Innehållsförteckning för Vol 22 från REVOLUTION WATCH

Having played for three major soccer clubs and earned 115 selections in the English football team, with 59 of them as captain, David Beckham has certainly left his mark in soccer history. In a career spanning 21 years, the gifted player had helped his clubs to score victories in six English Premier League Championships, two Major League Soccer Cups, one Spanish League Championship, and one UEFA Championship. However, trophies aren’t all that the high-flying soccer legend has amassed. Beyond the pitch, Beckham is a modern style icon and watch collector who has acquired an impressive range of timepieces, including a fine selection of modern and vintage Rolexes. It was from there that he unearthed the gem that is Tudor, whose revival, in the past six years, has been nothing if…

There’s something about a true tool watch, and this Seiko is a Tool watch with a capital T. There is nothing frivolous on the Prospex (OK, the rose gold touches on the bezel might be, but there has to be a bezel, so...). Sure, I know that I am never going to dive with this watch. But looking at it on my wrist, I know I can. And that makes me smile. I really enjoyed wearing the watch around. I wore it to the supermarket, I wore it to teach at Webster University, I wore it on my motorcycle—and it turned heads everywhere I went. I got a lot of “what is that?” looks and several friends asked me if I was planning to dive down to the Titanic, but…

Before movements are placed in watch cases, typically, you’ll find that they are stored in covered plastic movement holders. At that point, you can basically see every single part of the movement. This is what I am reminded of when I look at the new Bell & Ross BR-X2 Tourbillon Micro-Rotor for the first time. The effect is very similar, only this time, what you have is a watch with a movement placed within a transparent holder in sapphire crystal. This watch is mesmerizing, and confusing for sure, for people who do not know what it is. Quite apart from the reflective sapphire crystal, what you’ll basically see is a movement being strapped on the wrist of the person wearing the watch. The BR-X2 Tourbillon Micro- Rotor follows the BR-X1…

LOUIS VUITTON TAMBOUR MOON GMT MOVEMENT Automatic calibre; date, GMT function; 42-hour power reserve CASE 41.5mm stainless steel or stainless steel and pink gold; waterproof up to 50m STRAP Interchangeable strap featuring the Louis Vuitton patented system; stainless-steel ardillon buckle Inspired by Japanese taiko drums, Louis Vuitton’s Tambour burst on to the scene in 2002, marking the brand’s entry into the watch world. The collection became known for its use of the 12 letters “Louis Vuitton” on the caseband to indicate the position of the hour markers – as well as a penchant for the colour yellow. Quickly establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with, a number of iterations followed over the years with complications including chronographs, regatta timers, tourbillons and minute repeaters, as well as functions unique…

Patek Philippe Advanced Research released two innovations this year, housed in the Aquanaut Travel Time ref. 5650G, and people are freaking out. With good reason, I might add, because the two innovations in question – an improved Spiromax and a new timezone-advancing mechanism – have far-reaching implications that are completely obscured by their deceptively simple appearances. Thing is, this is not going to be a discussion of the watch. At all. This is one of those instances in which I care far less about the watch than what it means. It doesn’t happen a lot, but never underestimate the power of Patek Philippe to come up with something that takes up permanent residence in your thoughts (in an Aquanaut case, no less!) and will keep you up at night. SPRINGING…

BELL & ROSS BR 03-94 RS17 with automatic BR-CAL.301 movement; 42mm matteblack ceramic case; woven black rubber and black synthetic fabric strap. HUBLOT Big Bang Unico Red Sapphire with automatic HUB1242 movement; 45mm sapphire-crystal case; transparent structured lined strap. MOVADO Edge with quartz Ronda 772 movement; 40mm ion-plated, stainlesssteel case; integrated silicon strap. MEISTERSINGER Neo Plus with Swiss automatic movement; 40mm stainless-steel case; green suede strap. GLASHÜTTE ORIGINAL Sixties Aqua with automatic Caliber 39-22; 31.6mm stainless-steel case with turquoise dial; black alligator-leather strap. HAUTLENCE Vortex IPR2 (limited to eight pieces) with automatic movement; 52mm sapphire and yellow IPR2 (injected mix of carbon and ceramic) case; rubberized black alligator-leather strap.…

