Timepieces

Close reading of individual watches — movements, design languages, and the decisions behind them.

The collection · 85 essays

The Strange Collector Appeal of Alpina

There is a particular kind of car person who does not want the loudest thing in the parking lot. He does not want…

There are watch brands that seem to arrive fully dressed for the modern world, polished by marketing departments, sharpened by celebrity wrists, and…

There is a particular kind of collector who does not arrive with trumpets. You do not meet them at the loudest booth of…

There is a particular sound a vintage chronograph makes when it is lifted from a watchmaker’s tray and wound for the first time…

For a long time, Girard-Perregaux seemed to exist in the watch world like an old manor at the edge of a grand estate:…

There is a certain kind of watch brand that survives because it becomes inevitable. It builds a shape or a movement or a…

There was a time when the name Yema seemed to belong not merely to a watch dial, but to a particular French idea…

There was a time, not very long ago, when saying “Maurice Lacroix” in a room full of watch people produced a particular kind…

There is a particular kind of quiet that doesn’t feel empty. It feels loaded. It sits in the room like a held breath,…

There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over a watch fair before the lights switch on. It isn’t silence, exactly—more a hush…