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Watches & Wonders Day 1 – Rolex, Tudor, and Patek Philippe

Published on Wed, 30 Mar 2022 21:55:35 +0000

Recapping the best of what we saw on the first day of Watches & Wonders 2022.

Synopsis

James Stacey hosts a live recording from Watches and Wonders 2022 in Geneva, joined by colleagues Jack Forster, Danny Milton, and Cole Pennington. This marks the first major in-person watch trade show in several years, bringing together brands that previously showed at separate events - SIHH and Baselworld. The team discusses this unusual merging of the two traditional show formats, with brands like Patek Philippe literally transporting their Basel booths to Geneva.

The discussion focuses on three major brand launches from day one. Rolex introduced a left-handed GMT-Master II with a green and black bezel, crown at 9 o'clock, and date window also at 9 o'clock - requiring a specially engineered date wheel. They also unveiled platinum Day-Dates with fluted bezels, a technical achievement given platinum's difficult machining properties, and an updated Air King with a professional case, crown guards, and improved functionality. The team debates whether the left-handed GMT is a calculated move or seems unusually random for the typically methodical Rolex.

Tudor launched the Black Bay Pro, a 39mm GMT with a fixed 24-hour bezel reminiscent of vintage Explorer IIs, along with a two-tone "root beer" colorway of their existing BB GMT. The hosts have mixed reactions to these pieces, discussing case thickness, vintage aesthetics, and Tudor's positioning relative to Rolex.

Patek Philippe presented two new Calatrava models: an annual calendar travel time with eight patents addressing the technical challenge of bidirectional quick-set with calendar synchronization, and a simpler time-and-date model with military-inspired aesthetics. Jack Forster provides detailed technical insight, while the group debates whether Patek's departure from traditional design language represents exciting innovation or uncomfortable deviation from their DNA.

Transcript

Speaker
James Stacey Hey, it's me, James Stacey, and we're recording live from Watches and Wonders 2022. And when I say live, I mean we're recording it to tape, but we're doing it face to face, which I don't get to do that often. I'm joined by Jack, Danny, and Cole. How we doing guys?
Jack Forster We're doing great. Doing good. Doing good, James.
James Stacey So pumped to be back at a trade show. And I never thought I'd say that. We should specify that we're actually literally sitting in the middle of the trade show. So due to the schedule today, we have people going to dinners in the evenings and going back to work, and I wanted to get this episode up at a reasonable time back in uh you know the US time zones, uh North American time zones. And so we're recording just at a table where you would normally eat lunch. You might hear some background noise, we'll do our best with that, but uh it we'll call it ambiance, I suppose. It's color in our industry. Cinema verite.. Yeah. There you go Exactly. So this is the first day of the first trade show in several years, right? And it's kind of excited. I I was pretty stressed about it for the last couple weeks. And now kind of having the opportunity to see some of the watches and and be part of this again is like fun. It's it's kind of exciting. Jack's giving me we're all really tired, so there's gonna be some more.
Jack Forster Just you hate it. I've been trapped in my apartment for two and a half years. I am also having a blast and I've been trapped in my apartment for two and a half years as well. I mean a few trips here and there, but um this is a particularly interesting show because there are people here showing and Geneva brands showing together. And it's kind of like you know cats and dogs living together mass hysteria time, you know, because uh basically what Paddock Philippe, for instance, which is never you know shown at the SIHH Word Watches and Wonders has done is they appear to have taken their entire booth from Basel World, broken it down, including the carpet, broken it down, put it into containers, put it on the back of I don't know how many trucks, shipped it to Geneva, and just rebuilt it here. Definit
James Stacey ely more than one truck. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It's a huge booth. But yeah, it's a weird thing. So if you've if you've seen pictures of what these shows look like in the past, it's literally they've grafted the two shows together. So you wouldn't rebuild a whole booth. These booths cost millions of dollars and they're meant to stay in use for a long time and to be flat-packed and the rest of it. So when you come in, it's like walking into an SIHH six, seven years ago, five years ago, and then you turn and look down this one hallway and you can see a sliver, uh a s a cross section of the old Basel World. It'
Jack Forster s actually super weird. You feel like there's like this you know, trans dimensional doorway that's like leads from you know Geneva to Basel and that's just a lack of sle
James Stacey ep talking. I took a I took a picture of it 'cause I was like, this legitimately feels weird 'cause you're so used to the the separation between the two. Not only they're in different cities, but they're aesthetically very different. And uh and I think it's fun. Uh, you know, I think for this show we're gonna talk about kind of the three big brands that showed on day one. I mean everybody showed today, but that had big launches today. So that's gonna be Rolex, Tutor, and Patek Philippe. And uh I say we probably get into it because I don't want these to be super long and everybody's got stuff to do and sleeping to get done and the rest of it. Uh so let's start with Rolex. You guys thinking lefty GMT? I am thinking lefty GMT. I
Cole Pennington think that's a hell of a watch. Didn't love it in the in the renderings at all. Like to be honest. You were dubious of the green. I actually was. Like I'm a Pepsi stan to the to the core. But the thing is when you see it in the metal, it's the same color as the uh Starbucks or you know. You confirmed today. That's right, that is a confirmed thing. But because it's a known quantity, like because we're used to seeing that other watch in the metal, when this one we saw in the metal, it actually made sense. It's like, oh, okay, all right. The lefty thing's still weird to me because uh how many people are we speaking to with this watch?
