not an unusual situation in itself, even on the first of April. Around three dozen European journalists had assembled for a press conference to announce Corum’s return to business. Commendably, nobody asked if it was a joke. (This is, after all, the industry in which brands never really die - although it’s not looking good for Christophe Claret right now. Rumour has it the liquidators handling the company’s assets after it went bankrupt in 2023 have been completely unable to find a buyer. But I digress.)

Corum’s return has been both a long time coming and surprisingly rapid. In the collective imagination, it ceased to be relevant or interesting about eight or nine years ago; to my knowledge it has not exhibited at a watch fair since Baselworld shut down, and I could not have told you the last time I saw a press release, social media post or item of media coverage, much less an actual watch. Previously owned by Severin Wundermann, of Gucci Watches fame, Corum had been bought in 2013 by a company called China Haidan - a Hong Kong company that later rebranded as Citychamp Watches & Jewellery Group - for a reported $86m. Citychamp also owned Eterna6 and Dreyfuss and according to Andy Hoffman at Hodinkee, writing last year when the management buyout was announced, the trio of brands posted an $11.5m loss on revenues of around $20m in 2024.

Rapid, because the new CEO Haso Mehmedovic and his backers - two unnamed investors, both Swiss, one from the watchmaking world and one financial - only wrested control of the brand a year ago. The CEO, quite possibly the industry’s youngest at 34, is the majority shareholder and according to Vincent Perriard, the entrepreneur and one-time HYT CEO who is advising Corum’s leadership team during its revival, he raised the funds for his share of the buyout on his own.

Corum’s premises are fairly substantial; two 20th century brick buildings and one four storey steel and glass block. It is pretty close to the centre of La Chaux de Fonds and sits right next door to a dialmaker, Montremo SA. The press conference took place on the lower level of the modern building, and as you enter the space you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the headquarters of a higher-end Swatch Group brand, or a company like Girard-Perregaux. A couple of rooms were given over to displays of historic watches - more on that shortly. The size of the HQ is pertinent: it is a facility suited to a company that once made 20,000-30,000 watches a year. Mehmedovic says that in its first year under his leadership, Corum will produce around 1,500 watches, and he told me after the press conference that it would look to grow that, eventually, to around 4,500-5,000 watches a year (which is coincidentally roughly on a par with the brand’s annual production before he took over).

Read more

For reasons that will become clear in due course I have been deeply immersed in Omega history of late, so the announcement of a new Constellation came at a good time. I have purposefully avoided reading too many hot takes before publishing this; part of me suspects that it will incite the usual remarks about size and price - and fair’s fair, those aren’t aspects I felt able to ignore either - but I also thought there was scope to say something a bit more considered about how it fits into the Great Dress Watch Renaissance we’ve been experiencing, and what that even really looks like. I hope you enjoy it.

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

A galaxy full of stars

Omega’s new Observatory Constellation, which launched yesterday, March 26th, posed a few interesting questions for me.

If you aren’t yet aware, the key point — aside from the return of the Constellation’s 1950s design language which is significant in itself — was the introduction of a new testing system which allowed a two-hand watch to be certified as a Master Chronometer.

Previously, the METAS testing processes relied on photography of the watch’s second hand to assess its daily rate variation, or accuracy for short. That is evidently impossible with a two-hand dress watch, but Omega doesn’t want to release anything that doesn’t meet METAS standards if it can help it, least of all a watch descended from (or at least named in honour of) a celebrated observatory champion. So it developed an acoustic testing system that listens to the oscillation of a watch throughout its entire 25-day testing period, and calculates not only the existence and scale of any deviation but its precise occurrence. This already seems like a significant improvement in the methodology - perhaps analogous with having an echocardiogram (ECG) and being on continuous heart-rate monitoring.

The new system raises a few other tangential questions — I have asked Omega how it works and what its limitations might be, for example with regard to background noise and what volume of watches can be tested in parallel, as well as whether it intends to introduce this standard for all METAS testing, not just on these watches — but for now it gave me the following broader musings:

How many other brands are combining dress watchmaking with precision? How does Omega’s effort to deliver both style and substance stack up - on both counts? And perhaps the most fundamental question of all: does anyone care about having an accurate dress watch?

Read more

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Hot hat hits horological heads

It has been fantastic to see subscribers enjoying their official Fourth Wheel baseball caps - and there is still time for you to join them. Here’s the shop link - just let me remind you of some of the many uses for this simple piece of headgear.

