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- Grand Seiko Adds Beautiful Red Hi-Beat Mount Iwate To 44GS Collection, Namica Okami Is A Retro Futuristic Titanium Urban Sports Watch And Dior Attempts To Break Out Of Fashion Watches
Grand Seiko Adds Beautiful Red Hi-Beat Mount Iwate To 44GS Collection, Namica Okami Is A Retro Futuristic Titanium Urban Sports Watch And Dior Attempts To Break Out Of Fashion Watches
While the GS is nice, the star today is the Namica - a great looking watch
It's About Time
February 13, 2024
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Wow, what a slow watch day. I had to look under every single forgotten rock to see a piece of news. It feels like we’re in the middle of August and not February. The good news is that there is a very cool watch coming Thursday. Until then, bear with me.
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In this issue:
Grand Seiko Adds The ‘Sunrise at Mount Iwate’ SBGH345G To The Hi-Beat 44GS Collection
The Namica Okami Is A Retro Futuristic Titanium Urban Sports Watch That Really Stands Out From The Rest
Dior Revamps The Chiffre Rouge Watch Collection In An Attempt To Break Out From Fashion Watches
Raúl Pagès Wins the First-Ever Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives
Today’s reading time: 6 minutes and 22 seconds
👂What’s new
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Last week was a huge week for Grand Seiko and Seiko. At the less pricier tier of the two brands, they brought back the legendary Rally Divers and introduced a new Studio Ghibli Presage homage while the traditionally higher end brand, Grand Seiko, saw the introduction of a new Spring Drive Pink Snowflake, a white snowflake quartz and a duo of high frequency 62GS watches. But hey, they’re not done yet, as they just announced a third hi-beat model, the Sunrise at Mount Iwate SBGH345G.
While it has the same hi-beat movement that we saw last week with the two beautiful Heritage 62GS Sakura-Kakushi SBGH341 and Sakura-Wakaba SBGH343, this one has a different case, as it comes in the 44GS line, and a brand new beautiful - nature inspired - red dial. The case measures 40mm wide, a relatively thick 13.3mm and with a lug-to-lug of 46.2mm. It is made out of Grand Seiko’s ‘ever-brilliant’ steel, which is just a corrosion resistant steel alloy. Being part of the 44GS design, it has sharp facets and Zaratsu polishing.
The dial, as you would expect, is nature inspired. It’s always fun to see what GS can come up with in terms of description. According to them, that dial takes “inspiration from Mt. Iwate bathing in the sun’s red morning light, the dial expresses the rays falling on the majestic peak, which can be seen from the Grand Seiko Studio Shizukuishi, the home of Grand Seiko mechanical watchmaking”. Fun. What it really is a deep and beautiful red color with a sunray brushed pattern etched very deep, giving it a flecked apperance.
Inside is the in-house calibre 9S85. It’s a high frequency beater which operates at 36,000vph or 5Hz and has a claimed accuracy of +5 to -3 seconds/day. It also offers a 55-hour power reserve, features 37 jewels, and is resistant to magnetic fields of up to 4,800 A/m. As far as decoration is concerned, you get large stripes, perlage and polished steel components. The watch comes on a steel bracelet with a folding clasp.
The Sunrise at Mount Iwate SBGH345G will go on sale in March and it’s priced at $6,900. See more on the Grand Seiko website.
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One of the greatest advantages of a microbrand is that you can pretty much do whatever you want. While these brands were very limited in what their suppliers could do ten years ago and most had to settle with cases, dials and handsets chosen from catalogues. Now, however, we live in a different world - suppliers can produce unique cases and components even for the smallest of batches, allowing microbrands to experiment with whatever they want, all the while keeping prices low.
One such microbrand is Namica, a Tokyo-based watch brand run by a husband-wife team. Their first watch, the Shirahama held the shape of a more traditional diver but broke your mind with its dial. It came in white, blue or pink, but with the most matte texture you could ever imagine, making it look unreal in pictures. People agreed these watches looked great as they sold out quickly. Now, it’s time for their sophomore attempt and it looks to be another home run, at least according to the reactions to their crowdfunding campaign.
The new watch is called the Okami, meaning wolf in Japanese, and it’s a fantastic looking retro futuristic, extremely geometric and angled, sports watch with a fair price. The case has an almost square look with very massive lugs, measuring 39mm wide, 10.7mm thick and with a 47mm lug-to-lug. The watch is made out of Grade 2 titanium with two case colorways - grey and black. The grey is covered with A.T. Shield to protect it from scratches, while the black version has a DLC coating which is also protective. On top is a sapphire crystal and the watch is water resistant to 100 meters.
The dial reflects the shape of the roughly brushed bezel, features prominent applied hour markers, simple hands and comes in three dial setups, which in combination with two case colorways, makes up six possible outcomes. First up is the Neo Tokyo, which comes in a purple color with an intense dégradé to black on the outsides and a vertical brushed finish. Then there’s the Turbo Blue with a beautiful matte blue reminiscent of the old Shirahama. Lastly, there’s the Kurayami, meaning darkness in Japanese, which has a vertically brushed dial, blacked-out hands and indices, filled with black Super-LumiNova compared to the white in the other two setups.
Inside is the Miyota 9039 movement, which beats at 28,800vph and has a 42-hour power reserve. You can see the movement, despite it not being much of a looker, through the sapphire window on the case back. The watch comes on a custom-made FKM rubber strap, but Okami has set a stretch goal on their crowdfunding campaign, which has been met, to include an option of a titanium bracelet with on-the-fly micro-adjustments.
The crowdfunding campaign started on February 6th and is already fully funded. The Super Early Bird pieces which were priced at $429 are already gone, but you can get the Early Bird for $449, after those are gone you will still be able to get the kickstarter price of $469 before it retails for the full price of $630. Sounds like a great deal for a fantastic looking watch. See more on the Okami website.
