Watch Dandy

HANDS-ON: Girard-Perregaux’s Laureato in steel – is it a steal?

GP-laureato-blue-7 Let’s get this out of the way early on. Does the Girard-Perregaux Laureato share some visual similarities with other well-known luxury steel sports watches? Sure, but we can easily think of half a dozen watches that fit that particular bill. AP and Patek don’t have a monopoly on ’70s design. And make no mistake, the Laureato is very much a ’70s design. In fact, as far as watch designs go, it’s got a great backstory. The first Laureato, released in 1975, was a quartz, arriving as it did six years after the invention of the quartz wristwatches. Not only that, it was (according to GP) the first quartz movement made entirely in-house, and it also determined the frequency standard 32,768 Hz that’s still used today. Quite a feat given the novel and complex technologies involved. The watch – designed by an Italian architect, its octagonal bezel inspired by the footprint of Florence’s famous dome – was a hit, and by the latter part of the decade it had become GP’s best-seller. Even then, the key elements of bezel, hobnail dial pattern and integrated bracelet were key design features. And it’s not like the Laureato has suddenly reappeared after a long absence. The collection was given an upgrade…

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Editors’ Picks: The Best Everyday Watches Of SIHH 2017

It’s been less than a week since the 2017 Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) closed its doors, but the dust is finally starting to settle. After six days of non-stop watch gazing in Geneva, the HODINKEE team returned home with full notebooks, thousands of photos, and more than a few opinions on the year’s first big batch of new releases. To kick off a short series of stories sharing our editors’ favorite picks from the hundreds of new watches, we asked each team member to pick the one all-purpose watch they’d want to wear day in and day out. It’s a tough question, but we got some pretty great answers.

The Horological Society Of New York Takes Its Award-Winning Classes To Chicago and Philadelphia

In 2016, the Horological Society of New York (HSNY) took its horological education classes on the road, visiting Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The classes sold out quickly and were full of enthusiastic students, all eager to learn how a mechanical watch works first-hand. The response to the classes was incredible. For 2017, HSNY will continue its educational tour by visiting cities across the country, with the first two stops being Chicago and Philadelphia.

SIHH 2017 Round Table: What We Liked And What We Didn’t Like (Warning: Modem-Burning Photo Fest!)

Please join our Quill & Pad round table discussion, where we talk about what we did and didn’t like at the 2017 SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie). And get ready for a cornucopia of beautiful photos and colorful opinions!

Chantilly Arts & Elegance Event With Richard Mille Watches

At the mention of Richard Mille, classic cars don’t exactly spring to mind. The watches are all about advancement through the use of the best materials, so why would they be the driving force behind an event meant to celebrate the elegance of vintage machines?

Xavier Markl’s Top 10 of the SIHH 2017

The SIHH 2017 was my 19^th attendance to the Geneva-based fair. What a pleasure to tour the inescapable Geneva Haute Horlogerie rendez-vous, which has been great vintage indeed! Here’s my top ten favorite watches, after over 2,000 pictures shot. These are presented without specific order, focusing on gents watches (no mention therefore of the magnificent jeweled watches from Cartier, Piaget or Van Cleef and Arpels). A tough choice but as we had to pick ten, here we go with my personal highlights…

Urwerk Celebrates 20th Anniversary With UR-T8

By Martin Green
Time flies when having fun! That certainly goes for Urwerk, who celebrates this year its 20th anniversary and does so with the UR-T8 which they launched at the SIHH. The brand has come a long way in those twenty years, creating watches like the UR-103, UR-1001 and the EMC Time-Hunter. A signature feature of many of them are of course the three cone shaped discs indicating both the hour as well as the minutes, brought together by a stroke of genius. Of course, this complication is also present in the UR-T8, because what would a 20th-anniversary piece be without it?

Hands-On: The Greubel Forsey Tourbillon 24 Secondes Vision In Platinum With A Chocolate Brown Dial

With every passing SIHH, I find myself increasingly disinterested with everything that isn’t a time only or an ultra complicated wristwatch. On one end of the spectrum, what you get is the purest expression of a company’s design philosophy, while the other often provides a perverse pleasure in trying to rack your brain around the technical challenges the company has had to overcome. Very few watches tend to be both of these things. But when they are, they’re something extra special. Here’s one of them.

SIHH 2017 – The Piaget Polo S Black ADLC / Rubber (The new Limited Editions That Make A World Of Difference)

Launched with great fanfare in the middle of last year – see our introducing article – the Piaget Polo S was both a breath of fresh air for Piaget and, at the same time (and unfortunately) the most controversial watch of the year 2016. This is the sad part of the story. This watch is great… alone. But it lives in a market full of competitors. It seems that Piaget heard the complaints and for the SIHH 2017, some new limited editions have been showed, the Piaget Polo S Black ADLC / Rubber 3-hand and chronograph – a world of difference… And that’s were the deal becomes pretty interesting.

A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Annual Calendar – Hands-On

The SIHH 2017 is over and we’re left with mixed feelings. If all SIHH brands knew how to make us smile like A. Lange & Söhne seems to be able to do every year, there wouldn’t be any issues. This year, A. Lange & Söhne showed their 1815 Annual Calendar watch, and it immediately became […]