The Fourth Wheel, Issue 58

Only Watch 2023 Special: The Good, The Boring and The Unbelievable

Hello and welcome back to the Fourth Wheel, the newsletter that just has to ask: would you find these words more appealing if you were reading them in Mykonos?¹ I was going to review some Black Bays this week, but then Only Watch announced its watches and I was hooked. That review will come next week, along with some thoughts on the Alinghi sailing Pelagos pieces as well. For now, enjoy an epic-length dissection of Every Single Only Watch Watch. I’m just sorry I couldn’t include pictures of them all - look here, memorise them, then read!

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First, a special offer for paid subscribers to The Fourth Wheel. This November will see the return of the WatchPro Salon to The Londoner hotel (guess where that is!). It takes place over two days from November 10-11, will be full of watch brands and is generally a fun day out for the horologically obsessed. WatchPro has just announced that early-bird tickets are on sale, but I am pleased to say that readers of TFW can benefit from an additional 10 per cent discount. Scroll down to the bottom (or, you know, lovingly read every word) to find the link.

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Dropping sixty-odd (very odd, in some cases) new watches in a single day is officially Too Much for us all to deal with. I tore through the press releases, Instagram posts and official blurbs like an eight year old left alone with his or her eggs on Easter Sunday. Then, surrounded by foil wrappers and with a face smeared with chocolate², I started the serious business of judging them, one by one. I can’t give you 62 individual write-ups, because it would be far too long and I’d lose my mind, but I’ve tried to at least mention them all.

Let’s start on a positive note. I think Only Watch is great for the industry. I know they’re one-offs destined for the vaults of mega-collectors, I know the sums of money bear no real relation to the watches sold when it’s for charity, and I am open to the argument that the industry could do more for charity the rest of the time, rather than going all-out every two years,³ but having dozens of brands work up something crazy every now and then is fun for us all to watch.

Every Only Watch has a suggested colour theme - the last two were yellow and baby blue - that brands are encouraged to include in some way. This years was rainbow, and the results were predictably full-on. In the ‘explosion in a paint factory’ category we have… Bell & Ross, Czapek, Gronefeld, Jacob & Co, Jaquet Droz, Lederer, Louis Moinet⁴ and Maurice Lacroix⁵. The Gronefeld mandala-dial is by far the prettiest - let’s call it a controlled explosion - but I am not on board with the two-colour salmon-skin strap.

Gronefeld 1941 Principia Mandala

At the other end of the spectrum, you have the brands that flatly refuse to engage with the technicolour theme - like people who turn up at fancy dress parties⁶ just wearing their normal clothes. Tor me these split into two further camps; those where I will forgive the lack of effort because they’ve made a bloody great watch, and those that come across like absolute squares and need to be force-fed tequila⁷ until they shed enough inhibitions to do something amusing. In the first group: Ateliers de Chronometrie, Moritz Grossmann, and Andersen Geneve. I really, really like that Andersen Geneve in particular, and it gets away with ignoring the dress code by looking absolutely irresistible.

Andersen Geneve Jumping Hours

In the ‘accidentally turned up at a carnival in a grey suit, tequila for you’ corner: Blancpain, Carl F. Bucherer, Speake-Marin and Piaget. Guys: try harder. A blue dial? Stop press: a blue and green dial? Wonders will never cease. I was going to tag Chopard with the same criticism but it escapes for two reasons: it’s a beautiful watch to start with, and it has a dial that puts me in mind of pistachio gelato, and anything that puts me in mind of pistachio gelato cannot be bad.