WRIST ASSESSMENT HERITAGE WATCHES
Combining contemporary precision and hardiness with the enduring appeal of watchmaking’s golden age, these models are the very definition of timeless style
Watch brands have a complex relationship with the past. A luxury watch, which is often powered by nothing more modern than a coiled spring, is by its nature anachronistic. Watch companies depend on designs penned between the 1930s and 1980s, drawing on the creations that made them household names when digital displays didn’t exist. This tactic is so successful for the likes of Tag Heuer and Breitling that even newer brands evoke the same aesthetic.
Such veneration of the past really gathered steam in the early 2010s, when the market for vintage watches began to explode. In the decade previous, product design was more forwardlooking – limited-edition revivals of archive models were rare, and as a result, many watches of the 2000s look comparatively ungainly. But they still traded on centuries of expertise, and are a useful reminder that there is still a need for companies to innovate. Banks of technicians tweak mechanical movements to new levels of precision; teams of engineers master new materials that enable today’s watches to look and feel like those of yesteryear, but run better, for longer.
This kind of innovation has also given rise to timepieces that could only exist here and now: the hi-tech showpieces of Richard Mille, or the intricate collaborations between Hublot and creatives such as Richar
