Write Ups

Unless your idea of wild night out is casually browsing GPHG nominees with a negroni in hand (don’t worry, you’re in good company), you probably won’t have heard of Lyrique. They started last year and have made 70 watches in total, so don’t feel bad. Lyrique is really less a brand at this point and more a collaborative effort, a company with 51 ‘founders’. Yes. There are almost as many founders for this brand as they’ve made watches. How? Lyrique is the name of a group who sought to source Swiss-made components around a more-reasonable value, apply...

When one of my friends who’s just dipping their toes into our world asks me to recommend a vintage watch that’s affordable, interesting, and just cool, I struggle these days. Ten years ago, I’d answer Heuer and UG. Five years ago, I’d point to 90s Cartier (hah! definitely not today) or the Dirty Dozen. With every year that passes, it seems like I lose another option to rising prices. There are a few bastions holding out though, even today. Early Omega Constellations. Devil Divers from Caravelle or Bulova. Polerouters (iffy, not for much longer). Vintage Grand Seiko....

Wei Koh & crew know what makes a beautiful watch. Nowhere has this been more evident than their three collaborations with Chopard, of which this recent scientific dial is the third entry as an LE of 25 examples. This is the best of Revolution’s eye, Chopard’s high-end Qualité Fleurier movement (more on that later), and heavy dose of vintage appeal for good measure. All of these tasty ingredients were then interpreted through a philosophy which was to avoid being an explicit dress or sport watch, but a perfectly balanced hybrid of the two categories in steel.

The names Grand Seiko and Hi-Beat harmonize together better than Lennon and McCartney. But not all are created equal. This SBGH037 hails from a (currently) largely-unsung stretch of the Japanese manufacture’s history, what I like to call the double-signed era. This nascent stage I define as after the birth of the modern Grand Seiko reference system, but before dials became signed with Grand Seiko alone at 12 in the SBGR305. This was pre-watch-instagram, but post what we traditionally call neo-vintage. It is a timeframe many enthusiasts gloss over, but that really should not be the case. For...

Blancpain once ran an ad campaign stating ‘Blancpain has never made a quartz watch and never will.’ That’s convenient, as the house had gone bankrupt well ahead of the quartz crisis and Biver only restarted production once mechanical watchmaking was trending back to strength. Jaeger Lecoultre, on the other hand, had some confused years. However, those confused years allowed Switzerland’s grande maison to claim continuous production, an ad campaign they were never boastful enough to run. Moreover, I find it rather telling that even in troubled times, JLC’s approach to quartz watchmaking was some of the most...