The Fourth Wheel, Issue 63
"Where are the real watch journalists?" they cry. Plus, the madness of Swatch.
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly1 watch newsletter that, this week, has been mostly written from hospital wards and cafes as my wife and I awaited the arrival of our second child, who was born on Thursday. All are well, and I promise you my paternal duties were not interrupted by writing a whimsical missive for luxury watch addicts (and nor did I delay us leaving the house to fetch my preferred Rolex GMT-Master2). As ever, for the first Friday newsletter of the month, this issue is free to all. Enjoy!
Did you know that if you are a free subscriber, you’re missing at least 75 per cent of The Fourth Wheel? Recently we’ve had hot takes on the Massena Lab/Revolution ‘homage’, the definitive ranking of Alinghi sailing watches, the even more definitive verdict on Only Watch 2023, watches as Tinder encounters according to Justin Hast, our regular Ask Me Anything and so much more. In the next few weeks I’m going to review the new Patek Philippe Calatrava ‘carbon fibre’ models, and introduce a brand new format for guest contributors. If you’re still not convinced, you can subscribe with a free trial (but if you are, it works out cheaper for a full year up front).
I feel a twinge of pain, deep in whichever corner of the brain governs professional pride, every time a little storm bubbles up on social media and the same handful of highly active watch collectors start another chorus of “where are the real watch journalists?”
Last week it was the Massena Lab x Revolution limited edition launch. No need to go back over the details; it was the same as every other time before it, you just have to change the names. A new watch is announced; the collector community takes one look at it and decides it smells bullshit, says so loudly and everyone gets upset that no-one at a major media outlet has come with them to reach that verdict. Last week’s flare-up is particularly instructive because one of the parties involved in the collaboration was Revolution. Poachers-turned-gamekeepers, as the saying goes.
I feel pained not because I think the watch journalist corps is beyond reproach. Nor am I under the illusion that watch journalism in rude health. I feel pained because I have made a living as a journalist for fourteen years, have been writing about watches in some capacity for eleven of them, and I’ve seen first-hand how difficult it is to make a successful go of it as a watch media business.
I’ve written about this before, but quite a long time ago so I thought it would be worth another visit. But at the same time, I’ll give you the speedy version, because this isn’t Media Business 101, and also because I want to get to the part where I say silly things about Swatches3.
Do I wish we had a watch press where journalists could be a bit more forthright in their views, reasonably critical of brands and their products, and make a good living doing so? Of course - why do you think I founded The Fourth Wheel in the first place? But we have to be realistic about the last part.
Everything I’m about to say is true for almost all journalism, but even more so for a niche specialism like luxury watches. Good journalism - be it investigative or entertaining, or even simply informative - is expensive. And, this is the really sped-up bit… Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, media companies weren’t sufficiently clued-up to the potential of the internet, naively thought sharing their core product for free would be to their overall benefit, reckoned without the emergence of tech giants that would come to control the means of distribution of said product, and failed to recognise that their ultimate intention - in as far as these tech giants contemplated legacy media at all - was to replace them entirely.
You know all this. Print circulation: fell off a cliff. Advertising with it. Digital advertising couldn’t fill the gap. Brands reallocated those budgets to digital marketing, influencer and affiliate programmes and at the same time, started building their own suites of content. We can race right through the steady erosion of editorial independence chasing the last circling dregs of honest revenue, the evolution of advertorial and partnership content and get right to the obvious conclusion: you can’t make money from content alone. So editorial outlets started hosting events, creating membership clubs, and the big one: selling stuff. It’s not rocket science. It works. And for the most part, it’s giving people what they want. It’s not wrong; but it is incompatible with a robust, interrogative attitude and a finely tuned nose for bullshit.
For what it’s worth, I do not speak from an ivory tower. As well as publishing The Fourth Wheel. I’m the watch editor for Mr Porter, a job I’m proud of and enjoy - but if you’d told me aged 23, a fresh-faced graduate from City University London’s Magazine Journalism masters course4, that my future lay in working for a retailer, my face would not have been a pretty picture. Times change. Industries and individuals must adapt.
I accept that. But the reason I still feel those pangs of pain when the cry goes out is because I am optimistic that some of the last 25-year downward spiral can be reversed. That we can learn to value media again. I’m not (just) on a sales pitch for newsletter subscriptions; when did we accept that a 100+ page magazine of brilliant writing, informed opinion, humour, expertise, the best photography and illustration, all brought together by talented art directors, fact-checked by sub-editors and printed on good glossy paper and delivered to your door was worth less than a glass of wine in a bar? A Sunday newspaper - with foreign correspondents, op-eds, columnists, crosswords, obituaries, investigative units that take months to uncover deeply buried scandals - for less than a Pret sandwich? I call that a bit of a bloody miracle.
It’s not just print - in fact, getting hung up on the medium is to miss the message entirely. We used to value this content in print; we should value it equally in its digital form. The convenience of online and app content felt like it should naturally be free to access in the 2000s and 2010s, but most major media outlets have now woken up: if it’s worth reading, you’ll find some kind of paywall surrounding it. (It is one reason I charge for what I do here: it’s good, and you won’t see anything like it elsewhere - but the pledge I make to you is that you pay for content, you get content. No ads. No spam. No third-party interference. If I ever try to sell you anything, it’ll be something I designed that I believe in.)
But I’m lucky. I have a job that pays the bills. Most watch journalists are writing for titles that won’t jeopardise their commercial relationships. I have a lot of respect for the kind of thing Jose Pereztroika does but it’s a passion, not a job. ‘Telling it like it is’ on your Instagram account or YouTube channel is only low-risk if your income doesn’t depend on the companies you’re insulting.