Jack Forster Yeah, I think it's just conceptually harder to get used to than it is actually like wrong from a practical standpoint
James Stacey . So very rare, very rare. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but I've never been to a Rolex meeting at a press meeting where the watch was running. That's the first one in my entire history of Rolex press meetings where it was a real watch, and I brought it up and they're like, I don't know how that happened. Yeah. An oversight of some sort. So the hands were running, so after I took a few pictures, I wanted to get it back to ten oh eight and I have to do it upside down. So because I don't want to be like really hard on the crown on a watch that isn't mine. No, no, but if I do it upside down, then I can do it with my right. But the so you have that element and that would take some getting used to if you had a a a left a left side crown. Like a like a uh Pelagos LHD, but then where you're different than the LHDs, you've got the date is at nine. Right. Which as when we actually
Cole Pennington Yeah, right. The date is in nine. Jack, can you confirm that they must have developed a new date wheel for this? They had to have, right? I mean you can't just cut out 'cause it would be upside down. And it advances down
James Stacey . Yeah, and it exactly. So So it's it would be a new mechanism and a a date wheel where it's upside down. Otherwise, I assume the movement's 180 degrees.
Jack Forster It's a relatively trivial matter from a technical perspective to uh to set a date wheel up that way. I mean you you know the printing needs to be different and you probably there's a a finger that advances the um that it advances the date wheel at midnight, you know, it's a uh instantaneous switching date. But you know, like a simple calendar is like it's just it's just not that complicated. Yeah. And doing something like that is it's basically just a a you know sort of mirror
Danny Milton image of a standard date complication. And you would think that if it if it was anything more than trivial that they would have made a different movement out of it. I mean it's the same movement. Yeah, it's a lot of Rolex that doesn't seem to have drawn any attention to it other than Right. And that nothing was really changed. Because I think it's a fairly simple other than the date wheel task of moving the crown from one side to the other, is my understanding. Yeah, you just go like this with a movement. Exactly. So it's still interesting. I mean for me putting it on it left me wanting a little bit because I'm so used to it. I mean Cole's wearing his Pepsi GMT, I'm wearing my Batman GMT, and you put it on, it's just the same watch in a different color. It's disorienting to have the crown kind of hidden under your sleeve, but it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be when I first experienced sort of the the press images and and kind of had the intellectual idea of oh my God, we have a left-handed
James Stacey And like if you take one of if you take your GMT off, flip it upside down and put it on your wrist. How close does that get to the experience? Pretty close. I can also move the bezel around and get myself. Non-trivially not close. Exactly
Cole Pennington . Nope. I was just kidding. My thing about it is like uh we always talk about how calculated Rolex is, how slow they move, you know, glacial pace. And you have to think that everything they do is very um calculated, right? Yeah. So with that being said, this seems like something like kind of like I wouldn't say thoughtless, but it seems random. But you know that they're not random. So what does this mean? Like how many people
Danny Milton are are lefty? Well we will understood it to mean, at least how Rolex put it, is that they were trying to make the watch appeal to everyone who might want to wear a GMT master, which includes, I guess, left-handed individuals, though you could don't need to be left-handed. Or right-handed is my point. You have to be left-handed, right-handed to wear a watch on whatever wrist you want to wear it on. So this watch doesn't necessarily have to end up in the leftor
Jack Forster ium. Isn't that unusual for Olex though? Like the It is just seems totally weird. It
Danny Milton is. 'Cause Jack, you you''veve written about it. Left handed people. It's it's a smaller subset of human beings. Yeah. Yeah. It's like ten percent of the population. A
Jack Forster bout ten about ten percent. Uh do we have any lefties here? Danny, Jack, James? No. Yeah. I mean I'm uh functionally ambidextrous for most things, but would any of us wear it? Yes. You know, I like I said, I did I don't I I'm just having trouble I don't hate it as a watch at all. I mean I like it as a watch. I'm just having trouble adjusting to it conceptually, and I don't know why because I find it in myself to like things in even in the watch world that are much, much more bizarre than a you know than a left-handed GM
James Stacey T master. It's weird watch. And I mean weird in a good way, like like an oddball has the it has its own charm. It doesn't And I think that's probably it's a weird move for Rolex to do a line extension like this in this direction because it seems disparate. It's not just a new color. It's also this new format and the date at nine. Disparate, not desperate. Disparate, correct. Not desperate. I think I think so. You know what? I have it on decent authority, they're doing fine. Yeah. I tal
