Tom Ford extends its collection of watches made using recycled materials with the Tom Ford Ocean Plastic N.004, a rectangular-cased series with a minimalist, number-free dial design.
The Tom Ford Ocean Plastic N.004.
Cased in a 27mm by 48.5mm semi-matte black or white recycled ‘ocean plastic’ case with a steel back, the quartz-powered series extends the brand’s eco-friendly ethos to its matching white or black strap, which is made entirely from the same recycled material as the case. The braided straps are similar to the black and white straps found on its round-cased, black-dialed Ocean Plastic watches that debuted earlier this year.
According to the company, each Swiss-made Ocean Plastic N.004 watch “permanently removes the equivalent of 35 bottles of plastic waste from the ocean, with all packaging being recyclable.”
Tom Ford says it plans to release a metal version of the watch this Fall made with 100% recycled steel.
The new model is dressier than the earlier Ocean Plastic designs, with elegant diamond cut hour and a minute hands, double-curved sapphire crystal and a crown made of either matte stainless steel with a white ocean plastic insert or a black PVD plating and black ocean plastic insert. No markers beyond the Tom Ford logo at 12 o’clock are visible.
The Settimana Raw Brass is the newest exercise in pure minimalism from Ochs und Junior. The independent watchmaker launched a silver-dialed version of the watch late in 2021, and this latest edition adds a raw brass dial to the series, which is being offered in 36mm and 40mm titanium-cased options.
The new Ochs und Junior Settimana Raw Brass, available in 36mm and 40mm sizes.
La Chaux-de-Fonds-based Ochs und Junior was founded in 2006 by renowned scholar and watchmaker Ludwig Oechslin, alongside Kurt König, managing director of Swiss watch retailer Embassy, and Beat Weinmann.
Oechslin’s seven-component module meshes with a Sellita automatic movement and is simplicity at work. It consists of the brass dial with a functional back, a gear with weekday display (point), a triple function wheel and a transmission wheel.
In addition to indicating the time in hours, minutes and seconds via the hands, the dial also indicates the days of week via a black dot that rotates clockwise between the 1 o’clock and the 7 o’clock positions. The dot rotates from 1 o’clock (Monday) to 7 o’clock (Sunday). At the beginning of the week, the dot moves quickly to cover the 8 o’clock to 12 o’clock segment, restarting the new week each Monday morning.
Ochs und Junior artisans coat the hands and the rotating dot (day indicator) with black SuperLuminova.
Oeschlin also designed the case, using two titanium parts. In keeping with the overall industrial feel to the collection, artisans leave visible machining and milling traces on the case. An Oeschlin-designed crown and buckle complete the package.
The watch is fitted with a black Cordura strap and a leather case, both handmade by designer Sabina Brägger. Price: CHF 2,215 (36mm or 40mm titanium case).
With the new Classic Traveller Meteorite, independent watchmaker Laurent Ferrier adds a celestial element to its Classic Traveller dual-time watch collection.
The new Laurent Ferrier Classic Traveller Meteorite, released as a North American limited edition (of 15).
Released as a limited edition for the North American market, the new 41mm titanium watchfeatures a dark blue dial made from genuine meteorite sourced from northern Scandinavia.
Laurent Ferrier, known as much for impeccable dials as for elegant technical displays,immerses the meteorite in a galvanic bath to obtain the blue color. The watchmaker then adds a slightly raised white silkscreen print to the dial to enhance the natural patterns of the extraterrestrial slice.
Inside the watchmaker fits the superb LF 230.02 self-winding caliber, which includes both a second time-zone setting mechanism and a date.
The beautifully decorated movement offers a pawl-fitted unidirectional micro-rotor backed by Ferrier’s own double direct-impulse natural escapement. Because the escapement sends two impulses directly to the balance with each beat, it offers high efficiency and a healthy 72-hour power reserve.
The user can quickly change the local time using the left-side pushers, moving ahead or back without changing the minute hand. The aperture at 9 o’clock shows the home time with a 24-hour display that clearly indicates daytime and nighttime.
Laurent Ferrier’s Classic Traveller Meteorite is a limited edition of fifteen pieces for the North American market. Price: $69,500.
TAG Heuer heats up its Carrera collection with the new TAG Heuer Carrera Red Dial Limited Edition, a crimson-red-dialed Carrera that echoes the watchmaker’s long-standing role as a watch of choice among professional race car drivers.
The new TAG Heuer Carrera Red Dial Limited Edition.
Seen infrequently within the full TAG Heuer collection today (with the exception of a few Formula 1 models and this stunning bronze-cased Autavia watch), red has long been a favorite accent color for the watchmaker.
A red tachymeter scale dominated many Carrera models in the 1960s. Similarly, we’ve also seen bright red hands for decades on the Heuer Monaco. More recently, a few of you might recall the 2010 remake of the stunning 1974 Heuer Silverstone.
This newest red-dialed beauty features a brushed sunray dial with nicely snailed chronograph counters that allow light to reflect and refract.
TAG Heuer has been careful to attend to the Carrera’s signature lugs, pushers, glass-box sapphire crystal and tri-compax layout. Modern touches appear with SuperLuminova coatings on the faceted hands and indexes, a clear sapphire back and the slightly larger 39mm case size.
Inside, TAG Heuer places its excellent Calibre Heuer 02, which boasts eighty hours of power reserve and a (red-tinted) column-wheel. Framing the movement is a special engraving that extols the limited nature of this new watch, which TAG Heuer is offering as a limited edition of 600 pieces. Price: $6,750.
