I Review A Watch: The Christiaan van der Klaauw × Ace Jewelers stAriadne proves there is a baseline of good taste

Hey friends, if you’re reading this you are part of the Watch Club and get to read reviews a week in advance. This week, a watch that’s proves that first impressions shouldn’t always be trusted.

The Christiaan van der Klaauw × Ace Jewelers stAriadne proves there is a baseline of good taste

Full disclosure notice: I have no financial links with Christiaan van der Klaauw or Ace Jewelers and no money was exchanged for this review. Alon from Ace paid to ship the watch to me and back, and that's that. All the views in the review are my own.

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I had a Latin teacher in high school that I couldn’t stand. He was a mean drunk, but that wasn’t the main reason why I disliked him. My name means wolf in Croatian, and the dude just couldn’t stop screaming Lupus! every time he saw me. It was incredibly annoying. But now, with a 20 year difference, I know he fought a lot of demons so I hold no grudges. On the contrary. He told me one of the favorite stories from antiquity, one I repeat quite often, and I swear is very relevant to the watch we have today. Just bear with me for a while.

So, you’ve probably heard the Latin saying “De gustibus non disputandum est”. It’s commonly rendered in English as "There is no accounting for tastes”, but its direct and more appropriate translation would be “About taste there must not be any dispute”. The saying is said to have been first written down in a legal text in the 17th century — although earlier versions of the same sentiment have often been use in ancient Rome — and has since become a saying that is scorched into the brain of every single person on earth with poor taste. I don’t see it as much in the U.S., but here in Croatia, there isn’t a person with horrible taste that doesn’t try to justify it with this saying.

But the saying doesn’t actually mean what they think it means. At last this is the story the Latin teacher told me. I haven’t been able to verify it, but it makes so much sense, I’m sticking with it. And I thank him for telling me the story because I live by it to this day. In ancient Rome, when someone said “De gustibus non disputandum est”, they didn’t mean that everything is of equal quality and that taste is personal. In fact, the exact opposite was true. There is no dispute about taste, because a civilized citizen of Rome knew exactly what was considered good art and literature. It was the duty of a citizen to instantly recognize good taste. And any attempt to justify your lack of taste by saying that taste is personal was met with ridicule.

Every single one of us is deeply convinced that we have good taste. Some of us will go to the grave defending the 2013 Michael Bay masterpiece Pain and Gain as a spectacular movie, regardless of what other people tell us. But the fact is, there is technically only one universal benchmark for good taste and we all veer from it from time to time. And there’s no way to define what exactly good taste is. You should, ideally, feel it.

This is where my story with the Ace Jewelers x Christiaan van der Klaauw (CvdK) limited-edition stAriadne starts. I have gotten to know Alon Ben Joseph, the CEO of Ace, over the last two years of writing this newsletter as he has been the kindest of subscribers to the newsletter, always checking in, offering kind words and suggestions. A few months ago he offered to send me his personal Ace x CvdK stAriadne so I can check it out and write about it. I wore it for a few great days, sent it back, and it took me months to come up with this review. Because I actually gave the watch a lot of thought. Oh, and I should note, despite my friendship with Alon, this is 100% my unadulterated opinion on the watch.

When Alon reached out with the idea of sending me the watch, I said “sure, why not” before I even gave the watch a second look. As I got the shipping notification, I grew increasingly restless. What am I going to do with this watch, was my main question. I didn’t like it at all. It seemed a bit tacky, too large, too cumbersome. I just didn’t get it. And it was kind of awkward that I was going to have to write about a watch I don’t particularly like. The package came and the second I opened it I had a flashback to my Latin professor. We all think we have our individual tastes. But the truth is, there is a benchmark for good taste. And the Ace Jewelers x Christiaan van der Klaauw stAriadne sits firmly on that bench.

OK, let’s take a step back to meet the actors. In one corner we have Ace and Alon. Ace Jewelers was founded in 1975 by David Ben Joseph. Nowadays, it is owned and operated by his two sons, Alon and Amir. And it’s interesting to see how Ace positions itself in the watch industry. On one hand, their store in Amsterdam is a central hub for passionate Dutch collectors. On the other, they were one of the first watch dealers to embrace online sales, opening them up to the world. But Alon is also part of the Real Time Show podcast, which is THE watch education you need. The podcast team brings in every single person you should know in this industry, and get them to spill their guts. In the podcast you can hear Alon’s passion for watches, which has obviously resulted in the many, many collaborations that Ace has done over the years. There are too many to count, but they teamed up with the likes of Nomos, Ikepod, Nivada Grenchen, Christopher Ward, Frederique Constant and Elka. Among the collaborations was this stAriadne made with CvdK, which might be not just their most expensive collaboration, but also their best.

In the other corner, we have Christiaan van der Klaauw, a brand I wasn’t exactly familiar with until Alon turned me on to them. And since, I’ve only been more and more impressed. The brand was started by the man Christiaan van der Klaauw in 1974 and almost instantly he carved out a niche for himself — astronomical complications. He started off by making astronomical clocks, but quickly shrunk the complication to the wristwatch. The brand has a history of firsts — with perhaps my favorite being their latest: the inclusion of the orbits of all of the planets of the Solar System onto one dial for the first time ever — and in 2009 van der Klaauw retired. The brand was entrusted to the designer couple of Daniël and Maria Reintjes, who continued cranking out great watches. In 2022, the couple was joined by new majority owner Pim Koeslag, known for his legendary run as Technical Director at Frederique Constant where he created 30 in-house calibers in 20 years.

