From Tudor to Bell & Ross: How modern watches are leaving nostalgia behind
Retro, revivalist, old-skool, shabby-chic, heritage… However you want to pigeonhole #vintage there’s no denying that beyond the bare brickwork and filament lightbulbs of hip vinyl cafés, the trend’s nostalgic tendrils have stretched all the way to Switzerland. This is not without precedent, admittedly: the country’s famed mechanical timepiece is, after all, inherently anachronistic in an age when your cellphone is ever-present about your person.
In part a response to the financial crash, 2009 ushered in a cosy, affordable throwback to mid-century design, all WWII sepia tint, Gill Sans typography and battered brown leather. It felt like a welcome respite from the garish maximalism of the noughties. But 15 years later, raiding the archives is beginning to feel like a bit of a cop out.
Brands have made huge technical strides behind the dial: antimagnetic mechanics (Omega), carbon (Richard Mille), ceramic and silicon (Rado, Hublot, Patek Philippe, Ulysse Nardin), so it was only a matter of time before the package strapped to your wrist started to reflect what was ticking inside.
That time is now.
Leading the charge is Tudor, which despite a name harking back to Henry VIII, might be the most progressive outfit in the valleys of the Jura Mountains. Its core ‘Black Bay’ was a phoenix from the ashes, a supercut of design details drawn from the diving watches Rolex supplied to the French Navy’s elite frogmen in the 1960s. Today it is a cradle for the 21st century’s reassessment of traditional springs, cogs and levers. Five-year warranties, super-precision, 70-hour-powered movements, all made in a purpose-built robot-enabled production facility boasting net-zero carbon emissions.
Now the aesthetics are following suit, with rainbows of colour, high-tech materials and sci-fi sculpture adding flair to the already solid range. The new ‘Flamingo Blue’ dial of the 41mm Black Bay Chrono (£5,020) is a joyous affirmation of mechanical timekeeping’s future. Anchor weighed, retro military tropes discarded, titular wading bird taking flight, unshackled by the past…
Now let’s turn to Bell & Ross, the 1990s upstart whose majority owner Chanel went in with Tudor on a bleeding-edge micro-manufacturing plant they jointly dubbed ‘Kenissi’. The UFO-in-miniature that is Bell & Ross’s new ‘BR-03 Skeleton’ (£4,990, limited to 250 pieces), with all its steely, openworked brutalism, couldn’t look less high-fashion ‘Chanel’ or jetset ‘Tudor’. But it’s keenly informed by all three brands’ modern MO: a defiantly far-sighted belief in mechanical watchmaking, and how it can be an inspiration for design as well as reliability.
Bell & Ross’ watchmakers’ desire to fully reveal the watch’s mechanics naturally led to the creation of a dedicated movement. Its newly forged ‘BR-CAL.328’ forms the dial as well as the moving parts, making a spectacle of its upper ‘bridges’, forming an ‘X’ with each arm suspended from the case’s four corner screws. The screws themselves are a hangover from B&R’s square-jawed design language, drawn from the analogue cockpit instrumentation of fighter jets.
Architectural and wilfully technical, the BR-03 Skeleton Grey Steel, “is a high-tech jewel,” says Bruno ‘Bell’ Belamich, creative director and co-founder alongside Carlos ‘Ross’ Rosillo. “It’s both a ‘horological’ and ‘brutalist’ machine… a tiny sculpture in steel. The polished and satin-finished case, the faceted indexes, the ruthenium coating on the dial… everything is designed to capture and reflect light.”
The same could be said of Rado’s latest artist collaboration with British product designer Tej Chuahan. Before establishing his own company in 2005, Chuahan worked at Nokia, where he was responsible for the design of some of the tech giant’s most memorable models. Chauhan’s own ‘3210’ in watch form beams Rado’s signature futurism even further into the cosmos: the ‘DiaStar Original’ (£2,100), clad with gleaming, ceramic-fused yellow-gold, looks like it’s modelled around the proportions of Darth Vader’s helmet.
The dial of Christopher Ward’s Twelve 38 has a similarly dazzling effect. In response to a stream of requests from its increasingly cultish followers, Christopher Ward has re-introduced four open-series versions of its dodecagonal, integrated-bracelet sports watch, now in ‘mid-size’ Nordic Blue, Glacier Blue, Arctic White and Midnight Sun (all £1,050). The three contrasting finishes applied to Twelve 38’s jigsaw of steel facets – namely, ‘high-polished’, ‘fine-linear-brush’ and ‘sand-blasted’ – frame the main event: a tessellating, pyramidally textured dial that mimics the brand’s logo.
From one lighting condition to the next, every glance at your wrist is designed to shimmer uniquely. Time marches on, but it seems watchmakers are keeping pace.