While 2019 brought subtle improvements for Rolex’s mainstay watch lines, a rocky 2020 brought uncertainty – first we weren’t sure Rolex would release anything at all given the pandemic, which was followed by widely talked about updates for four of the crown’s pillar collections. The new 2020 models saw subtle changes for improvement and perfection rather than anything revolutionary. And lots more color!
Vacheron Constantin has been producing timepieces uninterruptedly since 1755, and it often draws on that heritage for the models in the Historiques collection. A great example is 2017’s Historiques American 1921 Small Model, a terrific unisex wristwatch.
‘The Watch Annual’ 2020 by Justin Hast and James Allen is a 172-page book featuring 72 watches from a large variety of price points and categories submitted by 40 contributors from 19 different countries. It is a book for watch lovers by watch lovers, coming from the so-called #watchfam. And it gives back. What’s not to like?
In this first episode of “Who Needs A Book Club!”, Karishma Karer, Sandra Lane, and Elizabeth Doerr discuss buying a first watch, basic at-home care of mechanical watches, how to be taken seriously as a female in watches, and the best watches to gift a man or a women. This is not just for women: men might learn something here too.
The new Breguet Reine de Naples Coeur Reference 9825 features a patented shape-shifting heart indication with a variable-length minute hand unlike any other minute hand that Elizabeth Doerr has ever seen. It’s a beguiling technical element as captivating as a beating heart.
On the eve of Super Bowl LV, Elizabeth Doerr takes a look at American football legends Terry Bradshaw, John Harbaugh, and Aaron Rodgers and their watch stories.
It is now a tradition for watch brands to commemorate Chinese New Year by creating beautiful, decorative, limited editions artistically depicting the appropriate sign of the Chinese zodiac. The Year of the Ox – which is the second animal in the Chinese 12-year zodiac cycle – begins on February 12, 2021. Elizabeth Doerr shares 8 of this year’s colorful offerings here.
There’s a new double-faced superstar in town: the De Bethune DB Kind Of Two Tourbillon. Co-founder and chief watchmaker Denis Flageollet wanted to create a watch with two distinct identities, incorporating two sets of brand “DNA” on the same watch. He also wanted to use the brand’s signature, patented floating lugs to their fullest extent. Elizabeth Doerr thinks Flageollet succeeded in his goals and explains why here.
At the end of 2020, Elizabeth Doerr posted a typical end-of-the-year ‘In Memoriam’ story honoring the departed. A reader left a comment on that story that Daniel Nebel, the independent autodidact maker behind Nord Zeitmaschine, had also passed away in 2020. Having found confirmation, here is her small tribute to an imaginative independent technician.
The phenomenal young tennis player Naomi Osaka is a risk taker, ultra-talented player, and all-around nice person, a shining beacon of hopeful light inspiring athletic joy and re-inspiring tennis audiences. And as Elizabeth Doerr reports, Osaka is now a new TAG Heuer ambassador.