Dive deep with the Doxa Sub 1200T Professional
If you know the heritage dive brand Doxa, you know they’re famous for three things: Dirk Pitt, distinctive cases, and orange dials that are bright enough to light up your life (and the lives of anyone within a 10-foot radius of you). Dirk Pitt is a fictional adventuring Doxa wearer, created in the mind of Clive Cussler, so we’re not going to cover him too much here. The case and the dial, however, are very much in evidence on the Doxa Sub 1200T Professional. So, if those sound like two things you’re into, read on. It’s important to note that while Doxa has been around for a good long while (the name was registered in 1910), these days the brand is really about their dive watches, which came to the fore in the 1960s. Throughout their history, Doxa had kept their dive watches remarkably true to that 1960s vision — with a legible-yet-stylised dial design (often in that popping orange), broad-flanked cushion-shaped case and an aggressively milled bezel. Not only does this well serve the adage, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, it’s also a good thing if you happen to have a cult dive design on your hands,…
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The “Dirty Dozen” are watches produced by the 12 British Ministry of Defence contractors during World War II who were tasked with strapping watches to the wrists of allied forces. While some of the brands are bigger and better than ever before, a few have slid into relative obscurity or the books of insolvency firms. I wanted to take a look at which of the Dirty Dozen survive today … Which of the Dirty Dozen survive today? During the Second World War, the MoD took the opinion that civilian watches weren’t up to the task of providing accurate timekeeping to their soldiers, and decided they needed more robust watches to distribute. Manufacturing industries around the globe were feeling the strain of the war-time effort, so the MoD couldn’t award the contract to a single brand, and instead offered it to 12 brands. Thankfully, most of them were conveniently based in the neutral territory of Switzerland. It’s clear that brands such as IWC, Omega, Longines, Jaeger-LeCoultre (and more recently Vertex) are all alive and kicking, but what of the other magnificent seven: Buren, Lémania, Eterna, Timor, Cyma, Record and Grana? Buren It is estimated that around 11,000 watches were produced by…
Fun fact: Last year the Apple Watch shipped 22.5 million units. In the same period, the Swiss watch industry exported 23.7 million watches. Scary stuff if you’re a Swiss watch brand. Especially scary if your business is rooted in quartz watches — the market sector that’s being most aggressively eroded by the Apple onslaught. This is hardly news though — the Apple Watch has been around for five years, and the Swiss have been busy coming up with their own alternatives, like the TAG Heuer Connected and the Montblanc Summit. For an excellent state of the union style overview of where the Swiss-versus-smart conflict is up to these days, you can’t go past this snazzy piece in The New York Times by the excellent Robin Swithinbank. Read it here.
Editor’s note: The longer I spend around watches, the less I find myself in bells and whistles (Patek alarms and Jaquet Droz excepted). In fact, I find myself more and more drawn to simple, pure designs that just work. The TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 5 Day-Date is a perfect example of this. On the surface there’s nothing flashy or fancy about this watch. But it’s precisely this steadfast design and supreme versatility that makes this watch such a winner … It’s easy to think of the Carrera as purely a collection of chronographs, as that complication is where its roots and, indeed, heart lies. But for a long time the TAG Heuer Carrera has been about more than just sports timers. It’s evolved into something more, a shorthand for sports pedigree and precision. This is the spirit with which the Carrera Calibre 5 Day-Date shines. The Carrera look is still there, of course, notably in the 41mm steel case, with those proud lugs and polished bezel. But the heritage is there in the dial — the simple baton markers and matchstick hands aren’t too far off those of the earliest Carreras. What’s new, though, is the day-date apertures: large, legible and…
Rodger Corser looks familiar, right? That’s because he’s one of Australia’s most enduring and endearing actors. You’ll find him fighting zombies in Glitch, chasing gangsters in Underbelly and stitching up wounds in Doctor Doctor. In the new season of the popular show, you may note a certain black and stealthy companion on his wrist: The Bremont U-2/51-JET. It complements a (pleasingly intergenerational) collection that we’ve explored previously in part in these videos. Rodger’s new fascination is UK-based brand Bremont. The fit is obvious. The brand has acting pedigree, with Bremont gracing the wrist of Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Matthew McConaughey and more. It has authenticity, with a quarter of sales going to the armed forces, who demand a superior level of reliability. And it has an honesty via a rugged build and masculine aesthetic that appeals to the Aussie sensibility. We asked Rodger to review the U-2/51-JET over an eventful week in his life — the one in which he was nominated for a Gold Logie, Australia’s answer to the Emmys. I first heard about Bremont when … I was spending far too many hours on sites like yours! I found their story interesting for a new watch brand. From what I can…