Even its launch was the ultimate display of quiet luxury. At last year’s Watches and Wonders trade show in Geneva, while everyone was losing their minds over Rolex’s Emoji watch, the brand also launched something else: the 1908 – its first brand-new collection in a decade.
Named after the year founder Hans Wilsdorf filed the name “Rolex” in London, this was an elegant dress watch inspired by a vintage model Rolex discovered from 1930. Make no mistake, this isn’t a slavish vintage reissue, it took the art-deco design cues – sans serif numerals complemented by the Breguet-style, or “pomme” hour hand – and modernised them to create a watch that seems both of the moment and timeless all at once.
Rolex even showed restraint in what was written on the dial. Rather than clutter it with model names, water resistance and whatever else, the dial, available in “intense” white and matte black, just has “Rolex, Geneve” under the crown at 12 o’clock, and “Superlative chronometer” curved around the sub dial at six. It’s subtle, sophisticated, and not a Submariner.
Rolex wasn’t the only brand to go against its own grain at the show. Patek Philippe did the same but in a reverse fashion, turning one of its most renowned dress watches into a sports watch, creating the most un-Calatrava Calatrava in the brand’s history. To many the Calatrava was, and remains, the ultimate dress watch. Since it first emerged in 1932 as the Ref.96, it has changed very little. It was not, as the many esteemed watch commentators would have you believe, designed by David Penney to save the company. David Penney is a Brit, an antiquarian horologist and illustrator and still alive today.
The Ref. 96, designed by the in-house team, was the first Patek Philippe to have a reference number, and was a symbol of the new streamlined company recently taken over by the Stern brothers – Jean and Charles. With its minimal, quiet luxury design, it set out the Sterns’ stall, defining – as author, historian and journalist Nick Foulkes says in his authorised biography of the brand – “precisely what a wristwatch should look like and the way it would continue to look throughout the twentieth century.”
Which is why it is surprising Patek Philippe decided to take this ür dress watch and turn it into a sporty roadster-style watch that definitely doesn’t go with a dinner suit. It’s evidently Patek’s bid to appeal to a younger clientele, with its stamped carbon-fibre weave dial and bold colour choices, but it could also be a symptom of something else.
“Ultimately this is a reaction to the boom and bust of prices for steel sports watches. The fact that prices are falling has put off a lot of speculative buyers, and the whole episode has left genuine collectors with a sour taste in their mouth and looking for areas of collectability that feel less fickle,” explains Christy Davis, founder of watch retail and market analysis site Subdial.
“For them, collecting has always been about passion, but over the past 24 months they’ve seen prices plunge due to an influx of speculative buyers and watch theft boom, to the point that they no longer feel comfortable wearing their watches in their day-to-day.” For Davis, this has translated into two different strategies for these two behemoths of the industry.
“The reaction has been slightly different for the two brands. For Rolex this meant reviving their dress watch offering, which has been left wanting over the past few years with little interest in Cellinis,” he says. “For Patek, who already have such a strong dress watch offering, it meant translating the Calatrava into a model that might appeal more to collectors that had previously only been interested in sports models. For both the goal is the same: to give collectors that previously bought sports models an alternative to get excited about and offer a place to collect that is sheltered from the price fluctuations and risks that we’ve seen in their flagship sports models.”
It could also explain why collectors and connoisseurs are turning to brands that are less noticeable, more discerning. The likes of Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and, to a certain extent, outliers like Hublot have dominated the scene for some time, thanks in part to an older generation beholden to labels and the fact that these brands are the ultimate signifiers of how much money you have. Just look at the proliferation of name checks in rap and hip-hop lyrics over the last twenty years. It is why independent brands are gaining traction and names such as Tudor are becoming more prominent in the mainstream.
Tudor, a brand that simultaneously has presence but also flies slightly under the radar in true quiet luxury style, has come a long way from being referred to as Rolex’s little brother. In 2021 it completed building work on a manufacture in Le Locle – the first premises to have its name above the door in the brand’s 97-year history. And what a premises it is. A place where traditional watchmaking is enhanced by cutting-edge technology. There is even a testing floor “staffed” by robots that runs 24 hours a day.
Tudor is inhabiting a space right now that is slowly being deserted. The likes of Breitling and Omega, who used to retail in the £1,500 to £5,000 bracket, are now upwards of that, while its other bedfellows are sometimes guilty of using off-the-peg movements such as Sellitas and ETAs and then charging a premium. Without changing its prices much, Tudor has quietly gone about the business of replacing third-party movements with ones from its next-door neighbour in Le Locle, Kenissi, a movement manufacturer started by Tudor in 2010 that launched its first movement in 2015 and is now 20 percent owned by Chanel, to whom it supplies movements.
Quiet luxury is all about championing discernment over brash displays of wealth; making a choice to opt for lesser-known brands rather than those lavished with logos. It works with watches as well as clothing. Do you want to be the fourth person around the boardroom table wearing a Submariner, or the one wearing a Rolex that people can only recognise if they look closely?