Danny Milton ked about this with Cole. What's interesting about the color, which would have worked perfectly fine in the normal iteration of a GMT master, is it seems like what Rolex always wanted this sort of black and green GMT to be since it released the first ceramic black GMT what in 2007? But they couldn't do bicolor ceramic. So it's a kind of a strange circular way to come back to this motif. But then to do it in a left-handed configuration, I keep saying left-handed, I don't mean it that. way In a left crown configuration, I'm you know, I'm not sure. They probably will release it at some point in a nor
Jack Forster mal, I'm sure. I mean, I think that one thing that has been going on uh with Rolex for the time that a lot of people have gotten to know Rolex, you know, during the most recent Rolex era, is we've gotten used to Rolex of think uh thinking of Rolex as a company that really does like very incremental lineup dates every year, plus like, you know, a few wacky things with uh But you know, historically Rolex was not always as sort of on the straight and narrow as it is right now. I mean, there were periods in its h in its history when it did a much wider variety of watches than it does today. So this it is this is in a way it's kind of like a return to a more sort of broader vision of what watch making at Rolex actually means.
James Stacey It's just we're not we're not used to it. In the interest of time, I I do I'm enjoying this conversation, but I you know, I think that's probably all we need for the GMT. But I do want to jump to what kind of dropped your jaw, which was the pair of platinum day dates. Yeah. Get
Jack Forster 'em, Jack. Oh my god. So you did bezel.. Yeah, yeah Fluted fluted bezel, uh thirty-six millimeter and forty millimeter. And you know, with the with the with the day date, the forty millimeters have always looked to me almost like like the Jurassic Park version of that watch. Like it's you feel like you're looking at a special effect, not at an ac not an actual watch. And I mean it's spectacular. It's like it's like it's massively heavy. I mean it must be like at l a hundred uh over a hundred and fifty grams easily. Easy for sure. And then like and you but you put on the 36mm platinum uh date eight with with fluted bezel and ice blue dial and like my like I had like this immediate completely non-intellectual reptilian hindbrain visceral reaction to it I was like I must have this and I'll do whatever it takes to get it. I don't care how many cities must fall before my sword, and how many soldiers must be trampled under the hooves of my stallions and my cavalry. I want this watch. Yeah. Oh it, costs how much? Shh Sugar. I appreciate that. I don't have to bleep it.
James Stacey Uh yeah, no, I I think they're cool. And it is an interesting thing that because I think if I had only seen the image of that, if this had been a digital show, I never would have thought about those watches again. Yeah. Yeah. I would have been like, okay, platinum watch for like super rich guy option look kind of looks like steel, cool blue dial. Whoa, a fluted bezel. But then you see the bezel in person, you're like, I kinda get it. That you swear that it's like uh it look it's so pr the the way that it does its thing with the light is really remarkable. Yeah, and it's like it's I mean plat
Jack Forster inum is a really challenging metal to work with. Um we can link back to the story that I wrote in the show notes. But you know, it's it's uh it's what machinists call sticky and it it tends to gum up cutting tools. And so like you can take a diamond tool that can produce a consumer ready, perfectly flat, shiny surface and you can make like a hundred surfaces with it. If you're doing the same
Danny Milton thing in platinum, the tools shot after about three. Yeah I mean platinum daydates always looked sort of it almost admitted that it couldn't do something by virtue of the fact that it only had a smooth bezel. And I think that it's a testament to Rolex's ability to just go for it. Yeah, go for it, persevere thro
James Stacey ugh that notion and end up here. But like within the within the scope of what we're talking about, it means something to Rolex. They're very proud of the fact that they figured out
Jack Forster how to do a fluted platinum. And I mean to be fair in the you know in the in the history of uh platinum and jewelry and watchmaking, you know, over the last like hundred and twenty or so years, I mean people have done lots of decorative, you know, lathing and engine turning with with platinum. Uh but it's tough to do. It's much more time consuming. It's hard on tools and um you know yeah it's um do doing something like that, all of those like perfectly aligned little, you know, divots, it's it's it it is actually non trivially challenging from a from a just from a metalwork
James Stacey ing standpoint. And then uh the the other one that's that's kind of a newly updated model, in many ways it looks similar, and then the moment you have it in your hand, it's like weirdly different than the preceding model is the new air king. Let's go. So Danny, d w