Earlier this summer, Zenith hosted collectors and enthusiasts at its Master of Chronographs exhibition in New York. During the special three-day pop-up exhibit and watchmaking clinic, the Swiss watchmaker hosted hands-on demonstrations of chronograph movements and displayed a room full of historical Zenith chronographs.
Zenith CEO Julien Tornare.
We spoke with Zenith CEO Julien Tornare during the event to learn more about the purpose of the exhibit. His responses are below.
IW: What do you hope people will learn about Zenith when they see this exhibition?
Julien Tornare: If they know about Zenith, then they probably already know about the El Primero. But they may not know about our history before 1969. My objective is to show that starting from the end of the 19th-Century the race for precision and chronometry began. That’s how we got to the El Primero.
In the 1960s we did not wake up and suddenly decide we were going to make super precise integrated chronographs. No. This started much earlier in the minds of our watchmakers.
This exhibit is to show existence of our heritage and where we got to where we are today.
At the turn-of-the-century, the only argument for the best watches focused on the most precise. In those days precision not only meant accuracy but also security. Sometimes it was a question of life or death, for example in an airplane or in a train it was very important to be precise.
There was no digital backup or satellite at that time. That was the ultimate proof of quality. Zenith has won with so many chronometry prizes, 2,333, out of which 233 or ten percent, were won by the Caliber 135.
Today most clients aren’t going to check the super precision of their watches. During those years this was key and Zenith was the leader. In this exhibition we display this point clearly.
I wish we had more of these. This is unique. When we started the project we begin talking about the commercial versions of the Caliber 135. But the extra-specialized versions of that caliber, which were made strictly for racing contests, will never be done again.
The Zenith Caliber 135 Observatoire Limited Edition, now sold out.
We have only a limited quantity of those. We use these to get them on people’s wrists because we believe this is the best testimony to our incredible past achievements. The remaining pieces we will keep in our museum. All of the recent debut pieces are already sold out.
The Zenith Caliber 135.
We will however have one more unique piece later this year with a different material, and a different dial, also by Kari Voutilainen. Phillips will auction that piece at the end of the year.
Many people wrote to me to obtain one of the ten limited-edition pieces. I told them you still have a chance when this piece comes to auction later this year.
Have the Skyline and new Chronomaster debuts met with your sales expectations in stores?
This is a fantastic program, one of the most exciting projects we have started. It is more than a project, it is happening. But we don’t produce those watches so we have to look for them and acquire them. The main challenge is the sourcing. Most of the time we have to find their watches and go to acquire them.
Last year, we acquired between twenty-five and thirty watches and ninety percent of those sold out. So if you go to one of the five Zenith boutiques today where we have these icons, you will see a few, but many of them are empty. Sold out.
We cannot produce these, so this is a great concept but we need to acquire more of the pieces. We are fully prepared with the restoration capabilities.
The Zenith Defy A364-2 revives a 1969 Defy nicknamed the ‘bank vault” due to its rugged construction.
What are collectors looking for among the vintage Zenith pieces?
They are looking for a nice vintage watch that they know it is fully guaranteed and restored and certified by the brand. Many of them have purchased a vintage watch at auctions in the past. Or they bought them on other resale sites.
And when they receive their watch, it was not working properly. Or they realize much later that some of the parts in those watches are not genuine.
Available on the Zenith Icons site, this G581 was among the very first El Primero chronographs from 1969.
So we thought why not guarantee that you were getting something fully perfect. I’m not excited as much about the revenue from this project, but more about the concept and the message we give to our clients.
What is that message?
The message is that Zenith does commit. We will restore and repair every single watch since day one. You know there are some brands that just will not repair their own watches after twenty or thirty years. I don’t want to do that. I want to be sure that if anybody buys our watches, old or new, we can always restore them.
That is a strong message. The inspiration is there. When one of our employees is wearing an A386 from 1969, and we want to sell a new Chronomaster Original, the speech is right there. Just the presence of the vintage pieces in the stores will help sell the new pieces.
The Zenith A386 was launched in 1969 in a more classical round-case with straight lugs. This example is offered at the Zenith Icons boutique in Shanghai.
Are the late 1960s pieces currently most in demand among the vintage items?
Yes, primarily the A386, A385, A384. We are just starting to see interest in some of the vintage Defy pieces. The A277, the earlier Chronomaster Sports.
Next year we will begin the new generation of pilot watches, so I expect vintage pilot watches to also come back in demand.
The Zenith Defy 21 Chroma.
Why should a watch collector today choose a new Zenith Watch?
When you buy a Zenith you buy three things. You’ve buying a brand that has a strong heritage. And when you get to know the brand, our history is so rich. This is a very important and it speaks to our legitimacy.
The new Zenith Defy Extreme E Island X Prix.
Second, look at our authenticity. At Zenith I can tell you that all of our stories are authentic. There are other brands that are successful commercially based on good marketing. Do you want to buy a marketing story or a true story?
Finally, we express our history in a very contemporary manner. We have, for example, the big Defy Extreme but also the Caliber 135, which is super elegant and decorated by Kari Voutilainen. We can do both of these things. We have the heritage, we focus on authenticity – and we exist in the 21st-century.
The braided straps are similar to the black and white straps found on its round-cased, black-dialed Ocean Plastic watches that debuted earlier this year. 
Tom Ford says it plans to release a metal version of the watch this Fall made with 100% recycled steel.
Laurent Ferrier, known as much for impeccable dials as for elegant technical displays,
A red tachymeter scale dominated many Carrera models in the 1960s. Similarly, we’ve also seen bright red hands for decades on the Heuer Monaco. More recently, a few of you might recall the 2010 remake of the stunning 1974 Heuer Silverstone.
