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- Farer Goes Very Hot Pink On a 36mm GMT, Straum Makes Fantastic Dials, Chanel Is Serious About Watches and Industry Breaks All Records
Farer Goes Very Hot Pink On a 36mm GMT, Straum Makes Fantastic Dials, Chanel Is Serious About Watches and Industry Breaks All Records
A very pinky or sparkly blue 36mm GMT just might be the perfect summer watch
Vuk Radic
April 07, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
Hey friends, it’s the Friday edition of It’s About Time. You should be seeing some changes on Monday, if all goes to plan. In the meantime, don’t forget you have until Sunday midnight CET to enter our giveaway for the Tissot PRX so throw in you last minute referrals.
In this issue:
Fratello pairs up with Straum
Farer has a beautiful pink watch
Chanel makes serious watches
The industry breaks all records
And… don’t miss out on your last chance to win a Tiffany PRX
Today’s reading time: 7 minutes and 3 seconds
This is the last week to enter our giveaway. We are giving away TWO of this year’s hottest watches, The Tiffany Tissot PRX Powermatic 80
All you have to do is click the button below and have five of your friends subscribe. Both you and one of your friends will be eligible to win one of the watches
👂What’s new
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The Norwegian microbrand Straum makes some nice watches. The cases are robust, movements are solid, price is accessible, the overall design is understated but what truly pops are the dials - striking whites, deep blues, fantastic greens with textures not often seen on watches of this price range. Now Straum has teamed up with watch blog Fratello Watches to create the time limited Fratello x Straum Jan Mayen Limited Edition with a fantastically red dial.
The Jan Mayen is an entirely new collection for Straum and can be seen as a refinement of the successful Opphav collection. It is a compact 39mm wide, with a height of 11.3mm. The finishing is a mix of straight and circular brushing and polished details and water-resistance is rated at 100m.
The name comes from the volcanic Jan Mayen Island off the coast of Norway, and the result is pretty dramatic with a lava-red fumé effect, while the ridged pattern is inspired by the insides of an active volcano. The applied markers are polished, with luminous inserts, as are the central hour, minute and seconds hands.
The watch is powered by the La Joux-Perret G101 automatic movement, with hacking seconds and a 70 hour power reserve. It comes on an integrated stainless steel bracelet.
The pre-order window starts on April 13th at 4:00 PM CEST and ends on April 20th at 4:00 PM CEST. Deliveries are supposed to happen in October and the price is set at EUR 1,600 without taxes.
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Let’s say it one more time. What are the trends this year? Color, GMT and going smaller in size, right? And who loves capitalizing on trends? Hello there Farer! The controversial British brand is introducing their new Farer Lander 36mm GMT in three colors.
The Lander IV is just a downsized version of the flagship Farer GMT. It has the same sea green dial with flashes of orange and red in the seconds and GMT hands. The real action is in the other pair of new pieces. The new Kano and Sea Coast models are a reference to Richard Lander, a British explorer whose name the collection is using, and his book “The Journal of Richard Lander from Kano to the Sea Coast”.
The Kano dial imitates the pink rock of Dala Hill in the Nigerian city of Kano. In this case, the seconds and GMT hands are in fuchsia and blue, toning down the otherwise dominating pink. You might not like Farer however much you want, but this hot pink could just be the summer watch of the year.
With the Sea Coast, there’s nothing different, other than the dial color - a beautiful spearmint sunburst, offset by the red and blue on the GMT and seconds hands.
All three Farer Lander 36mm GMT’s are equipped with the Sellita SW330-2, with 100m of water resistance. All three also share the same price - £1,225.
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While it would be completely reasonable to consider Chanel watches to be just a fashion house cashgrab that outsources watch production to China and slaps their name on sub $30 watches that they charge $150-200 later. But you would be surprised. Chanel only introduced its first watch for men in 2016 with the Monsier de Chanel which marked two firsts: it was concieved for men and had an in-house caliber.
Seven years later, Chanel is introducing the Chanel Monsieur Tourbillon Meteorite, which is so far from just a fashion brand - it has a black ceramic case, a meteorite dial and a flying tourbillon, all powered by a manufacture movement.
The very round watch measures 42mm, with circular shapes pervadin almost every detail on the dial and movement. The sliver of grey meteorite dial features a series of cut-out areas which are round and show off the gear train and give fleeting views of the tourbillon escapement. Two black intersecting rings forming an inverted figure-eight dominate the scenery; the larger ring is dedicated to the hours and minutes, while the smaller one is for the seconds on the tourbillon
The calibre of the Chanel Monsieur Tourbillon is based on the movement that was already used in the classic version with jumping hour, which was developed with the help of indie watchmaker Romain Gauthier. The Calibre 5.1 has been modified with a flying tourbillon, and a new display has been applied with classic hours and minutes.