Danny Milton alk us through the air king. Still forty mil. Forty mil, but it's now part of Rolex professional line, which means that the case has been changed uh completely from the last iteration of the forty millimeter air king, which two forty millimeter Rolex cases are not actually identically alike and they wear differently. So when you think of a GMT master or a submariner, um the case shape is a little more angular, a little more rigid, slab sided, I guess you would say. So that's what the Air King has now. So it's still got the same smooth bezel, but it now has crown guards. And the dial has been tweaked a little bit where lacquered lacquer black dial instead of gloss black, which I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between those things because there used to be my mouth shut on that one. I was like, okay, co Because lacquer and gloss are both shiny. Lacquer is shiny and they're all shiny. So wasn't what that meant. I was like, thank you. And and now the uh applied 369 markers are loomed. So it's a entirely more functional watch all around. And then there's a weird little detail. So if you look at the uh the markings on the dial, it used to be a five and now it's an O five. For symmetry, or what do you reckon it's for? I think it's for symmetry. A lot of these things are trial and error. This was a super esoteric watch for Rolex. Before things went absolutely crazy, this was probably the steel watch you could find inside of a boutique. We're just buying them for the sake of buying them. But this is actually feels like the complete version of the idea of what this watch should be. If you were going to make the Air King a sport watch, make it a sport watch. Okay. What I find the most interesting about it is the fact that it has crown guards with no functional or informational bezel. It's just a smooth sh pol
James Stacey ish. Sterile bezel. Sterile bezel. And like we did a just before the show kicked off, we did like a dream Rolex guessing sort of fun post, Photoshop stuff. And Cole had suggested like uh essentially taking an OP, giving it a gray dial, and putting the Air King logo on it. And I I thought it was a pretty handsome looking watch. On the other hand, uh, I'm I'm an outlier at this table. I don't like the air king. I didn't before. I don't like it now. It's it a's Rolex, it's great, but I don't like the dial. I don't like the coloring. Well and to be fair, the aesthetics were divisive, you know, from right from Jump Street. From the start. Yeah, th I'm not alone in this opin
Cole Pennington ion. No, not at all. Would I have liked the the Air King, the the OP Air King? Yeah, of course. But here's the thing, like none of us can get what we always want, and is this a DC component? Well, so this is my my the the negative externality of this is finally Rolex has figured out how not to have any single model be accessible, period. It was the air king.
Jack Forster Now it's it definitely won't be. It definitely won't be.
Cole Pennington Well, I mean, the role the air king wasn't exactly accessible, you know, before the change to the case, right? I so put it this way, I actually, and this this I guess would be considered what the kids call a hot take these days. Okay. I would rather have this than an explorer. This is just like a cooler explorer to me in a way. I jok
Danny Milton e I kid you not. I've I I agree. I'm with you on that. You are Mr. Explorer like over here. Something about this watch hit a nerve with me today. I don't know what it is. I like the fact that it is like uh it feels unlike anything else, and it feels more a little more fun than anything else. It just works for me. James is like sitting over here throwing shade at the end of these two guys see things. These two guys are giving
Cole Pennington us really weird. I just like that it's uh it has an aviation connection. Like I like the GMT because it has an aviation connection. And the Air King now that it's moving closer or like yeah, why would you do Chrome applied now that it's becoming more of a like piles watches should be functional. This is more functional now. So it it has my attention. I like it. I want to clarify too, I meant a modern expl
Danny Milton orer, not just like an explorer in general. Okay, yeah. Ye
James Stacey ah. Same. I like the explorer. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Everyone does. And speaking speaking of a s actually we we found ourselves a way to get into Tutor. Speaking of explorers, Tutor launched something very similar to essentially a modern sixteen fifty-five. So it's a thirty-nine millimeter fixed twenty-four hour bezel GMT that looks just simply a lot like a uh sixteen fifty five vintage vintage explorer uh two, and uh it uses the same movement that's in the BB GMT. I' Id I've I'll eat some crow. I've said in the past that I didn't think that they could fit that movement in a 39mm case. I thought they'd have to make a smaller movement. I don't have to say that anymore, but let's be clear, I know I was wrong. So 39 millimeters, it's fourteen point six thick, which is what everybody's kind of uh talking about in the comments. They th they people feeling that it's kind of thick. We had a a chance to kind of go hands on with it. I'm gonna write more about it tonight. I didn't watch. It's right there in the middle. It's uh significantly thicker than say my my 16570 Explorer two, forty-seven millimeters lug to lug, and it's a normal, it's the exact same functionality as the BB GMT. So it's a uh a flyer GMT with local jumping and instantaneous date on the hour hand. If you really want to compare it to something like an Explorer 2 or other 39mm Explorer 2s, it's 200 meters water resistance instead of 100. So there's some of your you know rationale for the thickness. You'll see it in the photos. Um uh so go back to the site and check for that story. But the way they've integrated the bezel and the crystal together does not feel like a black bay to me. It's much more there's a much higher level of finesse in the transition between the two versus the more vintage feel of the way that it's done in a black bay with like a box crystal. And it's weird because they were Tudor said that they they kind of are very consciously made some elements of the watch quite modern and some of them quite vintage, but not in the same space as a normal Black Bay. The uh loom plots and hands are much more matte than they are on pretty much any d other Black Bay. They're not metallic surrounds. And they use a uh they use a ceramic uh loom kind of blend. I didn't I don't have the full understanding of what this is, but uh it's nice and bright. I've got a loom shot, uh so it glows really nicely. I like the watch. It's like 3600 to 4000 depending on what strap you want. There's formulation of superluminova that's ceremized superluminova. Ming us