• Hailing a taxi

• Thanking strangers

• Deflecting light rain, drizzle and minor snow flurries

• Emergency frisbee

• Shooing wasps off a picnic (no guarantee of permanent results; swat at your own risk)

• Charades prompt holder

• Poker face shield

Buy this hat

Mirror, mirror, on my wrist

This is my first time wearing a Ming outside of a press presentation; I have had the watch for around a week, and it has been very satisfying to finally get hands-on with a watch from a brand that I’ve covered extensively over the last few years. I’ve interviewed founder Ming Thein a few times, I’ve watched with interest as the company has shrugged off the ‘microbrand’ label, matured, developed international partnerships in the form of the Alternative Horological Alliance and become something of a senior figure in a sector awash with start-ups. It has broken records, explored new ground in terms of engineering and materials science, and perhaps most impressively of all, carved out an aesthetic identity that is coherent, flexible and recognisable without feeling like a one-hit wonder or a pastiche. Alongside a few other potential candidates, I think of Ming as one of the most fully-formed examples of what it means to create a contemporary watch brand that is not totally indebted to the Great Swiss Watchmaking Tradition. It’s important to note that Ming uses Swiss movements and has a Swiss assembly partner, but culturally and conceptually its roots are elsewhere.

All of which is to say, there are many reasons why I’m excited to be writing about Ming, and we will get to them in due course, but reviewing this watch will also be about the nuts and bolts of the thing, so to speak, and with that in mind the most pressing item on the agenda is the bracelet. There was a time when reviewing a watch by starting with its bracelet felt rather like judging a painting by its frame, but for at least ten years now we have lived in the era of the integrated bracelet; the mania has certainly subsided from its peak, but as Ming itself says in its description of the Starfield, “Much ink has been spilled out of love for and frustration about integrated bracelets. We find ourselves in agreement with some of the frustration, yet there remains a strong appeal to the smooth continuity of a form that flows from dial to wrist and back.”

Retailers and sports watch brands have known for a lot longer than a decade that a good bracelet can make or break a watch - indeed, in the course of writing this I had half a mind to put together some kind of all-industry bracelet league table. I still might, to be honest; there are some shockers out there, and some unsung heroes. But back to the Starfield. Let’s spill some more ink.

Read more

Leave a comment

The main item today is the news of Dominique Renaud’s new watch, the one hertz Pulse60, which also heralds the arrival of a new brand, a new umbrella company and a number of mildly confusing acronyms. At the heart of it, however, is a real genius doing some really complicated and fundamental things with escapement architecture and other such heartland geek-fodder. The Pulse60 launches in three variants, and I promised I would provide some pictures, so here you go:

I also talk about Greubel Forsey’s final chapter for the sports-adjacent Balancier Convexe S2 - and what might replace it. There are new watches from Rado, Sarpaneva, Girard-Perregaux and Kollokium that are absolutely worthy of your time but which I sadly ran out of room to cover in any detail whatsoever - links below - and last but not least I give a minute to the worrying - if only in a fairly niche capacity - news that historical observatory trials data, the calculations by which chonometry prizes were awarded in Neuchatel and Geneva in the mid 20th century could be… completely wrong. This is ’s scoop and I urge you to read the full story on his Substack.

This Friday I will be reviewing the Ming Starfield, a watch with many talking points, but none more obvious or divisive than the design of its bracelet. You’ll find that in your inboxes as usual at 10:10 UK time. Until then!

Links discussed in today’s episode:

• Rado True Round Les Couleurs x Le Corbusier

• Kollokium Projekt 02 B

• Greubel Forsey Convexe

• Sarpaneva Firehorse

• Pointless Complication

Share

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you back here next week for more.

Chris

Attention watch brand owners!

I know quite a few of you read The Fourth Wheel: this is a heads-up that the Independent Watchmaking Report will be returning this year and I will be distributing the survey next week. Watch your inboxes and tell your friends. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, last year I created the world’s first international analysis of indie watch brands and published it as a report. I’ll be doing the same this May - but bigger and better in every way - and it all starts with the survey. So if you work at an independent brand, I will be in touch very soon. Drop me a message if you want to know more.

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

So you want to be a watch writer?

I am asked surprisingly frequently for advice on becoming a watch writer. Sometimes by people who have already given it a bit of a go, sometimes by people who are just starting out, and I say surprisingly because if you have been reading The Fourth Wheel for long enough, or follow me on LinkedIn, you’ll know I don’t shy away from the fact that it’s not an easy way to make a living. But everyone has a different set of circumstances, and many people, I think, like the idea of doing a bit of writing on the side and getting paid for it rather than actually being reckless enough to try and make it their entire livelihood.

Getting paid is in fact a key distinction; I said I am asked for advice on becoming a writer, but what people really tend to be asking is ‘how can I find work as a writer’. The devil on my shoulder will always whisper something along the lines of ‘piss off, this is my patch,’ but I haven’t listened to him yet.

This is a slightly different thing, because although I don’t think you should be able to find professional writing gigs if your prose is horrible, it will be clear to all of us that you don’t have to be the next Hemingway or Fitzgerald to rattle off a few watch articles. By and large, people are generally not looking for a fine critique of their writing style - which is a shame, because they often need it. What is an even greater shame is that they will probably find someone to publish their work who isn’t interested in helping them improve as a writer as long as they deliver a trickle of page views. What follows is a beginners’ guide to achieving something more - the art of acquiring information, perceiving the compelling narrative within and delivering it to people in a form that they enjoy and find useful. That’s the idea, anyway.