The Chanel Monsieur Tourbillon Meteorite is a limited edition of 55 pieces. Price is upon request.
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Since 2015 Reservoir has been creating watches that draw inspiration from vintage gauges and instruments. Their collections rely on themes (cars, planes, boats) and are often limited editions. Now they are coming out with their second series of watches inspired by cockpit instruments of vintage aircrafts - The Black Sparrow Collection, named after Eugene Bullard, one of the first African American combat pilots, who flew for France in WWI and earned the nickname - Black Sparrow.
There’s three models - you have a choice of a stainless case with a satin finish or a brushed stainless case with black PVD coating. The black dial can be combined with both cases, and the sand-colored dial comes only in the satin finished case. Speaking of the case, it’s 42mm, with a non-rotating fluted bezel.
All three references have Reservoir’s signature retrograde minutes hand; this time, it is cathedral-style and with the company logo. The numerals to indicate the minutes alternate between large luminescent art-nouveau-inspired and same-style hardly visible, in small black print. The hour display is at 6 o’clock. The watch uses their new RSV-240 movement, based on the La Joux-Perret G100 base with a patented proprietary module.
You can have it on a black or brown Barénia leather strap with white stitching. An additional leather NATO strap with quick-release spring bars for easy changing will also be included. The new watches are available to pre-order and will be delivered in the third quarter of 2023. The price is EUR 3,800.
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Just as Watches & Wonders wound down, Morgan Stanely released their annual report on the luxury watch industry and the watch blog SJX read through the entire thing to bring you the highlights. I’ll bring you the highlights of highlight, but make sure to go read the whole article, there’s some crazy stats in there.
The entire industry broke records in 2022, ending the year with CHF23.7 billion in exports, with a year-on-year growth of 11.6%. The growth is even more impressive compared to the figure for 2019, the last year before Covid. Twenty twenty-two was up 15.5% over 2019, meaning an additional CHF3.2 billion of watch exports.
The “big four” – Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, and Richard Mille – continued to outperform the broader industry and together captured a consolidated market share of 41.7%, up from 36.7% in 2019. The biggest winner in this group was AP, which achieved 27% growth in revenue, resulting in annual sales passing the CHF2 billon threshold for the first time.
Despite these record numbers, exports have fallen drastically - the industry exported only 15.8 million watches in 2022, representing an increase of just 49,000 units or 0.3% growth over 2021, whereas in 2000 Switzerland was still exporting 30 million watches per year. In other words, the number of Swiss watches exported has declined almost 50% over the last 23 years.
What’s even worse is the fact that the MoonSwatch made up 950,000 exported units un 2022. That’s a lot of MoonSwatches sold. That watch helped the Swatch Group regained its number-one position as the main contributor of volume to the Swiss watch industry, with the group selling an estimated 4.9 million last year. However, the Swatch Group blamed lockdowns in China for an estimated shortfall of CHF700 million in revenue compared to a year earlier.
There’s a lot of other interesting things happening in the industry - Tissot lost their position in the list of brands, while Breitling and Vacheron Constantin are newcomers to the top ten. Rolex outperformed the market and the next milestone for them will be CHF10 billon in annual revenue, which will put the brand on par with über-brands such as Gucci, which had sales of €10.5 billion in 2022. But unlike other brands in the category, Rolex sells just one product.
The report believes that 2023. should still be a record year, albeit with more modest growth in value of 3-4% and in a polarised market, with five brands accounting for 50% of sales, with a few niche, independent brands (that account for under 1% of total exports) that will continue to do very well.
Go read the whole thing to get all the details from the Morgan Stanley report.
🫳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 like
Launched in 2005 and named after its home village in Akita Prefecture, Minase offers handmade timepieces imbued with Japanese traditions. The independent brand demonstrates its horological pinnacle with the Masterpiece collection of highly technical artisan-crafted dials and cases. One of the Masterpiece options is the Akita Silver Filigree. Crafted in this time-honored native technique, here is an example of a bespoke dial framed within Minase’s signature Five Windows case.
⏲️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
We’re keeping it light for the weekend - a lot of people are celebrating Easter on Sunday and that means family meals. A lot of American families have cookie jars. Have you ever thought about cookie jars? Someone has, and how the cookie jar is the epitome of American kitsch
Dungeons and Dragons has been around for years. You might be surprised that they are not making billions of dollars. But they will try to now, without angering their very passionate fans.
Walter Murch is one of the best film editors of our time. Here, he writes a letter to his grandkids about oxygen, evolution, and our planet’s fate. Read it.
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
I went down a Goya rabbit-hole this week, not really sure where the interest came from. I’ll save you hours if you want to do the same - just watch this video. Even if you’re not planing on going down a Goya rabbit-hole, use the weekend to watch this expertly produced YouTube video on Goya’s Black Paintings. It is very much worth it.
💵Pre-loved precision
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