Most complications that exist in a wristwatch today are rooted in irony. While they were instrumental in the rediscovery and survival of watchmaking after the Quartz Crisis in the 1970s, their raison d’être irrevocably changed. Complications have become more of a performance art, in contrast to their historical function in scientific instruments whose precision was crucial to the advancement of knowledge. Strangely, though, a lot of attention is still being paid to their telos, or utility, in a timepiece — an exercise made even more extraneous by today’s digital tools. Most of the best in watchmaking over the past decade have understood this. But with that said, it is in the marquees you won’t immediately associate with the finer flights of horology that this understanding ran a whole lot deeper.…

For completely different reasons than are the usual yardsticks of horological skills, sapphirecased – or “see-through” – watches have become the latest measure of a manufacturer’s expertise. Unlike the brand-to-brand competitions based on the number of complications or variations on the tourbillon, both of which tax a company’s watchmaking prowess, working with sapphire as a case material presents an unusual challenge that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with timekeeping. We are dealing solely with aesthetics. With sapphire or other crystalline cases, the challenge is structural because the creation of cases involves materials that are tough to work with and which could prove brittle. As sapphirecased watches are rarities – some are even one-offs – there isn’t exactly a wealth of statistics about shattered or cracked cases, any more than…

What is Cartier’s essential raison d’être as you understand it? Elegance and self-expression. So for those who have absolutely no clue or interest in anything, what we do will never appeal to them. If you don’t care about your identity and how you express yourself, or even further, how you want to reward yourself and with what kind of tangible objects to express your feelings or your bond with others, or if you have no clue for aesthetics, you probably will not come to what we can offer. But I don’t think your life will be very happy. All civilizations whose existence revolved around pure function have disappeared, and those who came to a sense of pleasure and enjoyment have lasted longer. In the time of the Greeks, the most…

By the age of 25, Welsh-born actor Richard Burton (1925-1984) was hailed as the new Laurence Olivier. At 36, his role as King Arthur in Moss Hart’s musical Camelot (1960) saw him acclaimed as “the King of Broadway”. In 1961, while filming Cleopatra, he and Elizabeth Taylor became the most celebrated Hollywood lovers of all time. When Olivier cautioned his friend by telegram: “Make up your mind, dear heart. Do you want to be a great actor or a household name?”, Burton cabled back “Both!” But when the actor died in 1984, his unfulfilled potential was blamed on compromising bad film choices for fees, alcoholism and the soap opera surrounding his jet-set life with Taylor. The son of a Welsh miner and a barmaid, Richard Jenkins was the twelfth of…

Sitting on the gunwale in a pitching sea, 80 feet above the reef, a diver wriggles into his tacky rubber suit and heavy fins. After spitting in his oval mask, he awkwardly shoulders a cylinder of compressed air, cinches his belt of lead weight and puffs in his twin-hose regulator. On one wrist, a compass and depth gauge; on the other, a dive watch, its luminous dial soaking up the tropical sun’s rays. He glances over his shoulder one last time, then reaches down to spin the rotating bezel on his watch, aligning its zero marker with the minute hand, then presses his mask to his face and rolls back into the Caribbean. This is scuba diving, circa 1957. The rotating bezel is the hallmark feature of the dive watch,…

On 26 April 2017, Omega held the biggest event it has ever hosted in Europe. Turning the vast Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern gallery into a lunar landing station with a legion of spacemen lining the entrance, the dinner celebrated 60 years of the preeminent space watch: the Speedmaster. As well as the troop of would-be astronauts and a bunch of A-listers from the worlds of modelling, music and movies, the UK’s capital warmly welcomed Omega’s dynamic CEO Raynald Aeschlimann, Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney and the man of the evening, Dr Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin. Clooney led the tributes to Aldrin, echoing the mood of the hall, when he said: “I was eight years old in the summer of 1969 and was watching live on television as the first two…