Cole Pennington es a luminar. Just ceramise anything these days. So this is kind of the watch that you've been asking for all along. I think that's Are
James Stacey you like happy with it or is i is this the answer? So I I I think it's an unfair characterization of what I've asked for in the past because I would want to dive GMT and this is basically the same as the 16570, which I already own. Uh I really like the watch. Uh I'm definitely on the fence as to whether or not I should try and figure out how hard they're gonna be to get one, but I don't think it wears poorly. It wears quite nicely. The bra on the bracelet's a bit too much for me, but I'm not a big bracelet guy, so that's not really a surprising opinion. I like it on the NATO. I like it on the they have a new strap that's rubber on one side and like uh uh fabric on the other. And the watch looks really good on that, but it adds bulk, right? Because it has a double pass where the the two layers of the strap have to sit on top of each other.
Danny Milton I do kind of think that this is a hyper-specific watch design. Like I don't think it has the like mass BB GMT appeal in the sense that I don't ever think that the Explorer 2 ever had the same appeals that GMT Master 2 did. Right. So like on the point of how hard will it be to get, of course I don't know. I mean I don't th I think I don't think it's going to be so hard for a while and then possible. I'm like on the I'm on the fence on this one. It doesn't it doesn't really move me when I look at it, but only because I don't think that this is sort of in my wheelhouse necessarily. I do think it's I would have liked it better if the loom plots didn't lean so heavily into this sort of it's not even f it's not faux patina either. It's almost like yellow. It's just its own color. Yeah, it's a color.
James Stacey It's like the 1655. Yeah it's almost exactly like it. It's almost on the creamy side, but it's a different shade than what faux tan loom looks like. It's not brown. It's it's a more of a yellow gold y tone almost. And and I'm not sure
Danny Milton that doesn't necessarily make it look super utilitarian. Yes. It really looks like a sports watch. It's gonna wear like a sports watch. That's why they call it exactly. I definitely prefer this one on a strap than I do on that on
James Stacey the bracelet. It's like a lot of steel on bracelet, you know? And I think you know, in my case, I think it would be great on a normal leather strap, keep it nice and close to your wrist Yeah. I'm I'm impressed by it. You know, I I I'll probably collect my thoughts in a more uh you know defined manner for uh for the story, the upcoming hands-on. But I I look I'm a huge fan of GMT, so I I just think it's I like sports watches, and I think this is a a good one and it gives it gives another alternative, but it's not the only GMT that Tudor brought out. We also have a a new forty-one millimeter BBGMT with like a root beer two tone coloration. How'd that one hit you guys? It f
Danny Milton elt in the hand and on the table like a really faithful recreation of a root beer Rolex, even though Rolex, I don't think they ever did a two-tone root beer in that kind of way, like in a vintage iteration, right? Those were always single-color bezels. But if Rolex were to do that, this would be what it would look like. On the wrist, I put it on. I don't think I can I can support a black bay GMT generally, but the case still feels pretty big and pretty thick. And I don't think anything about the design makes it feel any smaller. Um, but I still like it. I I prefer again, similar to the um the Black Bay Pro, I like it on a strap because I don't love the color of the two tone center the gold center links on the on the black bay bracelets, plus they don't really taper. But I think it's super handsome. It does exactly what you'd want that watch to do. And so yeah, I mean I was I'm I'm into it sort of at a
Cole Pennington high level. Uh yeah. I mean, am I a Tucson guy typically? No. Uh am I even a BB GMT guy? No. But here's the thing, like uh it doesn't matter what I think. It's more like all right, let's objectively look at this watch. I think it's a very charming, whimsical, kind of like, you know, 70s, 80s throwback thing. And it makes sense to extend the line in this direction. And I'm just trying to think of like a situation where I think that watch would just shine. And I would say something like um I don't know, like going bowling or going to the rollerblade uh roller derby. Yeah, roller derby. Skating ring. Something like um you know, like I don't know, like I would like to wear that watch in a setting that evoked the the seventies and eighties and so forth to me. Just wear it around me. I evoke the same. Yeah, exactly. Wear it around Jack. What did you think of
James Stacey it, Jack? Um I liked it. I mean, um
