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Inside Our Dream Watch Designs

Published on Mon, 17 Jan 2022 13:00:00 +0000

James is joined by Nora, Cole, and Danny to chat over the edit team's recent attempt at being watch designers. From solid gold Explorers to funky Cartier and glowing Lange, this is the inside conversation about the watches we wish existed.

Synopsis

In this hostful episode of the Hodinkee podcast, James Stacy is joined by colleagues Cole Pennington, Danny Milton, and Nora Taylor to discuss a recent article where Hodinkee editors designed their dream watches. Each editor conceptualized a watch they'd love to see exist, which James then rendered in Photoshop. The team walks through each creation, explaining the design choices and modifications to existing models.

The watches discussed include Cole's A. Lange & Söhne Homage to Walter Lange with a transparent lumen dial, Davey's 36mm yellow gold Bulgari Octofinissimo, Nora's Cartier Tank Américaine on a full gold cuff bracelet, Logan's Tag Heuer Autavia GMT recreation, James's 39mm Pelagos GMT concept, Danny's solid gold Explorer, Jack's steel Cartier Tank à Guichet, John's Grand Seiko mechanical dress chronograph, and Trevor's Nomos Club with a black and navy dial. The conversation reveals the thinking behind each design, from Cole's desire to showcase Lange's deadbeat seconds complication through transparency, to Danny's belief that Rolex will eventually make a solid gold Explorer.

The episode concludes with discussion of Hodinkee's new Weekend Edition format, where editors curate themed collections of classic Hodinkee content each weekend. The hosts encourage listeners to share their own dream watch ideas in the comments, with plans to select and render reader submissions in future installments. Throughout, the conversation balances technical watchmaking knowledge with accessible enthusiasm, demonstrating both the team's expertise and their genuine passion for horology.

Transcript

Speaker
James Stacy Hey, it's me, James Stacy, and this week we have a hostful episode that digs into the nitty-gritty of a fun, fanciful, and entirely hypothetical post we ran last week that seems to have resonated with a lot of the Hodenky audience. To dig into our hopes and dreams, at least when it comes to watches, I've got a qualified cast of beloved co-workers collected on Zoom. So let's not waste any time as we get into our dream watches for 2022. Alright, Nora Danny Cole, welcome back to the show. I think this is gonna be a fun one. You all good? Well, we go. Doing great. Oh, yeah. New year. New year, new show, second of the year, first of uh what I would like to call a hostful show. If any of you used to listen to uh the nerdist podcast. You know, we did we had a fantastic interview with Daniel Miller last week. Daniel was a champ for coming on the show. It was super fun. This week I wanted to do something a little bit more internal, a little bit more, uh I've I've I you know I'm tempted to say naval gazy, but I want to look at a post that we made, and it's a visual post, so this is one where you're really gonna have to uh maybe not listen to it in your car unless you've already looked at the post. But uh this is going up on a Monday and on the the Tuesday preceding. So on uh January 11th, we published uh a story which is kind of uh a visual rendering of uh a handful of the edit teams kind of like dream watches. So it I don't even think it's like a one dream watch scenario, it's just a dream watch. Everybody picked something they thought they would love to see that doesn't exist in the world right now. And the idea was we we would attempt to build these in Photoshop and then publish a group story, uh, which we did. It's called We Asked Our Editors to Tell us about their ideal watch. Each one has like a paragraph or two kind of explaining, or if you're Cole and I, like five or six paragraphs, explaining why we want this watch, what we changed versus maybe what's already on the market, etc. For me, this is one of my favorite parts of watch enthusiasm. For years I've kind of slowly refined my mediocre Photoshop skills to be able to make watches by stealing pieces of other watches and kind of pacing them all together. Like I said, we've got Nora who really picked something I wouldn't have thought of or or even considered from a brand that we had some selections from and it's exciting. Uh Danny picked something that I think you know, like Danny, you know that thing where they they say, like, if you leave uh an and please this I'll get to my final point before you get offended, but you know, they say like if you leave monkeys in a room with a typewriter long enough, they'll write Shakespeare. I think that if you just left Rolex on autopilot long enough they would make the watch that you came up with. Like if you just like took everyone out of the out of the leadership and they just kind of like let it evolve naturally from the primordial ooze of current day Switzerland, you'd eventually get this watch. And then Cole finally, Cole saw that I was doing the Photoshop and he's like, I'm just gonna make James' day as hard as possible. And uh and he gave me a watch with a transparent dial. That's right. Let's dig into it. Um, I I think actually let's start with Coles. Uh we we did nine in total and and I think all of them are pretty fun. But uh Coles is at the top of the story, so let's start there. Cole, how about you tell give give us the elevator pitch? What why does this watch need to exist and what is it
Cole Pennington ? Okay. So it is the homage to Walter Longa, which is a langa, of course. It normally came in white gold, pink gold, yellow gold, with a you know, a a standard dial. It almost looks like the 1815 with a deadbeat seconds complication and a chrono pusher. So chrono pusher and then a center mounted seconds hand is what you're getting with the Omash Waltralon. So So one of my favorite things is the the Lumen series that Longa does. I think it's wild and out there. I like anything that's counterculture within a relatively restricted world. And I love the the homage to Walter Lange. And I thought, you know, why not? And actually I I truly think this is again something that Langa should make. Would Langa ever make this? I don't know for sure. Only because it's already a deep cut, right? The homage to Walter Longa is already a super deep cut watch to begin with. So then doing a lumen is like, okay, that's a little bit too much. But as we know, a negative times a negative makes a positive, right? So that's just science. That's just exactly it's just math and science. So the philosophy behind this one is all right, what does a deadbeat seconds complication look like? Well, now you have the chance to see it, A. You have some of Longa's incredible lumen dial work, which is you know smoky, translucent black dial. And I kind of read it, you know, I am a tool watch guy at heart, like you, James. Like at the end of the day, it I of course would gravitate towards that more so, but I use this as an opportunity to, you know, think in terms of high horology or or an area a little bit outside my comfort zone. So that's kind of the spiel.. That's the elevator It's a long elevator pitch.
