Issue 196: Reviewing the Ming 56.00 Starfield
Ming's first integrated bracelet watch has a Vaucher movement you can't really see and a mirror polish you can't ignore. Where does it stand in the sports-luxe pantheon?
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that only recently realised that I will hit 200 issues on the Friday of Watches & Wonders! What should I do to celebrate? I was thinking either a limited edition collaboration with Philippe Dufour or an extra bonus podcast episode… Weighing them both up, but seriously, I am open to your suggestions. If it’s achievable and enough of you want it, I’ll do it.
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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
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.