BVLGARI OCTO ULTRANERO MOVEMENT Caliber BVL 193 self-winding movement; central hours, minutes and seconds; date; 50-hour power reserve CASE 41mm; black DLC-coated stainless steel; water-resistant to 100m STRAP Rubber with black DLC-coated steel ardillon buckle There is no denying the rapidity at which the Bulgari Octo is growing in strength and winning over a new generation of watch lovers — to the degree that it ought to be understood alongside the all-time greats such as the Nautilus and the Royal Oak. Underpinning this is the fact that the heavily faceted eight-sided case with a contrasting eight-sided bezel is an adaptation of the original Octo designed by the watchmaking legend, Gérald Genta himself. Most famous in the Octo cult is the Finissimo, which has perfected the techniques of ultra-thin watchmaking and…

A. LANGE & SÖHNE ZEITWERK DECIMAL STRIKE MOVEMENT Lange manually-wound manufacture calibre L043.7; jumping minutes; constant-force escapement; 36-hour power reserve CASE 44.2mm honey gold STRAP Hand-stitched dark brown alligator leather Recently seen on a notorious satirical Instagram account was an image showing two watches to represent “You” and “The Guy She Told You Not To Worry About”. “You” was represented by a steeland- gold monstrosity. “He” was compared to an A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk. Yeah, it's that kind of watch: tasteful, elegant, masculine, obviously expensive and a presence that inspires lust. The latest to join the family, the Zeitwerk Decimal Strike, just adds more desirability to the mystique. Launched in 2009, the Zeitwerk is a jumping hour-and-minute watch, with two thankfully large numerical displays, from the company that gave…

PARMIGIANI TORIC CHRONOMÈTRE MOVEMENT In-house, automatic chronometer; 55-hour power-reserve; COSC-certified CASE 40.8mm white or red gold STRAP Black alligator-leather strap made by Hermès For some of us, complications are just that: something we simply don't need in lives that are already so crowded, so busy. It’s been said that we learn more new things in a day than a person in the Middle Ages learned in a lifetime. That may be an exaggeration, but Parmigiani Fleurier’s latest joins the raft of time- or time-and-date-only models appearing from brands as diverse as Breguet and Nomos, Rolex and Meistersinger, and it’s a plea for sanity “What’s the big deal?” you might be thinking. “Doesn’t every brand show time-only models, year-in, year-out?” The difference is that such timepieces are becoming the brands’ hero…

You could say that the debut of the Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar Black Ceramic, the belle of this year’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH), was a long time coming. And you’d be right — in more ways than one. All-black Royal Oaks have been spotted in the wild for decades, though they’ve largely been products of opportunistic third-party vendors, not the Swiss brand itself. Coating the Royal Oak’s case and bracelet in DLC or black paint has proven an effective — if not exactly “official” — means to render Audemars Piguet’s much-beloved design all the more striking. After all, it’s difficult to overstate the elegance of an understated all-black treatment. Since introducing the Royal Oak in 1972, Audemars Piguet has populated its most iconic line with edition after…

Late in the year 2011, IWC Schaffhausen introduced a watch into its Portugieser collection that had the world looking at the manufacture from a point of view previously unconsidered. This was the Portugieser Sidérale Scafusia. A watch that was capable of showing mean solar time and sidereal time, it bore a perpetual calendar on its caseback along with a sunrise and sunset function, and even a bespoke celestial chart, specific to the watch owner’s desired location. But perhaps the definitive feat that IWC had achieved with the Portugieser Sidérale Scafusia was its constant-force tourbillon. Why is that so? Well, in order to answer that question, we must first understand what the purpose of a constant-force mechanism is. If you recall high-school physics, you should fundamentally be able to appreciate that…

