With the 2020/2021 Olympic Games now in the (record) books, Nick Gould and Elizabeth Doerr can look back on a record number of watch spots for one event – but they certainly didn’t flag up every single watch they noticed. Here Elizabeth shares a listing of ten athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games who wore watches while competing by Omega, the official sponsor of the Olympic Games.
When Nancy Olson first saw the Breguet Reine de Naples at Baselworld many years ago, she remembers being taken by its absolute gorgeousness. It was so much more than a jewelry watch and it seemed to be made just for her wrist. Many years and many “try-ons” later, the Reine de Naples is Breguet’s flagship ladies collection, the most recent of which is the Reine de Naples 8938, which is available in two beautifully diamond-set versions.
The Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde Skelet-One Tourbillon is a more complicated version of the original Grande Seconde Skelet-One in which an inverted dial and streamlined skeleton architecture made for an impressive watch. This even more impressive version has also spawned a one-off piece for the 2021 Only Watch charity auction beautified by artistic plique-à-jour enamel.
One of the inconveniences associated with COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings was that GaryG’s local watch gang hadn’t been meeting in person so he wasn’t able to borrow interesting watches to shoot. However, just prior to the lockdown in California he did pick up an intriguing piece from a pal: the Anniversary by Vianney Halter.
In 2021, Patek Philippe is once again drawing attention to the decorative arts that help make its watches so exceptional, further staking claim in the preservation of many of the traditional skills and techniques that date to the manufacture’s roots. And now six new versions of familiar watch models have been presented to highlight Patek Philippe’s Rare Handcrafts.
Watch enthusiasts traveling into Switzerland, Germany, Japan, China, and the United States are targets of opportunity for border customs police. Here Chris Malburg shows how to avoid paying more in duties and taxes than necessary while avoiding the embarrassment of being suspected of smuggling legitimately purchased watches.
Big brands are now making beautiful, reliable, and relatively accurate “traditional” mechanical watches, but the handcrafted work many of us value is disappearing. Highly skilled watchmakers and artisans are rare and expensive: there just aren’t enough of them available to churn out the large quantity of nice watches now being sold. And why bother when nobody seems to have noticed?
Tim Mosso of YouTube and Watchbox fame recently hosted Elizabeth Doerr again on his podcast, “Talking Time With Tim” (episode 21). They discuss some of their favorite new watch releases so far in 2021, the democratization of independent watch brands and their products, and the brilliance of one their mutually favorite designers, Alain Silberstein. Give it a listen!
The Watches TV founder Marc André Deschoux shares his thoughts on celebrity watch brand ambassadors, starting with Tudor and David Beckham, which he personally felt was counterproductive: so much so that the announcement pushed him to not make a Tudor purchase he was leaning toward.
The new UR-100V P.02 brings together three parties: in addition to Urwerk and Collective, the project will benefit New York’s Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. And for GaryG it’s an example of combining concepts that at first glance seem contradictory: collaboration and exclusivity. In space.