Watch Dandy

In case you’ve been living under a particularly unfashionable rock for the last few years, you’ll know the name Virgil Abloh. Since March 2018 he’s served as Louis Vuitton’s creative director, while still doing his duty as CEO of the Milan-based fashion house Off-White, and being long-term buddies with Kanye West. He also wears a Patek Nautilus, but not a ‘regular’ one.  While he certainly didn’t start the trend for high-end streetwear, he’s an important player in the space, and fond of riffing on (and perhaps even appropriating) design signifiers of other well-known brands. In this context, his choice of watch makes perfect sense. On prominent catwalk display his watch stood out, being pitch black. It appears to be a Patek Philippe Nautilus 5726, an annual calendar with a moonphase indicator. But honestly, it’s hard to tell given the custom blacked-out finish, which renders everything, except the white logo text and the stars, black.  No official comment has been made by anyone on this watch, but GQ has exchanged some coy messages with a Paris-based custom firm who may (or may not) have done the work. Read it here. 

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Editor’s note: We’re big fans of the new Samurai, it’s one of Seiko’s all-time classic dive watches. We’re also fans of beautiful blue dials. Which is why the Seiko Samurai ‘Save The Ocean’ SRPC93K is a watch we can really get behind. Read on for our in-depth review … The story in a second: Same great watch, brand new dial. The centrepiece of Seiko’s 2018 Prospex collection is, without doubt, the brand new and very blue ‘Save The Ocean’ series, offered in Turtle, Samurai and solar variants. It follows on from the recent Black Series and Blue Lagoon. But while last year’s limited edition was purely a cosmetic update, the Save The Ocean release has an element of social responsibility. Seiko has teamed up with Fabien Cousteau (grandson of Jacques-Yves Cousteau), who is himself a marine conservationist, to raise funds and awareness for Cousteau’s Ocean Learning Centre. Part of this awareness-raising involves prominent displays of what healthy and not-so-healthy marine environments look like in several Australian cities. So, not only do these watches look the part, they also do their part. The case First up, aside from the dial and bezel, this watch is pretty much identical to its regular release…

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Editor’s note: Aviation-themed watches are one of the real fan-favourite genres, especially in Australia. And while there’s a lot of big brands capitalising on their high-flying heritage, there’s also some surprises in the mix. Here are our picks of 10 of the best pilot’s watches.  First things first, just what is a pilot’s watch? While I think most of us could instantly recognise one, there isn’t an exact formula like there is when it comes to dive watches — and there’s a lot more to it than simply being a watch a pilot would wear. Ultimately (since you asked), a pilot’s watch is one that is instantly readable at a glance, whether in simple time-only form, or more complicated with functions that a pilot might find useful. And while we can’t all be Maverick or Iceman (no one wants to be Goose), we can still live out the fantasy and feel the need for speed with these … Breguet Type XXI 3817 Andrew developed a serious watch crush on the Breguet Type XXI back at Baselworld 2016 and honestly, I can see why. Those creamy old-world Arabic numerals, the iconic fluted middle caseband, and a view to the first-rate flyback dual-time movement…

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