Absent any history or gambit to appropriate a dead brand name, Reservoir has been able to channel its energies into inventive design, high value for money, and a well-rounded model line, which is evident in this Supercharged Classic model.
Like explaining Dada without images or relating a dream, profiling De Bethune’s signature watch is a challenge – where does one start with a subject so alien? Tim Mosso not only makes a great start, he takes us through every detail of the flagship timepiece of this ultra-creative independent boutique brand.
Rolex has been described as a blue-chip brand built on blue-collar movements. That’s true no longer: recent developments at the patent office suggest that the future of Rolex watchmaking may yield dramatic breaks with its conservative past. Atomic oscillators, advanced mechanical escapements, and new complications could remodel Rolex in the image of avant-garde independent and boutique brands as Tim Mosso reports.
The last two decades have witnessed regular Rolex engineering advances, often in plain sight and in rapid succession. Despite these developments, Rolex remains a brand defined not by movements but by continuity, model families, and the Rolex image itself. Tim Mosso thinks that the root of Rolex’s soft-pedaled reputation for movement virtuosity lies in the company’s own branding strategy. That and more in this third installment of Rolex’s history of movement technology.
From the public’s perspective, Rolex’s surge into its movement revolution began with the now anachronistic-sounding Basel 2000 World Watch, Clock, and Jewelry Show. But the evidence of a long-term engineering campaign was mounting at the patent office and in the dealers’ showrooms as this article by Tim Mosso highlights.
If you want to love Rolex, but you love mechanical movements more than you love watch brands themselves, rejoice: Tim Mosso thinks that we are living in the halcyon days of Rolex movement innovation and shares a few well-illustrated technical and movement highlights right here.
SIHH 2019 provided an instructive example to Tim Mosso of architecture’s low-key role in watch design relative to well-worn tropes. For him it was the third year in a row that parts of Geneva’s Palexpo felt like a Southern California cars-and-coffee event. But there are a few watch brands that do architecture well, and Tim takes a closer look at some of them here.