I think having lived through the worst of the AIDS crisis as a therapist, having lost the love of his life to AIDS, and then having dedicated so much of his time to AIDS advocacy (during the Regan administration, no less) would make a realist out of anyone.
TickIQ is a watch collecting app that is trying to build a community around its social media feed. Will it succeed?
Grokking mechanics to some degree was fundamental to achieving the horological high, “the quieter form of fascination.” Promoting this state of mind, I will argue, should be at the heart of the Swiss watch industry. I believe this message to the industry is implicit in Lederer’s philosophy.
This was Panerai’s strategy in 2025, and the result is an update to the core 44mm Luminor Marina, the exact model that sits at the center of the expansive Panerai catalog. For the Rolex-heads out there, this update is like when the Crown gently updates the Submariner. The main difference is that when Panerai does the equivalent, watch journalists don’t start running down the halls of Watches and Wonders waving their hands yelling to their video team, “Roll the cameras now!”
I wore my Panerai Submersible to ride the Ducati XDiavel V4 thinking it’d be fun, maybe a little clever, but what I didn’t see coming was the deeper synergy between these two products.
With it’s new ambassador, a cat named Choupette, Hublot is showing all of us how to loosen up and playfully embrace loud luxury.
It’s a dress watch, full stop. Yes, mine is rated to 50m of water resistance (previous versions were marked at 30m, much to the chagrin of forum-dwellers who like to bitch about nothing remotely important), but it has, and will always have, a leather strap, so it’s not for swimming or showering or anything wet. It’s just 10mm tall, elegantly appointed, and the ever-present leather strap goes great with dressy attire. Again, this is a dress watch, and even the lovely sales-dude in Milan said so.
But it struck me as a big deal anyways, because for the longest time the relationship between cycling and watches has been nearly non-existent. Back in the day you didn’t see Bartali or Eddy Merckx sporting a watch or a Swiss endorsement. Hinault or Hincappe, no. Even the endorsement-heavy Lance Armstrong didn’t land anything from a watch company. It shows an incredible lack of imagination, really. Over the years Tissot has flirted with cycling as a timekeeper. The unremarkable Festina brand back in the 1990s had a cycling team that kicked some ass in the mountains. More recently, Tudor sponsors an eponymous team with Swiss cycling champion Fabien Cancellara as director. But on the whole, cycling and watches have not really consummated their relationship.
While I was away from BTD, I acquired two neo-vintage Rolex Subs. One is a two-tone 16803 from 1984 I got in a bizarre cash deal. It doesn’t glow, as the tritium has burnt through it’s half life a couple times. 1984 was the first year of the two-tone Sub, so eventually this will be a significant watch for collectors. The other Rolex Sub is a perfectly ghosted 16800 from 1981, making it a “transitional Sub,” which has a sapphire crystal and the quick-set date, but the old-school matte dial of the earlier 1680s. As my colleague, friend and well-known Sub-fanatic Greg Bredosian says, “That’s peak Sub right there.”
Is SWATCH’s BIOCERAMIC anything more than a petrolium-based plastic? Find out in this episode as Allen shares his investigation into this divisive material, its history, its current context, its chemical makeup, and even an email about it from a SWATCH representative.