ROCK SOLID
The Best Dress Watches of Fall 2015
“These are the watches we wish our grandfathers had left us.”
If you ask most analysts, the Apple Watch has pushed the mechanical watch one step closer to extinction. In fact, watch sales dropped 14 percent in June of this year. But what analysts don’t ment ion is that the majority of the drop-off was in the category of inexpensive, utilitarian timepieces — you know, the watches people buy at the grocery store. One category that is, in fact, experiencing not only a revival, but a downright boom, is the gentleman’s mechanical dress watch.
Here we see thin cases, typically of gold or platinum, with slim profiles and elegant complications. These are the watches we wish our grandfathers had left us, and aspire to leave to our own kids. The manufacturers that we tend to see excelling here in both design execution and sales are Rolex, which has revived its once-lagging Cellini collection, Patek and Breguet, which continue building upon their everlasting histories of distinction, and Omega and IWC, which have pushed upmarket to create some truly lovely pieces. But what should be even more exciting to the legacy-conscious horologist is that we can now add F.P Journe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Hermès to this elite list.
The most surprising standout might be the watch that bears a crown on its dial. A Rolex Cellini has never adorned the wrist of a macho racer in an iconic film. It has not, like its Professional brethren, benefited from countless free plugs from sports stars, musicians, business tycoons, and other big names. In fact, the Cellini was all but forgotten within the watch world until 2014. That year, we saw an entirely new collection that stripped the Cellini of the shapelessness of years past. In one fell swoop, Rolex became the manufacturer of not only cool watches, but fine ones.
Dress watches have long been standard-issue in French-speaking countries, so it should come as no surprise that the most handsome watch of 2015 comes from Paris-based Hermès.
If you ask most analysts, the Apple Watch has pushed the mechanical watch one step closer to extinction. In fact, watch sales dropped 14 percent in June of this year. But what analysts don’t mention is that the majority of the drop-off was in the category of inexpensive, utilitarian timepieces — you know, the watches people buy at the grocery store. One category that is, in fact, experiencing not only a revival, but a downright boom, is the gentleman’s mechanical dress watch.
Here we see thin cases, typically of gold or platinum, with slim profiles and elegant complications. These are the watches we wish our grandfathers had left us, and aspire to leave to our own kids. The manufacturers that we tend to see excelling here in both design execution and sales are Rolex, which has revived its once-lagging Cellini collection, Patek and Breguet, which continue building upon their everlasting histories of distinction, and Omega and IWC, which have pushed upmarket to create some truly lovely pieces. But what should be even more exciting to the legacy-conscious horologist is that we can now add F.P. Journe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Hermès to this elite list.
The most surprising standout might be the watch that bears a crown on its dial. A Rolex Cellini has never adorned the wrist of a macho racer in an iconic film. It has not, like its Professional brethren, benefited from countless free plugs from sports stars, musicians, business tycoons, and other big names. In fact, the Cellini was all but forgotten within the watch world until 2014. That year, we saw an entirely new collection that stripped the Cellini of the shapelessness of years past. In one fell swoop, Rolex became the manufacturer of not only cool watches, but fine ones.
Dress watches have long been standard-issue in French-speaking countries, so it should come as no surprise that the most handsome watch of 2015 comes from Paris-based Hermès. Not content to merely be the finest leather-goods maker in the world, Hermès is now a fully integrated in-house watch manufacturer. The Perpetual Calendar is an Art Deco-inspired knockout down to its custom-designed Arabic font.