The stAriadne features not just the classics you will get to know from CvdK, but also Alon’s pretty inspired design. But let’s get the basics out of the way first. Because they’re not as basic as you would expect. This watch uses the same case that CvdK’s Ariadne uses. This means that you get a very classic fully round case with extremely dramatic straight lugs with shaped screw heads on their end. I was never a fan of straight lugs like these — it’s one of the main things keeping me from enjoying Breguet — but seeing it live, they are just kickass. They are thick, just rounded enough and there to do business. The dimensions are not exactly for the faint of heart — 40mm wide, 14.6mm thick and with a 50.4mm lug-to-lug. Even on my 8 inch/20cm writs this had a presence. Mostly because of the thickness, which stands quite proud from the wrist, but I loved it all the more for it. It really is a statement piece. However, I also put the watch on several smaller wrists and I can tell you that it works on everything save the smallest of arms.

The entire stainless steel case is so highly polished it was impossible to photograph. Speaking of, this is the one watch that pushed me to try and take better photos. Because these suck. On the right side of the case is an onion-shaped crown and two gadroon-shaped pushers with the silkiest of actuation feels. There are sapphire crystals on top and bottom and quite unsurprisingly, water resistance is 30 meters. About what you would expect from a watch like this. I’ll just say I fell in love with it so much I would want to wear it all the time and would kill for 100 meters of water resistance so it could take a quick dip.

Moving on to the dial, we can say hello to Ace Jewlers here. Since the shop is based in Amsterdam, they use the black and red found in the coat of arms very often. Here, the two colors are used as accents, since the base of the dial is a pretty spectacular beige color with an extremely rough texture to it. The black can be found on the sub-dial surrounds, the date wheel that’s on the periphery of the dial and the black hands, while the central chronograph hand and the half-moon pointer date indicator are done in red.

But perhaps the main thing that put me off from the watch when I first saw it in photos was the fact that it was equally as complex as it was classic. It looked old fashioned, while somewhat illegible. Both of those claims couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, when you see it live, it instantly smacks you across the face with its coolness. There are four sub-dial of which only three are functional, because at 3 o’clock you’ll find a sub-dial that's used to balance out the symmetry. This one simply contains Christiaan van der Klaauw’s name and logo, a sun with 12 claws — something that you would expect to see from a 90s grunge band.

A ton of information is packed into the other three sub-dials. At 9 o’clock, you’ll find the running seconds, along with a 24h indicator. At 12 is the 30-minute totalizer with the day and month windows which can be had in Dutch or English. You would be a fool to go with English. And at 6, we have the 12 hour totalizer and the moonphase display. Now, seeing how ornate the rest of the dial is, the moonphase is surprisingly tame. There’s a small starry sky in the bottom half of the display and a black disc above with a small lumed moon. What isn’t exactly tame is the fact that they dropped the usual Arabic numerals and replaced them with quite extravagant faceted stars. Very cool. Oh, and ask anybody who knows me and they’ll tell you I don’t like Breguet hands. On the stAriadne in pitch black? Love them!

The keen-eyed might have already noticed a familiar layout to the dial, which kind of gives away what’s inside. They call it the CVDK7758 caliber, but it’s a Valjoux 7751 automatic chronograph movement as a base, with a custom module on top for the triple calendar and moonphase. It’s genuinely impressive that all of that fits under 15mm. The movement beats at 4Hz and has a 48 hour power reserve. It’s also nicely decorated, with circular graining, Geneva stripes and blued screws, along with a rotor that’s hand-engraved by Jochen Benzinger with a guilloché pattern and a sun, CvdK’s logo. The watch comes on a black alligator leather strap with a folding clasp that features another sun-claw.

I had this watch on wrist in the middle of summer (which tells you how long I had to think about it before I could write anything) and I think that made it all that much better. Linen, thin T-shirts, shorts and canvas sneakers are about as casual a wardrobe can get, so you wouldn’t expect a watch as ornate as this to work. Oh boy, did it work. The stAriadne is the ultimate chameleon watch. Very few pieces can work so well in work attire, fully casual Sunday grilling, all the way to more formal settings. There is no place I wouldn’t wear this.

Also, I’m not a sucker for attention, especially when it comes to watches. If it’s from watch enthusiast it might strike up a conversation, but if it’s from people who just notice a shiny watch it usually boils down to one of three questions: “Is that a Rolex?”; “Oh, wow, people still wear watches that aren’t a smart watch?”; and, the crowd pleaser: “How much is that watch”… followed by the obligatory “You would have to be completely insane to spend (insert any price between €150 and €50,000) on a watch!”. But this thing just attracted everyone in a mile radius. Everyone wanted to figure out what’s happening with the dial, while the case was so shiny, kids wanted to see the chrono hand move. I have never, ever, had this much attention paid to a watch I was wearing. And every single interaction was chill. So you see what I mean when I say that there is a baseline for good taste. It’s something everyone agrees is just plain good. And this watch is good.

The Christiaan van der Klaauw × Ace Jewelers stAriadne is a very limited edition of only 50 pieces made. Price is set at €9,450 with the Dutch 21% VAT. Is it worth it? Of course, it’s in excellent taste. See more of the watch on the Ace Jewelers website.

-Vuk