It’s not enough just to like watches

If you are asking for advice on writing about watches I would hope you do like them, but having the beginnings of a collection - or who knows, perhaps a world-class one - and some strongly-held opinions about what Omega or Tudor should do next is not going to get you that far. It is far more important to be a good writer with an enquiring mind than to be a watch geek with time to spare.

You need a good editor

Knowing full well the irony of what I am about to say, having spent years now writing exactly what I want to whatever length I please right here on Substack, every good writer needs a good editor. I have worked with many, and whatever laments I may raise about freelancing in the mainstream media, one positive effect on my work is that it helps to retain some sense of discipline - by which I mean sticking to a word count, removing redundant material and staying on brief. Although as many commissioning editors would tell you, I stretch those limits all the bloody time; this is a liberty that you can occasionally take when you have developed a good relationship with a publication but objectively, is not great advice to follow. Do as I say, not as I do.

Anyway, a lot of enthusiast-led websites - and I think a fair few print magazines as well - lack the time, budget and dare I say it, journalistic grounding to know how to properly edit copy1. This isn’t the case at the biggest and best watch titles, but it is true of many places where an aspiring writer might get a start, especially retailers’ websites. With a few exceptions - Teddy Baldasarre might be one, although I can’t speak from personal experience, and Mr Porter when I worked there certainly was another - retail platforms don’t invest in editorially-trained staff. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that you may well find places willing to take a chance on a new writer, and by all means you should take them, because any experience is better than none, but pretty quickly you will probably realise that they don’t provide the level of feedback you need to improve as a writer.

Share

Read more

With that in mind, I share a few reflections on what I liked at BWD, and spend rather more time talking about the one thing that I really saw as a missed opportunity. As I say on the tape, the event was very good, but could have had a truly special headline act.

Leave a comment

Elsewhere, it is a tale of two idiosyncratic Japanese watches: the well-intentioned convertible dive watch from Kurono Tokyo, and the fascinating Otsuka Lotec No. 8. One attempts to offer a practical solution to fans unable or unwilling to choose between a retro daily wearer and a conventional dive watch, and the other is deliberately esoteric to the point of hipsterism. No prizes for guessing which I think is actually the better resolved and more appealing.

Back next week for more, when I truly hope there will in fact be more to talk about. Enjoy!

Links discussed in today’s episode:

• Vertex M36 “Desert Edition”

• Anoma

• Schofield Skeptiko

• Pinion Pure Origins

• Vulcain Skin Diver

• Junghans Aquaris

• Kurono Tokyo Diver’s Watch

• Otsuka Lotec No. 8

Share

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you back here next week for more.

Chris

If you have been a free subscriber for a while, let me make one of my intermittent impassioned pleas: this really is the kind of thing you will not read elsewhere. Why not click that ‘upgrade’ button and find out what you’ve been missing?

Subscribe now

If you are reading this on Friday, I will be at British Watchmakers’ Day tomorrow. Come and say hi - I’ll be the one wearing the branded baseball cap, of course. You can still buy the official TFW hat, and I might just pop a few in my bag for anyone who wants to save on shipping. Otherwise it’d just be nice to say hello!

Buy The Hat

The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Subscribe now

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

NOS

In the right place, those three letters can mean a huge amount to a collector - but even if you are a real veteran it might not be obvious just how much mystery, frustration, patience and sheer luck is concealed behind them.

New-old-stock is one of those phrases that, once you are sufficiently far down the horological rabbit hole, simply trips off the tongue without much interrogation. It will crop up in press releases a few times a year, at least, and while I’m not saying its primary meaning is overlooked - people generally understand what is literally meant - I think it has become a commodified concept, a badge of horological respectability that isn’t as well understood as it could be.

I don’t think anyone’s really at fault here, and I really don’t mean that brands use NOS cynically. As you’ll read, it’s actually one of the few areas of watchmaking in which I think it would be really difficult to cut corners. I just mean that that polite little term, when encountered alongside all the other specifications and poetic descriptions of a new watch, is something that can just glide serenely right through our brains, leaving behind nothing more than a general sense of heritage. Sometimes brands want to talk about the movement, in which case you are usually treated to a few paragraphs about the wonderful attributes of a Valjoux 88 or a Landeron 248 - but often, there are other narratives in the mix, the (accurate) perception being that even with a small-batch limited edition, the movement history might not be the prevailing source of interest for every buyer, and you don’t want to make it sound like they’re actually buying a vintage watch.

What is new-old-stock?

Whenever NOS is discussed in any detail, it is usually very simply framed in terms of the glory bestowed upon a modern brand by working with some of the great movements of watchmaking history. Without a doubt, that is the big draw of using a new-old-stock movement, but there is so much more to the process than the end result. I wanted to understand a bit more about how NOS movements appear in modern watches, so I spoke to four companies that all have recent experience in the area: Andersen Geneve, Fears, Massena Lab and Struthers. What I learned actually led me to respect the practice far more than I ever had, and I think it should be more widely appreciated. The next time you see a vintage movement in a modern watch, you’ll know that at some point along the line, its creator probably went through a huge amount of heartache to get it there1.

Read more