Timepieces

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

The collection · 111 essays

Grand Seiko and the Luxury of Being Understated

The first thing I noticed was not the dial. It was the way the case edge caught the window light, a clean white…

The first thing I remember is the way the seconds hand stopped without drama. It was a Grand Seiko SBGW231, lying dial-up on…

The first thing I remember is not the dial, but the edge of the case catching the window light as I turned the…

The first thing I remember is not the diamonds, though there were enough of them to throw a small weather system across the…

The light caught first on the caseband, not the dial. I remember that because the watch was face down in my palm for…

The first time I opened the little red Cartier box, I expected a watch and found instead a question. It lay there on…

There is a particular kind of watch story that tends to get told loudly. It usually begins with a waiting list, a celebrity…

There is a particular kind of silence that falls over the watch world whenever a collaboration is announced. It is not quite excitement…

There is a particular kind of silence that surrounds an old pilot’s watch. It is not the silence of luxury, the velvet hush…

There is a particular feeling that settles over the watch world when something rare happens, and it has nothing to do with rarity…