James Stacy So what we have is uh the standard case Walter Long, it's probably white gold. Yep. Normally it's white gold. In this scenario. And you know, if you know the Walter Long, it's kind of like they took the 1815 as far as they could in terms of tech and subtlety, but we we gave the subdial that full loom treatment, the whole minute track, all the numerals, and then I painted in some kind of very thin, wouldn't even be functional in real life loom on the hands. We fretted back and forth on what to do. So if you have to think about these things kind of visually and then think about them vertically. So you're stacking things on top of each other to make an image that looks flat when you kind of look down on it. It's the easiest way to think about these. And with a transparent dial, you have to show something behind the dial. And of course, it's not like you can just Google what the dial side of a Walter Longa movement looks like. Yeah. Or even most any longa movement. So it took me a while, and I want to say the movement plate that's in there is from a Roger Dubuis. Interesting. Which is apparently they do circular graining on the dial sides of their movements. Which if you look at some of the other lumens that are in the market, you'll see that finishing kind of shine through on various parts. Normally they're more complicated watches than this, so I I think it worked out in in the end. It's certainly a fun-looking watch. I love the idea of a luminous longa. Yeah. I didn'
Cole Pennington t even know that bit about Roger Blue. So that that's some some great handiwork by you, James. Also thinking about the circular finishing and so forth. So thank goodness for Google. Ye
Danny Milton ah, great, great job. Cole, I'm curious because we all knew before we did this that James was going to be doing the Photoshop work for these watches. When you were type and I looked at the spreadsheet where we all put our ideas in and I read yours, did when you were typing it in, were you thinking about what James was going to have to do? Like were you laughing a little bit, or were you just no, this is what I want. I'm like, this is what I want, and James is gonna have to make
Cole Pennington it. You know what? I I I don't know if I was around during the inception of this story. Uh like oh,, James will be volunteering to do the the Photoshop work. So actually I didn't know that. And I did get a message from him shortly after I put my, you know, entry in the spreadsheet and he's like, what the hell, man? What do you what are you But then we decided, I mean James who who's gonna do it other than James, right? Like he can do it and he's also not the kind of guy to uh like say like no pick something else. Like he'll he'll try. And the first attempt we did, we used the main plate, but the backside underneath the dial. And it did look kind of weird. But yeah. Eventually we kept iterating, or James kept iterating and we got there. So no, I had no idea. I thought it was more like you just like, oh, what's your dream watch kind of thing? So I'm I my my ap
Nora Taylor ologies, James. When you finally saw it, did anything surprise you about it? How was it different from what was in your mind's eye? It actu
Cole Pennington ally wasn't different at all. That's the crazy thing. This is exactly what I would would do. So it's perfect. Dang,
James Stacy James. I mean with this one I have to be very specific. Credit Ian Cox, our exceedingly talented designer that works for Hodinky. He helped me do the whole dial transparency thing. And when I called him, I was like, Hey man, I got like a low level question for you. And I thought he would be like, use this tool, set it to like this tolerance and see what happens. It was like an hour-long phone call before we had kind because it's a we start with a black dial, so you want to take everything that's not black, but you want to do it with a tolerance that doesn't like end up blurry or fuzzy when you then recolor it. So that that took a little bit of time and that's beyond my Photoshop skills. That's not carefully cutting and pasting things and putting them in a certain order. That's uh a little bit more advanced compository. So yeah big thanks to Ian for helping on that one. It made a big difference. I know I would not have been able to do this at anywhere near this level uh without his help. So all's well that ends well. Oh, you need a team sometimes, right? So let's pick uh let's let's uh uh move on to one of the others here. Uh I think Davey had a real winner uh from the list. Which is it's one of those ones where like it's it's it's a bit like Danny's where it's a little bit obvious, but it's also like it's just it feels like something that should exist. Like once once I did and this is easy one. This is a color swap which was simple, but Davey wanted a 36 millimeter yellow gold octofenisimo. And the nice thing about the octo is I think m the majority of them are 40 until they get into the more complicated space. So they're 40 millimeters. And if you've ever worn one, they fit like a cuff. You know, they do fit big for 40. Super thin, really easy to wear, goes under up any cuff or whatever, but they fit like a big bangle, big and flat, right? And I think thirty-six would really change that balance, and that's what Davey was thinking. And and and I I have to agree with this thinking, and thankfully you can find a real easy PNG on Bulgree's website and just do the color replace uh tool, paint the whole thing, be a little careful around the black of the dial. And I I gotta say, I think it works. It worked for you guys. It looks so smo
Cole Pennington oth. Yeah. I think uh out of all of 'em, 'cause you know Bulgary worked with Revolution magazine on that crazy uh octo chronograph. That's a great I love that one. Yeah. So that shows that like Bulgary is willing to at least step out a little bit and maybe do something interesting. So out of all these watches, Rolex, we know, sorry, Danny, yes, they'll do it eventually, but they're gonna do it because of this article. But if revolution, exact
Danny Milton ly. We already tried with the Rolex Sprite. Unless they were already doing it and it's gonna come out this year. Then you are Most
Cole Pennington radus. There we go. Yeah, the so the soothsayer for sure. So what I think is like okay, Bulgaria can do these things. They have worked with media before. I think I'm gonna say now, out of all the watches on this list, this might actually happen. Just gonna say
James Stacy . We won't. Walter Longa Lumen. No, no. We won't. I think you might see Wilhelm Air Schmidt at uh at an event someday and get a little punch on the arm and like, hey, I thought that was cool. Yeah. But like I think that's as far as that's gonna go. I'd be happy with that. Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, he's a lovely guy for sure. But I I think I do agree that I I could see them looking at this and going like what did people actually want it a yellow gold one? Because they make a 40 in rose gold, which is like sandblasted. I made this render based on the steel because I really liked all the texture of the brushing, especially on the bezel. I thought it looked cooler than the matte, this like super matte sort of bead blasted look or sandblasted. So uh good pull from that one. Davey's on our uh video team, and if you've seen almost anything video from Hodinky and you liked it, it's it's because of only one of a few people and one of them is almost certainly Davey. So uh great team and clearly great taste in watches. He was sh