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Brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Gucci have done something that is incredibly hard to do - they escaped the bottomless pit of fashion watches. These are usually cheaply mass-made Chinese watches that licence the name of fashion brands like Hugo Boss and Michael Kors and sell for a 500x markup. The three mentioned brands worked hard to distance themselves form this trend and created some very interesting watches that can compete with pieces from reputable watch brands. Now, Dior is attempting to do the same - take watchmaking more seriously. And they are doing so by revamping their 20 year old collection called Chiffre Rouge.
While it’s a daunting task, Dior actually has one foot in the door already - they have been making watches since 1975 and have a development and manufacturing center in La Chaux-de-Fonds called Les Ateliers Horlogers Dior SA. Sure, they make mostly ladies watches with very few ventures into haute horlogerie, this might change soon.
The Chiffre Rouge is supposed to be a sporty watch that takes on a rugged black case that will instantly stand out with a red colored long crown at 4 o’clock on the time only piece. Speaking of versions, there are five of them right now, with three more coming later in the year. There’s the matte black time only and chronograph, two tourbillons and a limited edition with a rainbow of jewels.
The time only watch comes in at 38mm wide and it’s powered by the Dior CD.002, which is basically the Sellita SW300 automatic movement. It beats at 28,800vph and has a power reserve of 42 hours. The dial is made of black brass with a Cannage motif and red details in the seconds hand and around the date window. The chrono and tourbillon models are a bit larger at 41mm and much more interesting in terms of movement. The chronograph uses the El Primero 400 movements from Dior’s LVMH sister brand Zenith which beats at 5Hz.
For its tourbillons, Dior called on another LVMH stablemate, La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. It took the watchmaker more than a year to develop the CD.003 automatic movement with its flying tourbillon, as the Chiffre Rouge design called for the crown to be placed at 4 o’clock, rather than the usual 3 o’clock.
The watches go on sale this month, with three being limited editions - differentiated from regular production by the solid rose gold bumper on the right side of the case. The 38mm black three-hand will have a run of 300 and only 20 pieces of each 41mm tourbillon will be made, one in black and rose gold, the other with a bezel set with a rainbow of sapphires.
Prices will range from €7,800 for the 38mm three-hand watch to €13,500 for the 41mm chronograph, up to six figures for the limited edition tourbillons. See more on the Dior website.
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In November 2022, Louis Vouitton announced they will be awarding the Watch Prize for Independent Creatives, a prize that is meant to celebrate the “creative talent and audacity of the independent watchmaking industry, to support and encourage artisans and entrepreneurs, and accompany future generations”. And now, in February of 2024 we have our first winner. Beating out the heavy hitting finalists made up of Simon Brette, John-Mikaël Flaux, Petermann Bédat and Andreas Strehler, the prize went to Raúl Pagès for his RP1 – Régulateur à détente.
Raúl Pagès has been an independent watchmaker since 2012 and has drawn a lot of inspiration from his time working as a restorer. His RP1 – Régulateur à détente is made out of stainless steel, manually wound and features a caliber fitted with a pivoted detent escapement. The detent escapement has long been associated with precision timekeeping, dating to the days of marine chronometers, but is incredibly difficult to implement in a wristwatch due to it being susceptive to shocks. Over three years, Pagès developed a version of a caliber with an innovative safety roller cam to protect the escapement from impact. Very cool.
While the front of the watch is less interesting here, it’s none the less beautiful. It is a regulator-type display where the hour, minutes, and seconds are all separated, each dominating a designated dial of its own, all very simple and legible.
As the winner, Pagès is awarded a cash prize of €150,000 EUR alongside a one-year mentorship at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually likewatches
The Big Sur’s two-part dial is so arresting. You don’t get a more literal representation of a highway than an asphalt black background with double yellow stripes. I love how the stripes darken as they approach the dial’s edge, creating the impressions of both wear and distance. Other tasty details include the Lōcī’s shield logo on the yellow second hand’s counterweight, a black date at 6 o’clock that does not interfere with that hour’s marker, and the fact that they rendered “Pacific Coast Highway” in the same typeface as a California road sign. It may just be my own association, but I can’t help thinking of posted speed limits when I read the 60-minute/second markers printed in increments of five
⏲️Wait a minute
A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting
The Super Bowl was this weekend. While this game had it’s ups and downs, the game the Miami Dolphins played against the Minnesota Vikings at Super Bowl VIII was not as riveting. In fact, Hunter S. Thompson called it “one of the dullest and most predictable football games I’ve ever had to sit through, on TV or anywhere else," before he went on a tirade about his drinking collecting gambling debts, comparing football to Nixonianism and Al Davis to Sonny Barger. It’s Thompson near the top of his game with “Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl” for Rolling Stone magazine.
Huffington Post is not really known for their in-depth reporting. That’s not to say they’re not a good outlet, they sure do some great writing, but I rarely find good long-form on there. Well, they hit it out of the park with this comprehensive pice on why we might be living in the golden age of white collar crime. Really interesting read.
According to his memoirs, Eugène-François Vidocq escaped from more than twenty prisons (sometimes dressed as a nun). Working on the other side of the law, he apprehended some 4000 criminals with a team of plainclothes agents. He founded the first criminal investigation bureau — staffed mainly with convicts — and, when he was later fired, the first private detective agency. He was one the fathers of modern criminology and had a rap sheet longer than his very tall tales. Who was Vidocq?
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
Atelier Wen really knows how to talk to their many, many fan. Their social networks are on point, they produce fantastic content for their Journal. And now they expanded into making videos. But not just regular promotional videos on YouTube. This is a full-blown short documentary on their many suppliers in China. Worth a watch.
💵Pre-loved precision
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