Jack Forster It's inoffensive. I mean like it's it's we already know what the B B G M T is largely. Yeah. It's uh B B G M T is uh It's a wa yeah, yeah. I mean it's it's support conceptually. I've never spent enough time with one personally to formulate like you know an experience based personal opinion but uh I mean I think it's great that it's there. I think that it's a uh it's a great complication for them. It makes makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And uh I think it's a handsome watch. I mean I understand the caveats some people have about the case dimensions and I don't know that going smaller is necessarily where some folks would have wanted them to go in terms of aspect ratio, you know, like height to diameter. But it's it's I I think it's gonna do just fine. Now we know that they can go smaller
James Stacey , which is actually very interesting to me. But they don't seem to be able to go thinner. I think the 5652's well, we know it's 7.8 or whatever millimeters thick. Uh so that that's an issue. You know, I think my my read on this watch, I don't I didn't even pick it up off the table. Like I don't like brown watches and I don't like two-tones, so it's a bit of like a perfect zero for me. Um, but if you wanted to make a one that had an entirely different vibe than the one I like quite a bit, the uh uh Pepsi BBGMT. They made the exact right call. You know, I would love to
Jack Forster look up the movement height um you know for the caliber that's inside the BBGMT because you know casing up diameter can be really, really, really flexible. I suspect that there may be at least some desire on the part of Tudor to use the somewhat aggressive aspect ratio and the sort of slab-sided design as a way of stylistically distinguishing themselves from Rolex.
Danny Milton It could be, for sure. I want to throw a quick wrench in here, quick, quick, before we move away from uh this watch slash tutor. The there's a new Black Bay Chrono also. Uh and I wanted to know where you guys a champagne dialogue. It looksoks good good.. Lo really I thought it looked great. I sometimes think that watch feels very aggressive on the sort of bun style strap they put it on. And again, very seventies. Very seventies, but it's it it's tough. It's tough on the wrist sometimes. I wonder where you guys stand on that watch generally and what you guys thought about that one. I want the white. I still love the white di
James Stacey al. Yeah, it's a refresh white dial that was like a little bit thinner, uh nicely legible, uh you know, easy to wear, but the truth, the r absolute like simple, fastest answer, if I was buying a tutor chronograph it'd be a uh heritage chrono blue. It's a good call. So pretty. Yeah. Been around for a long time. Yep. That's a hell of a watch. Uh you know, also a watch that is kind of wears big, but it works big. Like it you know, it it's a little on the thick side, it's a little long, lug to lug. Uh but I I like that watch a lot. It works on a ton of different straps. It's one of the few times where a striped NATO doesn't bug me. The sort of fabric strap they have with the blue, orange, white.
Cole Pennington How about you cool? You champagne dial? I'm I I don't like snowflake hands to begin with. Okay. But my issue is that like on a snowflake hand watch I, don't like mixing large circles. So the chronograph registers with snowflake registered for a while. I feel like I'm le
Jack Forster arning so much about my colleagues on this trip. Very complex taste. Very, very complex. Very complex. Multifaceted. Yep. Like onions. Like if somebody's if somebody onions have no faceted. If somebody'd offered to bet me ten bucks that Cole didn't like snowflake hands, I would have I would have been like, yeah, I'll tak
James Stacey e that bet. And like how wrong I would be. I don't I don't necessarily disagree with the idea on a um of snowflake hands on a chronograph are problematic. Yeah. It's just a little bit tough. Especially when you have a hour counter. Right. That's what
Jack Forster I'm saying. Like it it's a little bit too much going on for me. This is the I mean it's it's the it's the larger problem of whether or not um the chronograph functionality combined with uh the w the classic chronograph um you know subdial layout, if you combine that with dive watch hands, um it can be a little bit challenging. Absolutely.. And I mean people do it I mean Omega does it. Ye
James Stacey ah, yeah. All right, let's uh let's head over to Protect Philippe. I'm gonna mostly hand this over to Jack. I didn't get to go to this meeting, so I I'm excited to learn about these watches. Jack, they've got some uh pretty good look in Calatrava and a neat expression
Jack Forster Yes. So the two uh the the th there were a lot of line extensions. I it's like I don't know why, but I'm finding that expression just absolutely hilarious and I can't figure out. The more you say it, the more you're like, why is this something I say this often? Yeah. It's like saying novelties for new watches at trade shows. You know, you do it for about 15 years and all of a sudden you're like, why do words mean? What what is novelties even? Um, yeah, so the two new new watches at Paddock were uh both Calatravas. Um one is the annual calendar travel time, uh the 5326 G-001. So that's an annual calendar travel time watch, first time that paddock has ever put together those two complications. It has uh syringe hands, which I know bugs some people on paddocks, especially paddocks with classic classic complications, but I think it works here. It's got this beautiful textured dial. And, you know, one of the nice things about it is that it is a uh it is really a practical flyer GMT. And they've gotten rid of the uh pushers that were part of the you know the pilot uh dual time. Uh you can set the local time forwards or backwards in one hour jumps at the crown