Nora Taylor outed out in the watch we wore most this year video for wearing uh sweats with a tank and that's just like as it should be worn by maybe one of our most stylish staff members. So it makes sense that he pulled together
James Stacy this really dope watch. under the bus here, but just uh within view of the bus. Uh he won't like that. He just has great taste. Like it's easy to spend time with Dave. He has an amazing taste in music, art. He has a a a fantastic kind of uh visual uh literacy that I I I really appreciate about David and you and you can see it when when you ask him to think of something he would like to see. You look at it and you go, Well, that's something everybody wants to see. I get it. Along the same lines, I'd let's jump to Norris, which is a uh a really fantastic creation. This one was a bit of a struggle from a Photoshop standpoint, but I guess I don't actually know what they call that full model, uh which we base the tank. Do you know what the tank one is called in total? I looked on the website and there wasn't like a it is sh I think it's just called the like cuff. Let me pull up the I couldn't identify a name. I called this the Cartier American Full Gold Cuff. Uh but they make a a Panthere version and Nora, again, I th I think you're right. It it kind of it's interesting to have the longer case shape because it's already a rectangular sort of presence. Yeah. Versus the square of the panther kind of fitting into the links. Which gets lost. Yeah. They just say it's on extra large cu
Nora Taylor ff links, which speaking of the cuff of the octopanissimo, yeah, it is both an incredibly gaudy, but also I think with the tank a little, I like that the tank is not a particularly gaudy, it is kind of the antithesis of it, like a very quietly elegant watch. And then just strapping it on this like big honkin set of cufflinks makes it incredibly luxurious and I think just super fun in a way that I would not necessarily say Cartier always is. And one of the things that I had in my head but didn't include in the sheet because I didn't want to kill you was it would be extra cool if it had like a reverso style case so you could flip it over and it would just look like a bracelet. Oh that would be brilliant. Yeah. Take some notes, Guardian. Yeah. But yeah, I think that that is just it really sort of makes the watch feel like a bit more of an integral part of the very cool cufflinks when
James Stacy you sub in a tank. Yeah. And for anyone listening that like when Norse says cufflinks, she doesn't mean like like traditional cufflinks like for the shirt of a cuff. This is a it's like a big band bracelet that's made out of fine watch style links. And it even has some negative spaces, some spaces that don't have links in sort of geometric balanced patterns. And and so it's all kind of like imagine wearing a Jubilee bracelet that just went there was no watch. It went all the way around, but then make it triple width and squeeze a watch into the links, and that's what you get. So not all the lines kind of line up on this one because the panther, they you know they mold it to make it fit into the the flex of the bracelet. But I did my best with it. I think it's a cool thing. I I also just think like the um the American looks really good in yellow gold, which it doesn't currently exist in. Mm-hmm. Uh so I think even that on its own is a is a stroke of uh like why ar why aren't they making that? Yeah. For sure. If they make it, I will give them all of the money
Nora Taylor I don't have. So there we go. He
Danny Milton y, what are credit cards for, right? I think this watch plays. I mean it really does. Yeah. I I agree. I would never have envisioned or thought this would never come into my brain. So you showed me something that I had never conceived in my entire life. So thank you, Nora. Thank you, Danny. You're welcome.
James Stacy I think one that folks seem to like and that I like is Logan's. Logan's, yeah. So this is cool. It's a tag hoyer. You know, Logan knows the brand really well. And I think that is kind of key to making one of these things is you kind of have to be able to see the whole scope of the brand and then find that thing that you feel is missing, even subjectively that's missing. And I think Logan might have picked something that isn't only just missing, but absolutely tag needs to make. And this is a so based on the current C case, which is the kind of the the chunkier case used on some of the Ottavia stuff, but a recreation of the Ottavia GMTs from the early seventies. You know, blue red bezel. We literally just took the dial and bezel from an actual Ottavia GMT from a photo from the the Hodinky shop and then dropped it on top of uh the kind of case and outer bezel edge from the fragment design chronograph they made uh a couple years ago, which uses the right case and has and and I think the end result, like you know, Logan's been on the show plenty. We've all said that like Logan just he he gets it, and and like you can see that like he gets tag. This is this makes perfect sense. They would sell a lot of these. I think the the C shaped case does, the C actually stand for chunky, James or no? My guess is it probably stands for something specific. It's probably not chunky. Yeah, I'm kidding. But
Cole Pennington compact? I have no idea. Chronograph? Yeah, I think the the watch is excellent and again one that could potentially be made and I also like the treatment the very conscious treatment to leave out tag like everyone always asks for, right? It's just the Hoyer Ottavia, isn
James Stacy 't it? Yeah, I mean that's just cause we we took it from a dial and that's all it said 'cause it was a vintage dial. But I mean you you would you wanna put tag branding back on? I think no. I think it depends on how hard they wanted to lean into it being a heritage model. In my mind, I like these sorts of conversations. So give me some balance if you think I'm on one s too far to one side. But I would think they would launch this line with with four or five versions, like they did with the Aqua Racer, like they did with the isograph, like all these ones. And and you'd have one that's very vintage, like the like what they did recently with the Aqua Racer, the with the throwback version. And then you'd have a few examples that were the same format and movement and such, but were leaning a little bit more towards Aaron Powell So this is Pepsi
Cole Pennington , obviously. What other bicolor configurations would be interesting? I think you but stay away from kind of known quantities, right? Like stay away from Batman color scheme, stay away. You know what might be cool how you integrate tag back is take the colors from the tag hoyer logo and make that the bezel. It's like green and red? Yeah. Yeah. Like a Christmas time watch.
