Category: STRUCTURAL – Top Story

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Hands-On – Panerai Radiomir Quaranta 40mm

Panerai Radiomir Quaranta Wrist Shot

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.

Richard Mille and Pro Cyclist Mathieu van der Poel Put a Quarter-Million Dollar Watch In Serious Risk of Destruction

Richard Mille RM 67-02 Ultra Flat watch

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.

Podcast – Conversations E19 – Rikki From Scottish Watches

Scottish Watches Logo

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.

Podcast – Insights E37 – I Fell Into The Rolex Black Hole

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.

Swifty-Fathoms, Swatchpain – How The Nicknames of the Swatch x Blancpain Fifty-Fathoms Mock The Swatch Group

Swifty Fathoms

Collectively naming a watch has become a way to induce its significance as an object of popular culture. Most watch nicknames are affectionately playful; consider Seiko’s Shogun, Grand Seiko’s Snowflake, Omega’s Speedy, or Rolex’s sugary soda pop GMTs. But when it came to the SWATCH x Blancpain Fifty-Fathoms, the proposed nicknames seemed, if not exactly unaffectionate, certainly devised to cast some measure of disdain onto the thing.

Hands On – The Panerai PAM914

PAM914 Panerai

Panerai releasing the PAM914 is like the Rolling Stones playing “Satisfaction.” It was just an undeniably dead-center kind of watch, the one you might have sent out to space to represent Panerai to aliens. It’s the Panerai that didn’t have some feature you wished was or wasn’t there. Here’s why this watch is the perfect Panera.

Why We Built The Watch Space App

Without the Watchville app, the global watch community no longer had a central hub, an intersection through which much of this community’s endless output would pass all day every day so that the siloing effects of digital life didn’t divide our community the way it has divided nearly every community I can think of over the past decade or so. This is why you’ll find The Watch Space app is so inclusive.