and the annual calendar stays synchronized as you cross midnight, but you can also set it back and it stay and it resynchronizes itself. And the change is very, very fast. It takes place over about an uh an 18-minute period. So what Paddock did was um, you know, and this is again them doing something really interesting technically that like most people won't notice or even care about. They just care about the result. But it was like a fairly difficult thing to do. So they re-engineered how the jumping mechanism works for their annual calendar in order to sh in order to make it possible for it to switch back and forth uh in synchrony with the um with the local time and in order to switch relatively quickly, you know, so that uh you know no matter when you're looking at it within a relatively short time frame at midnight. Yeah. It's it, you know, it's it's switched over. But and there's actually like you wouldn't have guessed it, but there's actually eight patent spending, you know, for this particular watch. And uh complicated thing. Yeah. We got a chance to look at a a big plastic with a call in the industry, a maquette, like a giant loose site model of how the complication works. And uh there's some really, really, really clever technical watchmaking going on in there. And I think Paddock, especially you know, like in the era of the hype watch, they probably don't get the credit that they deserve for really innovative technical watchmaking. But they talk about it, you know, more than Rolex does. Rolex does an awful lot of uh technical innovation that like it gets patented, it's in the watches. They barely communicate about it. If you ask, they'll tell you. But it's just like it's not, it's not their thing to be like, wow we changed the lift angle of the escapement. Uh and uh now we're getting uh you know, one point seven percent better efficiency out of the main spring barrel on
James Stacey average over a seventy hour power reserve. And yeah, this is just paddock being paddock in the same mode as the you know kind of piloty themed Cal Travel travel time that they put out, you know, five, six years ago, seven years ago now. I I like it. It's really casual. The time and date model doesn't scream Patek to me. I didn't I've only seen the images, so I don't want to be unfair. But the the annual calendar travel time I really like the way it looks in the images and in the in the display which we're sitting right next to while we're recording this. Yeah, it's uh you know this is another
Jack Forster example of how difficult it is to um and I'm you know I think we're all realizing this after two years of writing about watches that often we don't get it actually get a chance to see. Um but like the time and date model is in person, it feels much more quietly luxurious, it feels much more like a paddock than you would think from the photographs. The dial texture is handled really nicely. Uh the case dimensions are really, really fantastic. Um the case construction is really fantastic. You know, it feels like a very sort of like luxurious highfalutin take on making, you know, just a practical everyday watch. And I think it's going to attract a lot of interest.
Cole Pennington What I uh was curious about, Jack, when I first saw the watch, I uh thought, well what is this design based on? Like is there any historic design precedent for something that looks like From from Paddock Philippe?
Jack Forster Yeah. I mean certainly they've done they've done simple time and date watches with uh with Arabics all around. Certainly they've done watches with syringe hands in the past. I mean, this combination of sort of vintage adjacent design cues, you know, including the dial texture, which is kind of reminiscent of field watches and even pilot anti-magnetic pilots's watches. Like it looks a little bit like a soft di ironal. I I can't think of anything off the top of my head in their history that in it that sort of really anticipates this in a lot of the details. Um, you know, but that said, there's probably a lot of little things here and there. One thing that I should mention about the case construction, by the way, is that there's a uh actually a hobnail pattern engraved on the case flank. And it it looks like it stops at the lugs, but if you look really closely it doesn't. So the entire the round part of the case actually nestles into a recess cut into the lugs. And it's a it's a it's a it's much, much more complicated case construction. But it's like it's a little thing that you might might not see it at first, but it's it's something that you um you know it feels to me like one of those watches the more you find out about it the more you're you're the the more you're going to be glad that you got it like you're not setting yourself yourself up for like buyer's or morse like a very nerdy speci
James Stacey fic, thoughtful cas,ual watch. Yes, exact that that's exactly what it is. I think you might have sold me on them. I was kind of I was kind of bland. I I mean I really love any travel time patek. I just like seeing the skeletonized hand. Just
Jack Forster makes me happy whenever I see it. I mean I have to say like that the the annual calendar travel time is a technically super interesting watch. I mean eight patents associated with it, pr a practical tra super practical travel time watch with an annual calendar that you can switch back and forth back and forth at midnight is like that it's kind of the ultimate, you know, convenient. It's a flex. Literally. It's a flex, but it's also the kind of like the ultimate convenient traveler's watch. Like you don't have to worry about the date at the end of the month except for February. Um you can set it anytime you want. There's like no issues with actually, like traveling with it and using it. And um, you know, it's not like it's not a flashy watch at all. It's kind of the opposite of a flashy watch. It really feels like a practical traveler's watch. That said, even though it's intellectually less interesting, the one that I would want to wear everyy da is the simple time and date model. Yeah, I kinda dug