James Stacy Something like that. Who knows? I mean the the nice thing with the bezels is there's such a history of like pretty much every color combination has been used to some level. And you could just like pick the ones that you like. And as long as you tie it into some color on the dial, it I think it mostly works. Yeah. You know, I boosted the reds and blues on this one to make it feel a little bit less like a vintage watch, but for the most part, I just I think that they could turn around and make this. I don't I don't really know immediately what movement you would use. I think a derivation of the caliber Hoyer O two is what Logan has intended. And and whether or not you do that, or I guess Ada has a version of the 7750 that has a GMT on it. Zinn uses that a lot. So there'd be some options. I I think it's a killer one for sure. As always with uh with Mr. Logan. Let's let's talk about yours, James. Mine? Yeah. Mm. It's time. The time has come. So this is one I've had in my you know I've I've been talking about it and making little renderings of it for a few years. I'd like a Pelagos GMT for sure. I call it the Pelagos two, uh which I think would work. This render is not perfect. There's a few things I I should have put a date in it. I ran out of time of why would you have a GMT watch without a date? So yes, you're right if that's if that was your comment. And but otherwise, I mean the big things for me is in my mind this would blend some of what they established with the FXD. Keep in mind this is a dream watch. It'sn't this watch is not going to happen. But I would see it as a thirty nine millimeter. It's still titanium, but no HEV, so two hundred meters water resistance, a little thinner than a current, a little smaller than a current. Give me the same bracelet, the same rubber strap option. Make it based on a fifty-six twelve MT fifty six twelve, which is the BBGMT's movement, so you would have a date if you wanted it, which again I think you would. Uh three or six would be fine for the date, please, nowhere else. I chose a blue orange coloring because I thought it kind of aligned with you know the heritage chrono from their past. I also just like blue orange, you know, Doxa 750T Caribbean GMT was also a fan, and that's the exact same colors basically. For me personally, my favorite part about this whole watch is the bezel. I very carefully tried to blend a pelagos bezel with the exact layout of a mill sub so it's fully marked. But when you have double digit numerals, the edge of the outer O, so the zero and thirty, the zero and forty, the zero and fifty is the first minute marker. So it lends this balance that still allows big markers. And you see that if you go back and like Google a mill sub. Uh and yeah, for me this would be you know, they could take my money now. As long you promise you make it in the next five years, I'll pay for it today. I'm curious, James, why not make the GMT bezel bicolor? I don't see the purpose. Okay. I like the simplicity of how this still feels like a dive watch first. Okay. Um and that's why I didn't like with a B B G M T you have a twenty four hour bezel. And and don't get me wrong, and this is something you could you could have arguments about if you wanted to, and and I guess I do internally but like I I don't really like twenty four hour bezels. I think a lot of people if you ask the average person who has a GMT master they can't explain what it does for them or even why it rot
Danny Milton ates, for example. I have a harder time explaining what it does, period, to someone else who's asking what it does, period. Not what it does for me. Yeah. Just what it just what it just what it does. Even though I know what it does, but it just it comes out of my mouth and the other person's like,
James Stacy okay. Yeah, so for me, I I want I I like and just like the watch I'm wearing now, which is the the Braymont S three oh two, I like a dive watch that has a GMT function, not a GMT watch that can go underwater. I like that. And I I definitely think this watch would look cool with a two color, like if I'd gone a white on the top of the b the so white orange and blue orange. I definitely it's just we I had uh I had days to do the nine renders and I'm just I'm not so talented at Photoshop, but it's quick. These are my evenings for quite some time. And I I like the simplicity in this, but I do agree that you could go buy color for the Riot. But yeah, so you have the the fully marked bezel, then you have uh the on the Riot, which is kind of a thing in the in the Pelagos world. This has one that's more similar to that of the FXD, so it doesn't have the cutouts around each marker, which kind of takes some of the three dimensionality away, but this could watch this theoretically a bit thinner. If that's an orange, I I could also very easily see a black, red, white version to go with the blue, orange, white. I think that could work well. I even think you could do just one that's mostly black and white with a little bit of color
Cole Pennington You mentioned that you would take some text off the dial. And I this is, you know, whenever folks talk about tutor, this is what they always talk about. The sequel to the Iliad and the Odyssey on the dial da.y Ye
James Stacy ah, well I mean the that joke the joke when the Pelagos went in-house and had five lines of text was that it was like what a word or two syllables away from uh a haiku or something like that. A haiku, yeah, exactly. What would you take off? In my mind, all this needs to say is Pelagos 2 and the depth. Okay. Yeah. I don't think it needs anything else. Like the officially certified that like that's a historical thing they put on the dial. I don't need that. And uh I don't need it to say that it's a chronometer, I'm buying a tutor, I know what I'm getting. But I do understand like tutor makes watches for people that aren't necessarily deep watch enthusiasts and words on the dial are important. It's like you know, badges on your car, that sort of thing. I would I would like I like cars with fewer. Other people like to, you know, remove E three hundred badges and put uh you know E sixty three badges on them. So AMG badges. Yeah. As many AMGs and M powers as you can find. But yeah, this is uh this is literally just a watch I've always wanted to have and and own and buy and create and and yeah, I like it. I don't think it'll ever happen. You know, I I don't think that we'll necessarily see this because the the movement wouldn't fit at thirty-nine millimeters, but it would fit at 41. BBGMT and the Pelagos have similar case sizes. So hey, if a felican dream, right? Yeah. But this is a watch I would definitely buy and then I would have to sell a bunch of other ones because I'd have no need for them. I would just wear this. So this
Cole Pennington would yeah, reduce redundancy in the collection. I like that. I like the the kind of pragmatic role that this fills too
Nora Taylor . That's what I'm known for. If people started calling it the Stacy, would that be thrilling to you or deeply embarrassing? It would be deeply embarrassing. Or
James Stacy just unsettling. The Stacy. I'd I'd just be happy to have one on my list. I don't need anything more than that
Danny Milton . I don't need a deal on it. Okay. It's already been spoken. You just spoke it into existence. It's over. The we can't you can't take it back. It's now it's now out there. We'll let it out the like little bit of dry heaving I had at the thought
Cole Pennington . So so here's a question. You you can't take your own watch. That's out of the question. For everyone on this call, whose watch do you take
