AW21 WATCH JOURNAL

14th October 2021

A must read for gents looking to update their watch collection. Dive into the world of luxury watches and discover Alex’s Doak’s definitive buying guide for right now.

No more black and white! Since the arrival of red ceramic in 2018, Hublot’s Metallurgy & Materials laboratory at its factory on the north bank of Lake Geneva has honed the perfect balance of temperature and pressure, enabling zirconium oxide pellets to be ‘sintered’ at 1,300ºC without burning the pigments. First red, then blue, beige, green and now yellow, housing Hublot’s other proudly in-house creation, the Unico chronograph movement.

76533 | £21,700

Long before the dawn of mechanics, the heavens and especially the moon served as our clock and calendar. In collaboration with Japan’s renowned, minimalist starchitect, Tadao Ando, Bulgari’s ultra-thin Octo harks back to this more spiritual relationship with time, embedding a gold ‘Mikazuki’, or waxing crescent moon within an exquisitely hand-lacquered deep blue dial. Its grooved texture spirals from the base of the seconds hand, while everything floats within a night-sky case of black ceramic.

£13,000

The enfant terrible of fine Genevan watchmaking marks 2021 with unusually restrained aesthetics fused with typically amped-up micro-engineering. Its ultra-light titanium tourbillon cage tumbles within the brand’s two-line skeleton dial-cum-movement – forged from ultra-high-tech ‘Cobalt Chrome CarTech Micro-Melt BioDur CCM, a non-magnetic, cobalt-chromium-molybdenum wrought alloy exhibiting high strength, corrosion resistance, and wear resistance. Standard.

76756 | £129,000

This takes watchmaking’s ‘green’ trend and not so much runs with it as drives it through Kenya aboard a Defender. Zenith has revived its ‘A384’ of 1969 in matte, microblasted ceramic, bringing out the dark nuances of titanium – an antireflective measure that won’t dazzle the fauna you’re tracking. Framed by deep olive-green, cooler spruce, with vintage SuperLuminova pops, the dial broadcasts the busy ‘El Primero’ mechanics beneath, ticking to one-fifth-of-a-second precision.

78051 | £7,500

To a SCUBA diver, tweaking their tried-and-trusted watch is tantamount to toying with how you fold the parachute of a skydiver’s backpack. Fear not, TAG Heuer knows its onions, so in reduxing its pro-spec Aquaracer, all you get is a better dive watch, plain and simple. The signature 12-sided bezel now integrates scratch-resistant ceramic and fluting for easy grip, to give just one example. In this case, with restrained flair, the 1978 original gets a hat-tip from beige Super-Luminova and a red military scale.

76562 | £3,600

Created in 1973, just one year after Gérald Genta ripped up the rulebooks with his Royal Oak design for Audemars Piguet, the Riviera was a zeitgeist masterstroke from one of Switzerland’s most venerable maisons: a twelve-sided luxury sports watch in steel with integrated bracelet and dynamism baked in. Here it is in 2021, now driven by Baume & Mercier’s precise, five day and antimagnetic ‘Baumatic’ movement, which you can watch ticking through a smoky blue sapphire dial.

77901 | £2,350

If that ‘925’ seems naggingly familiar, then you’re right: it’s the purity rating (out of 1,000) for sterling silver. While rare for any watch these days to be cased up in this tarnishable, dentable metal, remember this is Tudor: when it comes to its Black Bay divers, military heritage points are one, sub-aqua credentials are another thing entirely. Sure enough, the addition of aluminium (et al.) to the mix means that ethereal sheen will survive, perfectly complemented by the aluminium bezel’s cool taupe.

76539 | £3,230

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As we rediscover the art of partying once again, we do so with unbridled joy and passion.

With the world finally opening up, it’s not so much a return to normality as a joyous headlong dive into a smorgasbord of rebooted cultural OOMPH.