The global watch industry is full of contradictions. On one hand, it regularly enables innovation and quickly adopts new and cutting-edge materials. On the other, the basic nuts and bolts of mechanical timekeeping have not changed much for more than half a century.
Today, one of the hottest trends in watchmaking is modern-vintage, which combines modern manufacturing processes with designs reminiscent of the horological past.
When the global economic crisis of 2007 hit, it signalled the end of the “crazy” era of increasingly out-there watch designs. Buyers began to gravitate to more conservative and classic timepieces in the hope that they would not go out of fashion – and hold their value for longer. They were simpler, smaller and appealed to this desire for a retro aesthetic.
Now, modern watches with vintage designs are arguably the most popular category in the sector. The combination of styles evocative of a simpler time, but utilising modern methods and materials – and a warranty, of course – is compelling. For example, Hamilton just introduced a new hand-wound piece at 38mm, the Khaki Field Mechanical, which has already sold out of its first production run.
“Hamilton has a history of making innovative and fine watches: the first digital watch [the Pulsar Time Computer] and the first production electric watch [the Ventura]. This history is a source of inspiration for us,” says Sylvain Dolla, the company’s president and CEO. Other brands leading the vintage-inspired trend are Montblanc, Zenith, Zodiac, Blancpain and Tudor, to name but a few.
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Several “boutique” brands have been making watches powered by refurbished vintage movements for years. The leader in the field is Armand Nicolet, whose CEO, Rolando Braga, decided to make use of vintage movements in modern limited editions after discovering a stockpile of mothballed movements in the factory after he took over the brand.
“We have been doing this for more than 20 years,” Braga says of the high-end refurbishment scheme. “We replace the mainspring and the hairspring. If we didn’t do this, we wouldn’t be able to make them better. The watches with vintage movements we produce will work for more than a century if you take care of them.”
Based in Colorado, US, Vortic Watches buys vintage pocket-watch movements wherever and whenever it can, and puts them in 3D-printed titanium cases. RT Custer, the company’s co-founder, recently made a one-off piece from a 1920 South Bend movement, itself originally produced for Harley-Davidson, which includes the original dial and hands.
Typically, the watch companies doing this work clean the movements thoroughly, replace any damaged parts (either with new parts or with existing stock), change out the mainspring and hairspring, and add shock absorption. Richard Paige, an independent watchmaker living in Hawaii, makes one-of-a-kind watches using reworked vintage movements. “These movements are from the golden era of watchmaking: American pocket-watch movements made between 1890 and 1930,” he says. “If you compare apples to apples, then most of these movements are far superior to most modern movements.”
The interest in and sale of vintage timepieces has taken off over the past few years, partly driven by the rise of online second-hand retailers including the “grey market” of unauthorised online sales from websites such as Chrono24. Buying vintage offers some real advantages: prices are more competitive; the selection is wider; not everyone has the watch you are wearing; and, if purchased carefully and in good condition, can be a serious investment. (One of the most famous vintage watches was the Paul Newman Rolex Cosmograph Daytona that sold for $17.8 million (£12.5m) in 2017.)
“I think pre-owned watches will be bigger than new watches in five to seven years,” says Danny Govberg, CEO of WatchBox, an online pre-owned marketplace and app launched in 2017. Headquartered in the US, Hong Kong and Switzerland, it has $100 million in private equity to be invested over the next 18 months to strengthen its digital strategy. “My belief is that pre-owned is entering its golden age, because the technology and the transparency is here.” WatchBox hopes to reach annual revenues of more than $200 million – a drop in the $62.5 billion global watch market’s ocean.
Celebrated clothes designer John Varvatos once stated that style was timeless, that it endured and transcended generations. Fashion, on the other hand, was of the moment. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that vintage – both the authentic and inspired-by – has come into its own. Again.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