Danny Milton ? Just a kind of quick, quick fun game, you know? Mine's easy and it's boring. I'm taking Davy's and I'm also going to caveat it by saying that when Kasha, my wife, saw my pick and Davey's pick, she just kind of like rolled her eyes and said, Fancy dudes, and then walked out of the room. Cause we both just like turned to watch solid gold, you know, and turned it into James and was like, here. Make this wat
James Stacy ch be like gold. Yeah. I don't know. That's uh Nora, Nora, what do you think? Which one of these aside from yours would you want to rock out with? Ooh
Nora Taylor . If I'm getting mine and I want variety in my collection, I might actually pick John Buse's Grand Seco Mechanical Dress chronograph. It's kind of one of the few chronographs I've seen that I'm really into. But if I don't have mine and got room for another uh fancy watch I'm taking Davis. I would probably
Cole Pennington yeah so here's the thing I again this this is weird like I'm not drawn to some of the tool watches I I actually I'm opposite from you. I like a GMT watch as a GMT watch. I would also go John Buse because and I don't know if he even mentioned this or if this is even part of the thought process behind it, but it channels the spirit of the 5718, which is that uh Olympic counter that I wrote about a while back. Yeah, it does for sure. So I think that is that's probably the way. Or Danny's. I think like I I've always liked Explorer. I think
Danny Milton uh they call that a segue, I think, in the podcast business. Yeah, yeah. So Danny says I I made it the
James Stacy hero. I think it's it's just one that you look at and you go like, dang, like why not? Like they're doing a two tone, why not a solid gold explorer? So Danny, this would be the current thirty-six mil size or you would make a change?
Danny Milton The only change that I would make that I didn't mention and that I didn't know until I saw the new two tone and the new thirty-six is that the bracelets super thin. It tapers dramatically. Way more than any explorer ever has in the past. In a way that just feels like if you've ever seen a vintage Daytona, it kind of feels like that. It's not quite that much, but close. So I would just return the bracelet taper to its normal state. Um other than that. So maybe it's like a two or three millimeter taper versus like I think it's almost five. Yeah, which is crazy. So yeah. So make it two or three millimeters and then you've got me. Same, same modern thirty six millimeter case. Everything stays the same. Uh just just solid goldify it. And still keep polished cent
James Stacy er links, eh? Yeah, I think that okay, so well I mean you gotta blame that a little bit on me. I'm not gonna rush on in Photoshop. Come on
Danny Milton . Here's the thing. I w I wanna I wanna say that the original call to action for this was not what dream watch do you have? It's what do you wanna see the watch industry do in 2022? So this isn't like I have other dream watches. This is what I was trying to think. What might Rolex do this year? And they're not going to brush their center link. So maybe if it was a dream watch in in a dream world, like sure. Like I I would love a fully brushed gold bracelet to the same way that I want a fully brushed steel bracelet on my GMT master in steel that I have. Like it's just I don't love but I will say that the the polished center links look much better in gold than they do in steel. Like period. Way again period like much
James Stacy better. Here's a question for you, and I didn't this is something I would have done and just sent to you if I'd had um you know more time to devote to this uh exercise. What about a solid gold jubilee bracelet on that baby? That would look so good. That would look so good. It would sacrilege I think. People get upset when I put a a forty dollar Jubilee on on my explorer
Danny Milton too. It would be that's the thing, right? It's it was it's balancing what you think is realistic versus what would never happen, and that would never happen. It would just it never would. But I would look it would look great. It would look fantastic.
James Stacy Yeah, I think so. I think this is great, Danny. I think this one rocks. Um, I love that again, you gave me like very little to do. I took the two-tone version, I did I I created a color replacement profile and I just carefully painted it. And that's why we were able to do a hero that was also a wrist shot. You turn it around in like ten minutes after this idea like was created. Yeah, I've been I've I've I'm I'm like a low key uh pro at just making gold versions of steel watches in Photoshop for boredom. There's no talent involved. I've just I've put a lot of practice into it. I think mine of of the ones that I would want to go with if I couldn't have the Pelagos 2, it would probably be either Danny's or Jack's. Which can lead us to Jack's. This is actually uh a name of a watch I've never heard spoken out loud. So my distinct apology to Cartier, uh Jack asked for a steel tank Augushet, uh which is maybe the easiest of all of these because they already make it in platinum. So I made it look a little darker and uh and I removed some scratches from the photo I was able to find. And that was that. I turned the strap gray to make it an extra steely sort of affair. And then Jack wanted the um the cabochon in the crown out of tantalum, so I gave it a slight bluey, steely sort of t
Cole Pennington Up in Toronto, it's a bilingual teaching system, right? Don't you learn French as well in
James Stacy school? Yeah, I'd I I to be fair, know I my vocabulary in French isn't terrible. I've never come across the word guichet. And I could even be saying that wrong. And again, like my distinct apologies. For those of you that may not know this watch, this is a kind of a classic tank shape, but what we have is a twin digital display. So you have a a small aperture towards the top center of the front brushed face, that's an hour display, and then a semi-radial display with a like a a l actual metal cutout. It's really cool the way they do this, and there's a rotating kind of dial behind that that tells you the minutes. I've seen the the platinum version in person a couple times and it is a jaw-droppingly cool watch. This is a deeply, deeply cool thing. Jack like, like Logan, like Dave, great taste, nose watches. And once I pushed him, I was like, Jack, you got one for me? He's like, I do actually, and it's not going to be much work. And And uh and he's like, turn this a platinum watch into a steel watch for me. I was like, okay, I'm on it. I don't think it's a watch that they make a lot of. So if t if Carde decided to make this watch, it would be a very hard watch to buy. It'd be very expensive and very difficult to buy, but man, is it kind of a a cool idea uh because it is kind of the most tank of the tanks. You drive it you drive a real tank by looking out a tiny little window and and you know, don't care if you hit a tree or whatever, because it's a tank. And uh and with this I think it it kind of and captures that in in some fun ways. It's just very slick. Yeah, I mean I would I would I would wear that watch. Put it on a NATO. Put it on a NATO
Nora Taylor . Might look sick. You don't know. Take it diving. Yeah. I would love a version of this watch that was actually just a day and a date. I'm like, I don't need the time. Just tell me that it's Wednesday the twenty-seventh. That's an incredible idea for a watch period. Just like I don
Danny Milton 't care what time it is. Just I need to know what day it is.