Danny Milton it, man. That's really interesting to hear. I I I think we might be on the same page again of not really digging that that time and date model. I I feel like
Cole Pennington I would because it's kind of military. It looks like a you know a thirties like with the uh the way the side of the case is engraved. That's like a a knob on you know a a magneto adjuster of something like it feels like I would, but like for me, you know, I'm not necessarily as well versed in high aerology like you are. So the 5196 P is the Patek Kalatrav that always drew me in. Right, right. And now when I'm seeing something that's like far more in the wheelhouse of like watches that I kind of am familiar with, it takes it off the pedestal and like brings it into the area that I'm
Danny Milton like, okay, well I know this. Yeah. It feels like Patek conforming to a design ideal that's be that's become popular over the last five, six, seven years from a very low end to a very high end. Like like you wanna you wanna uh Hamilton khaki field watching. I wasn't gonna say it, but you wanted to say Patrick.
James Stacey All brands make all sorts of watches that fall into these batches and and they do so for their customer base. And I think it's kinda rad that in some ways they've made something that has that aesthetic but would apply to a like would translate to someone who really loves their tech collection
Jack Forster . specific product categories. It's something that happens all the time in the design world, like it happens constantly in the design world, you know, these mixtures of high and low. And it's it's uh it's an accepted part of, you know, couture, but it's al it's also an accepted part of in the indust various industrial design idioms. So but but for some reason we resist it in fine watchmaking because we c we like, you know, brands should always play the hits. There should always be tangible connections to the past. But I sometimes feel like watch enthusiasts get angry if brands play anything other than the hits. Like like they're not allowed to do this kind of like cross-pollination with different uh design idioms. And um I respect Patterson.
Danny Milton That's an interesting point. It's almost like uh this is new for Patek Philippe, but it's and it's it's an old style design, but not in the DNA of Pisek Philippe, which is a very kind of intellectual idea
Jack Forster . When they came out with a pilot travel time, um, you know, I saw it and it was a that was a very divisive watch. It had these two like I'm such a fan of that watch. I remain such a fan of that watch. I love the smaller one in Rose Gold as well. It had those two Honkin Big pushers on the side. And they're like, What's Paddock doing? Like they stole the hands from Zenith, which is of course not true. But uh I ran into Terry Stern the year they introduced it, he was in And he looked at me and he said wearily, Yes, yes. You know how many people have said uh I hate it, I hate it, I hate it in the meetings, then on the way down they asked me, Can you allocate me one? I mean, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. This
Cole Pennington is kind of like a to me, a little bit like an aquanut. That's a really good comparison. Yeah. Because it has both toolish and also highology, and that's super popular. So
Danny Milton the numerals look like they might be very similar in style to the Aquanaut too, the Arabics. Yeah. Yeah. Oh that's a point. The way you've been explaining it, Jack, I'm kind of I've come around circle a bit. And uh and even you call. I mean I I can see now I wouldn't want a brand like Patek to think they can't go in this direction because we would say this is not the Patek way. Look, there are certain brands that are watches.
Jack Forster They go out of what enthusiasts perceive as their lane, even a tiny, tiny bit, you know, you get like fulminating fury on the internet. I mean, you know, Rolex is another example. They have but to change the proportions of a of uh like a submariner case by half a millimeter, and there's like a thousand comments saying Rolex has lost its way. You know, I mean the end is nigh. Yeah, there'
James Stacey s nothing new under the sun or in comments for sure. But uh yeah, on that note, I think that's probably the probably the episode. If you want to read more or learn more about any of these things, everything we spoken about, which is really only a sliver of some of the great stuff we saw today, is on the website now or will be in the next few hours. So just keep checking in. Thank you so much for listening. Obviously, if you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend. We can't ask for anything more. Jack, Danny, Cole, you're tired. You're probably hungry. You've got plans for the rest of the night. I really appreciate you guys coming up. This is great, James. Thank you
Jack Forster . Oh, sure. Like a lower floor admittedly. Into the basement. Into the bas
James Stacey ement. Thanks again for listening and for you guys for being on the show. And we'll have another episode for you. Roughweed this time tomorrow if you download it right when it comes out. Catch you later.