According to Walt Disney, “It’s a Small World After All.” Given the state of retailing today, we should amend this sentiment to: “It’s an Online World After All.” When was the last time you bought a book in an actual physical bookshop? Or a CD in a music store? These brick-and-mortar retailers have by and large gone the way of the dodo. Today’s retailing is all about selling on the web — for the convenience, the comfort and because that is what the consumer wants. People today buy groceries online, prescription drugs, eyeglasses, clothes, shoes, sporting goods, cars and more. Watches, however, have been slow to the party, but things are heating up now as major players are selling online. Revolution reached out to the leaders of the watch industry…

Launched two years ago, Vacheron Constantin’s chronograph Historiques Cornes de Vache 1955 felt like a timepiece manifested by the will of watch lovers the world over. A timepiece that had tapped into the collective consciousness and its prevailing fascination with all things vintage, yet executed in a dynamic, modern way. First, there was the size of the watch, which, at 38.5mm, straddled the present and the past perfectly. Second was the movement: the venerable Lemania CH 27 (or in Vacheron Constantin speak, the Caliber 1142), now finished to Geneva Seal standards and evoking the magnificent history of 1940s precision timing. And then there was the design overseen by Vacheron Constantin’s artistic director Christian Selmoni and designer extraordinaire Emilie Vuilleumier, the same woman behind the design of the world’s most complicated…

When Montblanc launched its last big collection – the revisited and revamped TimeWalker family – the brand decided to go to the very heart of rallying for an opinion. If the former World Rally Champion Ari Vatanen liked them, they knew that they would be on to a winner. The legendary Finn’s love of motor racing is perhaps surprising considering that in 1960, when he was just eight years old, while heading to the local church with his parents and siblings, the family car was involved in a collision in which his father died. But children have a way of coping with horror and, too young to fully understand what had happened, Vatanen vowed to tame the car, an aim he has battled to achieve ever since. After the death…

Watch writers, as an occupational hazard, often field requests that start out as: “What watch should I buy?” Common enough, but one word changes that radically to: “What watch brand should I buy?” Yes, there are countless investors out there, eager to acquire an entire maison and, invariably, the conversation concludes with them saying forlornly: “I tried to buy Universal Genève.” Among the dormant houses – and there are plenty – Universal Genève SA’s state of limbo is the most puzzling, for here is a brand whose time has surely come. Pardon the use of that cliché, but its currency has skyrocketed since its recent rediscovery by an influential newbie, though seasoned collectors have always known it to be one of the most important of all the “tool” watchmakers, ranking…

Ask any Patek Philippe collector where they plan on being this summer and odds are they will tell you New York City. The reason? Patek Philippe is hosting a 10-day public exhibition titled “The Art of Watches, Grand Exhibition” which will take place from July 13-23 at Cipriani 42nd Street. A two story structure will be built within Cipriani to showcase museum pieces from Patek Philippe as well as its current collection. At the same time as Patek Philippe’s official exhibition, Christie’s New York will be hosting a 10-day selling exhibition of vintage Patek Philippe vintage watches featuring over 300 examples of timepieces available for immediate purchase in the 20 Rockefeller Center Galleries. This selling event, completely independent of the manufacture, will feature timepieces priced from $5,000 to over five…

This year’s TimeWalker collection presents a more masculine and bold approach that is rooted in the racing-chronograph heritage of Minerva. How did the philosophical vision of Montblanc’s (and Minerva’s) past heritage in racing chronographs inform the details of the design? The thinking behind the new TimeWalker collection was, first of all, strategic. We wanted to make a strong and sharp, professional sport line out of it and today, professional sport watches have a list of requirements that technically and stylistically the watch must correspond to in order to be considered as such. These requirements range from needing robustness for being worn every day in action, to readability in low-light conditions and under glaring sun, to requirements about precision in time measurement, and lastly in terms of design, to be an…

In your position with Phillips, what exactly do you do? The Watch department at Phillips is still quite new, having officially launched in November 2014. As Head of Americas, together with my NY-based team, we represent the department on this side of the Atlantic taking in watches, serving American clients, building the foundation and developing the community for future auctions to be held here through valuation days, collector events and partnerships. As the department’s International Strategy Advisor, my team and I help create digital and traditional marketing strategies to build our brand globally. In preparation for our auctions, I assist the team with the writing of each season’s catalogs–working to explain the greatness of every watch we sell on behalf of our clients. How did you get into watches? My…