James Stacy Just the year. I'm just lost. Just a pure a watch of pure leisure. I need only to know the calendar date. For all those checks I'm writing. It's fabulous. I love that idea, for sure. Let's see what else we've got here. So yeah, uh we spoke briefly about John's, which is uh really fun and and I think John really uh can see that there is a bit of a hole in the Grand Seiko lineup for a mechanical dressy chronograph. They do chronographs, very sporty spring drive based chronographs. But uh John, very simple brief. Take a popular Grand Seiko and turn it into sort of an equally dressy chronograph. And uh if you look carefully at this one, those of you who like to do these sorts of things, these little Photoshop puzzles, you'll learn there's certain brands that and my guess is it might be a purposeful thing for counterfeit, but they will always put their second hand through something on the dial. Like Rolex and Tudor will always have their second hand going through the text at the bottom of the dial, always, one hundred percent of the time, drives me bonkers. It's a step further when you go to Basel and they hand you a dummy or a sample of the watch and it's locked with the hand going through the text at the exact same second point. So I love the specificity. I adore it even. I just hate the outcome from my side of the fence. And so the Grand Seiko is the same thing where if you try and find any Grand Seiko, the second hand is almost always going through whatever the complication is. So on the spring drives, in the press images, the second hand goes right through the power reserve indicator. So I had to really search around and I eventually found a presage enamel dial chronograph that they made, and I stole the one dial that didn't have a hand going through its subdial and then turned it into a transparency and dropped it onto a white birch. And I think it kind of works. John's only note was could we put the the complication not at six? Because right now it kind of looks like Aaron Powell And how does it work, by the way? I
Cole Pennington mean that's kind of a dumb question, but actually, how does it work? It's just a chronograph, start, stop, central seconds, and then minutes at the bottom. So it's an hour counter
James Stacy . It counts up to an hour. Yeah. A one-hour chronograph. Which isn't uncommon in in the dressier chronographs. Yeah. All right. I see it now. I I can dig it. I I guess it depends on people's concept of dressy. I thought dressy maintained some minimalism. You could go with a two or three dial chronograph, but I think it it would start to feel significantly less dressy the more you added to it. I think this kind of works, but I do understand that obviously normally when you have a chronograph, you have running seconds, this would forego that. In this case, uh for in in a minimalist attempt. I think it's kind of still aligns with uh Grand Seiko, but I uh admittedly I'm writing between their lines on that one. I think came out great. Yeah, John gets Grant Seiko and and I think this one works for sure. We also had a really cool gnomos from Trevor, uh who helps uh run our social media stuff and and does a great job at it. And uh but I didn't know he was a gnomos guy. I'm just kinda getting to know him now. And yeah, he he wrote a very straightforward block of text, uh, you know, a uh mini-matic with a black dial, uh, mostly white accents and then some navy blue accents. And we went ahead and made it. And the whole time I was thinking like, I don't this is gonna look even like uh this is gonna look like every gnomos. All the gnomos look the same. And to his credit, when it was done, I like it. It looks cool. It's like it's kinda modern, it's kind of youthful, kinda subtle. Uh I think it's killer. Yeah. Nice work on that, uh, for sure. Gnomos is one where I think you could almost do this a hundred times. Like the brand has such a dialed aesthetic, but so much variety within that space that I feel like you know, any time you go to buy a gnomos, you go like, well, the perfect would have been and it's one one thing to add or change or remove. So it for a Photoshop competition, it's perfect
Danny Milton . So who won? Who won the competition? I mean I I'm pretty sure I won probably, right? Yeah. Okay. So we're done? That
James Stacy 's a tough call. I mean I, judging by what people said, I mean, it might be Davey. I think it might be you, actually. I think it's James. Me. Yeah
Danny Milton . Nobody picked. Nobody picked mine as their double. I think if you guys were in a in a club like James would win, like it appeals very much to what you both would like love to see. So it's a deeply subjectively something I would buy. Yeah. It totally. And they all are, right? Like so many of these are, like in so many ways. And in fact, like mine isn't even something that I think speaks to me 'cause I think I I didn't understand this competition at all. Like if I was like So it's not necessarily like my dream watch, but I just kinda roll it. I didn't really understand what was going on
James Stacy , but I'm just just glad to be here and turns out I'm awesome
Nora Taylor . I blacked out what happened. Every editor's big story is a competition going forward in Danny's mind. Oh yeah. That's how I see it. I'm here to win
James Stacy consciously or unconsciously. By force of pure effort or luck. Yeah, I I'm not really sure. Uh you know, in my mind I I like the Pelagos the best. I think it's the one um that kind of suits what I would want, but I look at these and there's like a handful of them I would love to wear. I think Kohl's would be so much fun as it's this insane piece of like super subtle high-end watchmaking that also glows in the dark. That's perfect. That satisfies the five year old inside of me and like the the modern watch writer and exactly the rest of it. And and uh yeah, Danny's is dan Danny's yours is one that like I could absolutely see existing and on people's wrists and like courtside at basketball games. I feel like in two years you're gonna be writing watch spottings about this watch, and you're just gonna be like, this sucks. I'm so tired about writing about this watch that I willed into existence at some level. And then Norris, I I love yours. I don't think I could pull it off. Let's be honest. I'm sitting here in kind of a military sweater a few months behind a haircut