Where are the real watch journalists? They’re out there. What they need is a publisher with deep pockets who’ll do things the hard way, and an audience that will put its money where its mouth is.
Here on The Fourth Wheel if you eat your main course you can have some dessert, so having sat through my worthy diatribe on the media landscape, you have earned a reward. This week, I bring you your regular public service reminder that Swatch is the maddest brand out there. These are the ten wildest Swatch designs currently on sale5. Enjoy!
It’s not the artwork reproduced on the dial (although if you’re not into pop-art, it would definitely elicit a double-take), and it’s not the bright yellow - Swatch does bright colours like Rolex does 904L steel. It’s the keeper, the prosaic rubber band that’s used to extend the reference to the 1965 screen print. Has this most humble element of a watch ever shown more personality? I think not.
I know, bright colours alone are just so Swatch. But there is bright and bright, and this is the latter. You don’t need lume to see this at night. In fact, you can use this to charge up the lume on your other watches.
Memento mori? Memento party, more like. Best of all, the googly eyes rotate in and out of their sockets - eat your heart out, Konstantin Chaykin.
Kame-Sennin, also known as Master Roshi, is a character from Dragon Ball. Making watches with one of the biggest manga and anime universes ever created isn’t too crazy, but imagine seeing this on someone’s wrist. Imagine it on your wrist. Imagine seeing that face whenever you check the time. I’ll be honest, it’s making me ask why there hasn’t been a Swatch x Rick & Morty collection.
Produced with artists Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, this will get an ‘if you know, you know’ nod from modern art supergeeks, but bafflement from everyone else.
Who doesn’t love their mother, and want to remind her of that affection with a cherished gift? Well, as of this year, you can express your filial devotion with an all-red watch emblazoned with the phonetic pronunciation of the word on the dial, and a strap that reads “I told you so!”.
The watch that originally inspired this list. The ne plus ultra of Swiss national clichés - a golden cow in a heart, on a watch! Even H. Moser would struggle to match it. That’s because even Edouard Meylan has never dared put a cowbell on a watch strap. But sometimes, Edouard, you just Need More Cowbell.
Made in 2020 for the Chinese Year of the Rat. With mad Swatches, half the fun is in the name, and I would defy anyone not to want a watch called ‘Cheese! Squeak! Squeak!’. I had assumed it was a mouse, which would be cuter, but look at those ears6! And you have GOT to check out the packaging.
What’s wilder than a watch with a bell on it? That’s right, two bells. The campest, kitschiest, most cracker-worthy watch perhaps ever designed. I love Christmas as much as the next man, but, in the nicest possible way, I do not want to meet the person who would wear this. Sorry.
Who needs a Bulgari Serpenti or an Hermes Cape Cod? Recapture your youth and pay homage to those iconic multi-strap designs all at once with this saccharine, E-number laden essence of nostalgia. It’s childhood innocence in a watch; so obvious, so brilliant, so ridiculous and silly. For anyone thinking it’s a children’s watch, the strap sizes go up to a seven inch wrist.
Quick Links
The Long And Increasingly Complicated Story Of The Reference Number, at Hodinkee
Unashamedly nerdy but fundamentally insightful. I strongly agree that one reason neo-vintage and modern watches can be harder to geek out over is the difficulty even hardened collectors have remembering the designations for different references. If you can’t remember it, you can’t obsess over it (a point I will be making to Grand Seiko til the day I die). This piece also reminded me that about six or seven years ago I emailed Patek Philippe asking if they could explain their reference number system to me. They replied politely that no, they would not be able to do so. To this day I am not entirely sure there is a system - at least, one that’s not heavily dartboard-based.Guilloche For Beginners: A Photo Essay, at SJX
At a time when dialcraft has never been more valued, yet more and more brands cut costs by stamping, rather than cutting, their guilloché dials, this was a fascinating look at how the magic really happens.When Life Gives You Lemons, Buy A Lemania - The Phenomenon Of The Revenge Watch, at Mr Porter
Very pleased with how this turned out, and not just for the perfect pun that Johnny came up with for the headline. Living well is the best revenge, as the saying goes, and it extends to watch purchases too. For reasons already mentioned, I didn’t consume a lot of watch media this week, so just these three recommendations for you.
And Finally…
It took me until the very last test of the Ashes series, and a message from a good friend and loyal subscriber to realise that Rado, as the official watch partner of the ECB and long-time maker of a watch called the Captain Cook, has seriously missed a PR opportunity. How easy it would have been to put together an ad campaign where Cook was crossed out for Stokes, and cash in on the enormous goodwill exhibited for England’s Bazballing leader?7
I laughed at Ben James Hodges’ highly accurate observation that the latest MoonSwatch edition looks like it has not Swiss lanterns, but Red Cross blood bags, on its second hand. Once you see it, you can’t not.
Weekly-ish, in weeks when babies are being born.
My NATO strap has been urinated on, though. I feel a newsletter themed around watches and newborn parenting coming on…
It’s worth it.
Ok, I admit, at this point you just need my A-Levels and you’re basically reading my CV.
I know some of them are artist collabs, and they make perfect sense for their audience, but objectively they still look completely wild as watch designs.
Ears! Not balls. Get your mind out of the gutter.
For my non-cricketing readers, Alastair Cook was a former captain of the England men’s cricket team; the current captain is Ben Stokes, a swashbuckling, charismatic and - for an elite sportsman - strangely relatable man who, together with coach Brendan McCullum, has transformed England’s test cricket performances under an aggressive playing style nicknamed ‘Bazball’.
C o n g r a t s on the new addition to the fam! I hope the babe and spouse are doing ok