CLOCKS ROCK IN BASEL While we continue to await the oft-reported return of the pocket watch – usually voiced by hipsters and vendors sitting on hundreds of them – the high-end clock is making a comeback. Cartier’s Mystery clocks have long been objects of desire, while product designer Marc Newson has brought a new allure to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s fantastic Atmos clocks. Watch brands such as Parmigiani Fleurier, MB&F and Bremont helped kick off the revival in proper clocks, the last-named recently showing its second Marine Chronometer, decorated by Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood. Parmigiani wowed us in 2015 with its models made for Lalique, while MB&F has collaborated with legendary clockmaker L’Epée for the science fiction-inspired Balthazar, Melchior, Sherman and Destination Moon. L’Epée, it turns out, is the secret ingredient, with two…

By now you will have heard – 2017 heralds the 60th anniversary of not one but three historic Omega watches. Comprising this trinity is the Railmaster, a highly non-magnetic watch, and incredibly rare, much more so than its famous counterparts by rival makers (you know, the one for Engineers, and the other resistant to a thousand gauss…). Then there’s the Seamaster, whose fortune has been watertight, cemented by its consistently sound design and good looks (barring only a few ghastly but forgivable aberrations in the 1980s). but forgivable aberrations in the 1980s). The remaining, and superior, figure of the trio is the Speedmaster, which I would argue is one of the most famous watches in history. Speedmaster has been a household name since the watch hitched a ride to the…

FABERGÉ VISIONNAIRE CHRONOGRAPH MOVEMENT Self-winding 6361 chronograph; 60-hour power reserve CASE 43mm rose-gold and titanium case or black DLC-treated ceramic and dark grey DLC-treated titanium case STRAP Alligator leather Swiftly realising that banging on about eggs was a cul-desac, and that its initial line-up of watches for the re-birth of the company was less than mind-blowing, Fabergé has metamorphosed into a serious player in haute horlogerie. It doesn’t hurt to work with geniuses like Jean-Marc Wiederrecht, either, such that a hugely respected rival has confided that he thinks the Visionnaires are, “rather special”. Joining the company’s aptly named line of adventurous, masculine watches – the kind of halo timepieces aimed at the sort of customer who would appreciate Harry Winston’s Opus models, Greubel Forseys or other iconoclastic watches – is…

GRAND SEIKO SBGR305 MOVEMENT Automatic calibre 9S68 CASE 40.5mm Brilliant Hard Titanium STRAP Crocodile leather Since its formal UK launch in 2010, Seiko’s haute horlogerie subsidiary Grand Seiko has been a firm favourite with the watch pack. But this Baselworld saw the brand come into its own in more ways than one. In the words of Shinji Hattori, Chairman and CEO of Seiko Watch Corporation, “[Grand Seiko] has made great strides forward in terms of distribution, sales and interest among watch lovers. I am delighted with our progress to date… In order to further reinforce its unique appeal and to reach out to a wider audience, we are today taking one step further and presenting Grand Seiko as an entirely separate brand.” As a part of this “step further”, and…

When I put on a watch I love that I have an instant chemical reaction to, I hear music. And the moment I put the Blancpain Tribute to Fifty Fathoms Mil-Spec on my wrist at Basel this year, I heard the cataclysmic drum solo in the Surfaris’ seminal surf-rock track, “Wipe Out”. That’s it. I knew. I was buying one. To me, it represents the single most successful merger of contemporary and vintage design in the watch industry this year. Which makes it even more important, because #vintagemodern is also the prevailing theme of Baselworld 2017, where the biggest players displayed a masterful activation of a unique union between modern and historic codes, creating watches charged with seductive tension between the past and the future. Patek did it with the…