Danny Milton . Could it work as an ankle watch? You know, like the the bracelet is so big, I could you could like s you know look down and see what time it is. You know, it's I don't I don't know like size-wise, how big is that bracelet? Nora, you tell me, it's yours. Could I size it for for an ankle? Um in
Nora Taylor the fantasy world, yes. Okay. Wear it over a sweatpant for maximum. There you go. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah
James Stacy . That's good. That's good stuff. That's good stuff right there. Well yeah, I th I think I think that's probably the rundown of these designs. Get in the comments. I mean the the post has been up for a couple hours at this point and we've got the better part of a hundred comments. Uh we're asking people to give us a one or two sentence explanation of what your sort of dream watch or watch you would love to see, put it in the comments. We're gonna pick five or so that we like, and I'm gonna go back to the drawing board and see if we can make them happen for a future post. So that should be kind of fun. If you're hearing this, it's not too late. Uh so get in there, give us your design, we'll chat about them in our our our Slack channel and pick the ones we like and then we'll try and put it together, which I which I think should be pretty cool. This is something I would love to do more often. I don't think it needs to be like a editor's roundup. I don't think like everyone has to weigh in on each one. But every now and then you just have an idea and and we can kind of put it out there with a little bit of text and and and who knows maybe maybe some of these come into existence and and that sort of thing. If so, we gotta figure it out some sort of a discount program with uh Cartier. If they make that uh tank ogie show, we need to uh we need a discount of some sort. Let's get litigious. Let's just start doing. It's my IP based on somebody else's IP. Yeah, let's not get litigio Yeah, I think right now this would be a a gray area where if we weren't providing commentary on what we did, uh uh might be problematic. But yeah, this uh I think this this kind of uh covers our basis in terms of that. Um did you guys have any other ideas that uh waiting in the wings, other things
Danny Milton you would love to see, that sort of thing? I mean I'll I'm I'm gonna throw one out there. Yeah, let's hear it. I think it's high time. I'm gonna go Rolex again. I think that what watch brands do is they give you a little bit of what you love in something that you don't love, and then vice versa. So they give you something you love with something that's just missing. And I think if they translate the the bezel of yachtmaster onto the submariner, it would be a very, very winning combination. Now you'd have to tweak it because I'm not a huge fan of how it's like totally blacked out, but I love the sort of matte ceramic, whatever they're doing on the yacht master. So a relief style bezel? Yeah. And I think it would give the watch a return to the tool kind of utilitarian styling that it's missing with the shiny ceramic bezel that it has. I think shiny ceramic, yeah. Shiny ceramic's a tough a tough sell for people who miss the tool watch. And that's why the black bay fifty eight is so loved. And that's why the matte ceramic of the Pelagos is is something that people really gravitate towards. And I think um if Rolex took a little bit of whatever they're doing on the yacht master, it would look amazing on a submariner. It would look amazing on a GMT master. It would it would just be great, a great way to to do those bezels, bezel inserts. Well we can definitely make that one happen for sure. L
James Stacy et's how many of these do we put up before Rolex just writes us and says, Hey could you guys not? These are cute, but shut up I I think it's already happening. We just don't know about it yet. Yeah, we're not the
Danny Milton ones they send the email to for sure.
James Stacy Apologies to Nick Marino in advance for all the emails he's bound to get. How about you Nora? Any other any others when I when I told you I needed a couple more and you came up with this incredible American cuff. Anything else? Uh this is one that you couldn't do for me. I need
Nora Taylor just a watch, any watch that is the exact purple, the dial is the exact purple that's in my mind's eye. Cause I feel like there's so many there are a handful of purple dials out there. And I don't like any of them. And purple is a great color, but you can turn into like cookie aunt real fast. And so that is what I am my personal quest is finding a purple dialed watch that su
James Stacy its my tastes. You gotta work your way through a color swath and find that right purple and then work backwards from there. H
Cole Pennington ow about you call any others? Uh you know, I just did that piece on that like big Grand Seiko diver. That huge, huge one. They do have some smaller divers out now, but I want like a properly sized, like an an SKX double oh seven wearing Grand Seiko diver. So a high beat diver, really wearable size and and kind of like a sub compare competitor. Yeah, exactly. A sub competitor.
James Stacy And I would definitely wear that over a sub, hundred percent. Yeah. So like the closest they've come, and it wasn't a Grand Saco, of course it's the SLA like O one seven and uh O three whatever's like though the kind of recreations of the sixty-two mass that have an eight series movement, which are really rad, but I agree that there's um not unlike with uh John's chronograph pick. I would say that if you look at the the layout of the Grand Seiko stuff, it really feels like they need a a like mass market high Yeah.
