Zach Kazan

We love quartz watches at Worn & Wound. For many of us, they were the first watches we ever wore, and represent a foundation of enthusiasm that has stretched on for years. There are many, many facets to quartz, and if you think of quartz watches simply as “affordable” alternatives to mechanical, you’re missing out on a lot of history, unique design, and special movements that simply aren’t possible with a mechanical caliber. One of my favorite little quartz rabbit holes is the output of traditional, high-end Swiss brands during the earliest days of the technology, leading up into the period often referred to as the “quartz crisis.” It’s fascinating to look back and see how these brands handled such a major shock to a centuries old industry, and the quartz watches produced by the most storied Swiss brands during this period are almost always significant, carrying with them design attributes that effectively distinguish them from traditional mechanical watches.

In recent years, the Windup Watch Fair has played host to a number of notable debuts from some of our favorite watch brands. It’s a great time to launch a watch, after all. With hordes of watch enthusiasts descending on Chicago’s Venue West over the weekend, brands had a captive audience to launch splashy new releases. Christopher Ward, a Windup mainstay for years, keenly understands this, and jumped at the chance this weekend to debut colorful new versions of The Twelve in a new 38mm case size. The enthusiast favorite size rounds out a varied collection of integrated bracelet sports watches that have driven a lot of interest in the brand since they launched a little over a year ago, and Christopher Ward, as always, is having some fun with color in this new batch.

The latest from Furlan Marri pays tribute to a classic watch design while adding just enough of a twist to make it feel contemporary. The new Disco Volante takes a circular, flying saucer-like case that first became popular in the 1930s as its starting point, and tweaks the formula slightly. Thinking about Furlan Marri’s previous work and the design language they’ve established, the Disco Volante makes a lot of sense in their ongoing project of updating classic Art Deco ideas, and the watch really fits into the current moment as well, which has seen shaped cases and unusual designs pulled from the past and brought up to date for new audiences.

If you choose to, it’s really easy to look around the watch industry and throw up your hands in frustration that there are no new ideas. Even as we move through a period of what many hardcore enthusiasts agree is a new Golden Age of inventiveness in the affordable watch space, there’s a lot of evidence that many are playing it safe. Brands both big and small, at all price points, tend to revert to proven formulas that they know will work for them. The idea, after all, is to sell watches, so you can’t really blame anyone for deciding to lean on past performance in the hopes that it will predict future success. But that makes a brand like Lebond that much more interesting. They’re not leaning on any proven formulas, and not only are they trying something genuinely different, but brand owner Asier Mateo is actually relinquishing control of the design of each piece year in and year out.

Lorier surprised us at the Windup Watch Fair in Chicago last week with a new release dubbed the Rambler, a collaboration with Indiana based Janus Motorcycles

I’ve never been to Venice, so I’m ill equipped to comment on how accurate the representation of St. Mark’s Square is on the dial of the new Venezianico Redentore Bellanotte, perhaps the brand’s most ambitious watch to date. What I am prepared to say, however, is that the new watch is impressive, charming, and full of little surprising details. And while it’s ultimately not a watch I’d personally wear day to day, it’s full of individual elements that I really love, and I’ve come away from it genuinely impressed at what Venezianico is capable of producing at what frankly feels like a made up price point. The fact that this watch comes in at under $1,000 is honestly kind of insane.

This past weekend marked the 55th anniversary of the moon landing, unquestionably one of the greatest achievements in the history of humanity. When Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface, it changed the world forever. We all know the story of Omega, the Speedmaster, and how that chronograph became the “moonwatch,” but there are plenty of other brands and watches that have attempted to jump on the moon landing and NASA bandwagon in some way. Some of these are successful, some of them are not. But one series of releases that I’ve always thought of as genuinely pretty charming are G-SHOCK’s NASA themed watches, the fifth iteration of which was recently unveiled.

Watch collectors who have been in the hobby for awhile know there’s a certain pleasure in looking in the watch box, or across the flat surfaces in your home where watches are scattered, whatever, and seeing a group of watches that make sense. If you believe a collection is a reflection of your personality and taste, it follows that the watches in the collection will be thematically linked in some way, and just kind of work together. Instead of a watch box that has exactly one watch from each key genre, you see a box of watches that defy easy categorization, but somehow are obviously the product of a core collecting philosophy. I don’t know if I’m quite there yet, but I’m getting closer. But there’s still one watch in my collection that’s a clear outlier, one that will never quite fit. It’s the runt of the litter, the redheaded step-child, and ugly duckling, all wrapped into one. My Seiko SRPG17 “Land Tortoise” just doesn’t belong.

It’s officially Space Watch Season. We just saw G-SHOCK release their latest collaborative release with NASA, and now Bulova returns with a new version of their popular Lunar Pilot, this one in a “blood moon” colorway. While the Lunar Pilot doesn’t have “first watch on the moon” pedigree like the venerable Omega Speedmaster, it does have its own legitimate spacefaring history. In 1971, Dave Scott, mission commander of Apollo 15, wore a similar Bulova Chronograph when he became the seventh man to walk on the moon. Unlike the Speedmaster, which was conceived originally as a racing chronograph, the Bulova on Scott’s wrist was designed specifically for use in space, specifically for timing related to critical life support systems.

I think it might surprise some longtime readers and friends to learn that I kind of love the Olympics. I’m not the biggest sports fan and generally scoff at watches tied to athlete ambassadors and endorsements, but the sheer spectacle of the Olympics gets me everytime. I won’t sit here and say that I’m some great expert on competitive swimming or track and field, but without fail, every four years, I get drawn into the inherent drama of it all. So I’m looking forward to this weekend, when the Paris games begin in earnest, and following along as much of it as I can. And while it’s not the reason I’ll be tuning in, I’m mentally prepared for an absolute onslaught of Omega advertising and branding to blanket the telecast.