Earlier this year, a small cadre of professional athletes made headlines in America with their straight-faced — and incredibly offtopic — post-game declarations that common classroom globes are gross misrepresentations of our planet, as the Earth is obviously flat. A more appropriate model, according to the not made-up Flat Earth Society, would resemble a floating pizza pie, wherein the “crust” is, in fact, a 150-foot wall of ice that keeps the oceans from spilling out into the vacuum of space. (We should note that the ice wall in this theory is Antarctica, and 150 is merely the conservative estimate; others peg the wall’s height at as high as 50,000 feet.) What these high-profile “revelations” indicate, aside from the fact that Game of Thrones must surely come off as a docudrama…

When New Zealand lifted the rugby World Cup at Twickenham two years ago, it was to be the final match for six members of the invincible squad. As well as team captain Richie McCaw, centres Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith, hooker Keven Mealamu, loosehead prop Tony Woodcock and arguably New Zealand’s greatest ever fly-half Dan Carter, all wore the black jersey for the last time in October 2015, leaving younger players to step up to the plate. “Most people expected there to be a re-booting phase after losing so many of us who had played around 100 games, but as part of the old team I knew that the guys were just going to get better. We had structures in place for five or six years to build up these…

A tale as old as moving pictures, the saga of an android gone rogue has formed many a successful plotline from The Terminator to the “Itchy & Scratchy Land” episode of The Simpsons. But nowhere within the genre have so many ethical issues been raised than in the HBO remake of Michael Crichton’s 1973 film Westworld. When I caught up with one of the show’s stars, James Marsden, the first 10 episodes of the Golden Globe-winning series had just finished airing and news of a second season had already been announced. Set in a fictional wild west-themed amusement park populated by robot hosts, Westworld is a place where, for a price, guests can indulge in the most socially unacceptable behaviour–ranging from routine vandalism to rape and murder–without fear of retaliation…

Tell me about the story of Blancpain’s relationship with the sea? Alain Delamuraz: The story of Blancpain’s dive watches began more than 60 years ago in 1953. Our president then, Mr. Jean-Jacques Fiechter, who was a diver himself, was embarking on a new era of diving — where humans could dive without coming up to the surface for air for a long time. During that period of time, one was not able to buy diving equipment as one can today at a regular diving shop. When you wanted to dive, you would have to be a member of a diving club. From there, you could borrow the equipment you needed: mask, dive?suit, amount of oxygen you’d consumed and had left. Such dive watches then were not sold in boutiques, but…

You starting diving in the 1950s. Tell me about the difference between the experience then and now? Well, when people ask me today, what’s the best place to go diving? I’ll always reply, “Almost anywhere, 50 years ago!” Since the end of the Second World War, technology has been rapidly advancing. Through GPS and the satellites we have in the skies, the advancement has aided us — for example, during a dive, you are able to know the exact location that you are at in the ocean. This enables you to go back to the same place time and time again. In the past, the ocean had been protected mostly by its inaccessibility. For instance, people could not get to Antarctica to catch what they wanted. Nowadays, it’s different. Armed…

You have achieved so much, but how did you first get involved with golf? My mum gave me a plastic golf club when I was very young, and I would swing it all around the house and the backyard. I was always a big fan of sports from when I was tiny and probably my biggest sacrifice to date was having to give up other sports to concentrate on golf. It was really hard as I loved playing them all growing up. But, while deciding to focus on golf was definitely a difficult decision, it was certainly the right thing for me to do at the time. In 2015 you won the US Masters and US Open – how did it feel to win two majors in a matter of…

How are things going? So far, things are very good. We have had the CEO of Citizen in Geneva for three days and no difficult questions, no conflict, nothing at all, it was all good. They seem to be quite happy with how things are going. They leave us completely alone. I speak with them from time to time to give them updates. There has been some integration on the financial part, reporting figures, but business-wise we are still executing our original business plan. We are integrating the US Citizen agency to have more comprehensive activity in the US, which will mean a significant growth in the US this year. This year, we are also changing distribution in Japan. How have things changed in the USA? The president of Citizen…