Cole Pennington And we you kind of have that right now with the SBG H two eight nine. Oh boy. Which is that that gorgeous purple. It might even be the purple that uh Nora's thinking of. Just go check out that wash door. It's it's it's it's good. And yeah, I would love love to see that uh just a little bit smaller. I I agree. Like they need a sub killer for sure, but really to, do it smartly, don't start from scratch. Like use what Seiko has built. And they have to a degree, but I have I actually I'm just going to save it for the next round up. Let's I'm not going to talk about it too much. And sure. The next time we do this again, I'll I'll you know it won't be too bad on Photoshop. Don't worry. I got you this time. No, no, you're good. I'm I'm getting better each time
James Stacy . Love the attitude. Yeah, yeah. that type of work. And it I I would love to see, and and I haven't quite decided what, but maybe this will be in one of the future ones as well. I would love to see what a modern take on like the IWC GST line. You know, it's and it hasn't been gone, you know, m I maybe ten or twelve years, thirteen years, something like that. So it wouldn't be that much to to recreate. But you know, the the thirty five eighty six, which is the black yellow with the captive bezel, that dive watch, that one, but in a different size and maybe tweaked in a few different ways and different colors. You know, there's a handful of like really great IWC stuff that I think could be kind of tweaked and you could literally like launch it tomorrow and people would go nuts
Cole Pennington . This this did kind of present me with an interesting philosophical exercise, which is everything we know that exists, like okay, design your favorite brand X, right? Everything you're pulling from is something they've generally done before. For the mo so all of you know the landscape of what we can draw from is a known quantity. I think the more interesting challenge next time might be all right, you are actually a designer for X, Y, and Z and you have to you know design something brand new. Like you know, you've seen brands that pivot to a completely new design direction. Um the reason I think about this is because I love the the yellow and black aqua timers from early 2000s. Recent and and that hasn't come back or anything like that, but how do you even begin to conceptualize a new aqua timer that is sort of true to IWC, to you know the direction they're they're going and so forth? So I actually this kind of makes me think watch designers have it pretty hard. But super hard to come up with something genuinely new
James Stacy to add to the conversation. Yeah, and and think about the take the talent of the designer and a great idea, whether that comes from someone who knows a lot about the brand's watches or the designer or a team of designers. And then consider that like sometimes those designers work in small brands where you can make something happen. Other times they work for giant companies. Like if you're part of IWC, you got a lot of bosses, and they've got bosses. And the people at the top, they're they're not interested in necessarily moving quickly. This is a typically a pretty stoic sort of environment in which to sell a product. And and they move slowly. And uh and so yeah, I think it could take a really long time. I think it's super hard. And and I would say if you want to start designing things from ground up, we're gonna have to hire somebody else to do the do the rendering. Uh because I I definitely not doing any three D stuff or or like genuine, you know, creation of of assets and that sort of thing. But I I don't disagree. It'd be super fun to see what we could think of that's brand new. But man, there are some good ideas in the comments already. So there's some real winners that I think will turn out turn around to be really fun. All right. Well, I think that's a look at our dream watches for 2022 and and we've had a fun chat and and certainly I had a a real blast making them and I'm getting a real kick out of the comments. There's some fantastic ideas in there. Uh before we leave, there is one more thing that's kind of changed from an editorial standpoint for Hodinky, uh, and that's with how we're treating the weekends moving forward. And I think it's pretty exciting and it's one of the reasons I wanted to have Danny on, not just solid gold explorer stuff. But I wanted to have Danny on because Danny kind of helped with the first one and uh I know I'm gonna have to get up to speed because I think mine's in the next couple weeks. So we're each kind of championing a weekend and and it's kind of a a new take on on the format, right, Dan
Danny Milton ny? Yeah. I mean you've seen in the past on Hodinky Saturdays and Sundays, we used to have something called the weekend roundup where we would each sort of choose stories uh n normally not related to the watch world and feature you know some great journalism, great video, great content that we found on the internet that week or just ever. But what we're doing now is we're trying to really eventuze Hodinky editorial uh on the weekend. Think about the Sunday paper. Um we're calling it the Hodinki weekend edition. And it's like James said, it's gonna be curated themed hodinky content every weekend packaged up for your reading and viewing pleasure. So each of us pick a theme. Last weekend I picked the Omega Speedmaster to kind of kick things off. And we're gonna be picking about five classic hodinky stories that range from video series like reference points or weeks on the wrist or talking watches or in-depth editorial pieces that could be, for example, 3,000 words by Cole Pennington on whether Heslite or Sapphire is the Speedmaster configuration that you should be getting and what's the difference between them and why. And sort of these things that are helpful to know about these watches that we love. But it won't just be themes about specific watch models. It could be themes about you know different areas of of watch interest, aviation, military, um movies, you know, to use something that I'm into. Um so every weekend you'll see a different editor take the weekend edition in a new direction. Um and it'll stay up live over the whole weekend just so you can return to it and enjoy it and and get something new out of it. And I think um it'll be fun to see every editor's spin on, you know, writing a few paragraphs on why they love that specific weekend content. I think it's gonna be really fun. Um, and I think last weekend was great. We tried to incorporate social media into it. We've created the hashtag hodinky weekend so every single weekend there'll be a different theme if you've got a watch that matches it you know our social media team's gonna share your content and put it out there and so you know hit us up on Instagram and Twitter it'll be a lot of fun. A good way to engage with the readers and kind of spice up the weekend at Hodinky. Extra spicy. Spice it up. So classic fl
James Stacy avor and extra spicy. We're moving into extra spicy territory. Classic flavor. All right, guys. This has been a treat. As always. It's so nice to see your beautiful faces and uh and to chit-chat with you guys about watches. It's always um a highlight of my week, and uh I'm looking forward to another year of uh of doing this sort of stuff with y'all. If you're listening and enjoying the show, I always ask for the same thing. Leave a comment, let us know what you think. If you have any criticisms, uh support, whatever ideas, drop it in the comments on hoodinky.com or just share it to a friend. If you enjoyed the episode and you think a buddy might might like it as well, send it their way. Uh I can't ask for anything more. And uh you know what? We'll chat to you in about a week's time. Nora, Danny, Cole, thanks so much. Thanks, James. For having us. Pleasure's mine.