Zach Kazan

I love it when a little sub-genre in watches emerges as an area of near obsession. I’m sure some of my fellow hyper fixated readers know exactly what I’m talking about. This happens in other areas of our lives as well, and it might be easier to identify across more mainstream interests. For example, there was that month during the pandemic where I decided, quite compulsively, to watch and rewatch every David Fincher film, plus his many commercials (

Straum has announced a new permanent addition to their popular Jan Mayen Collection of sports watches, the all new Frozen Metal Titanium. While at a quick glance you could be forgiven for thinking this is simply an iterative redeployment of a proven sports watch formula, there are actually a handful of notable upgrades when you start looking at it a little more closely. Like just about every other watch Straum makes, it takes inspiration from the natural landscape and a spirit of outdoor exploration, but here we also have some additional refinements and hints at potential new aesthetic directions that will have many enthusiasts curious about the brand’s future.

Anoma has announced the latest version of the A1, their watch with a unique triangular shape that brand founder Matteo Violet Vianello says was inspired by a free-form table designed by Charlotte Perriand in the 1950s. There have been a variety of derivations of the original A1 design since it launched, and it’s been a surprisingly versatile canvas for a number of different ideas and points of reference. The thing I like most about the Anoma project, even more than the shape of the watch itself, which I like a lot, is that those ideas largely come from outside the watch world. This industry is filled with references to its own past, and sometimes new watches feel like fist bumps acknowledging and celebrating, well, themselves. It’s refreshing to see a brand celebrating an artistic world that extends beyond watches – it really expands the aperture on what’s possible in terms of design.

As Christopher Ward has grown in stature in recent years, it’s their most ambitious watches that have resonated the most with me, personally. Nothing against the Sealanders, Tridents, and the like, but the brand has really become interesting to me with watches like the Bel Canto and the Loco, and even the more artistic, design forward stuff like the

This year’s edition of the Windup Watch Fair in Chicago is in the books. As always, the Chicago show played host to a huge variety of brands that covered every imaginable genre of watch, price points up and down the spectrum, and truly offered something for every taste. And as is the case with every Windup these days, it was an opportunity for many brands to debut brand new watches for an audience hungry for something special. There was no shortage of limited edition releases and entirely new watches timed for unveiling at Windup this year, as well as a bunch that launched recently and were getting their first public look.

Nodus and Raven have collaborated once again for their fourth edition of their popular TrailTrekker watch, a sporty GMT with EDC design codes. This new release is perhaps the most EDC oriented yet, with the prominent use of forged carbon fiber front and center on the dial and bezel, as well as lots of decorative lume. It also represents the first time a TrailTrekker has crossed the thousand dollar mark, but this one feels like it’s a step up in terms of its ambition, and seeing all four on the Nodus website side by side, it’s clear the two brands are building out a product line that can be taken in a number of different directions going forward.

We’re about half a year removed from the release of Toledano & Chan’s b/1.3r, certainly the brand’s most ambitious release to date with a solid gold dial, subtly updated case construction, and their first “Swiss Made” designation. They’ve followed up that launch with their first collaboration with The Horologly Club, the Hong Kong based watch collecting community (which actually has members all over the world, including T&C cofounder Alfred Chan), just announced this morning. The new limited edition, which they’ve called the Breutalist, takes on a familiar form with some very specific design codes that fans of the brand will likely welcome.

It’s a question I ask myself every year around this time. It’s partly rhetorical. We all know, somehow, what a summer watch is. It conjures something in the mind’s eye of a watch enthusiast that is colorful and probably on the sporty side. It looks best when sun drenched, on the beach or a patio or a hiking trail. Or maybe even with brightly glowing dial furniture in a dark movie theater on the hottest summer afternoon, when you just need to be in an air conditioned space for a few hours.

What do you think of when you think of Hanhart? I think it’s fair to say that for most of us, the watches that come to mind immediately are very distinctly

TAG Heuer has released a new three-way collaboration and a sequel of sorts in their new Carrera Chronograph made in partnership with Team Ikuzawa with a design assist from Bamford. Team Ikuzawa is a legendary Japanese motorsport team founded by driver Tetsu Ikuzawa and continues today under the stewardship of his daughter Mai Ikuzawa as […]