{"id":8055,"date":"2011-03-20T05:03:39","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T05:03:39","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-03-19T18:03:03","modified_gmt":"2011-03-19T18:03:03","slug":"Time-Warp--Watch-your-man-with-a-vintage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=8055","title":{"rendered":"Time Warp – Watch your man with a vintage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s cutting-edge men’s watchmakers are crafting timepieces with the bygone elegance of your grandfather’s ticker. Enter modern watchmakers, who are solving this conundrum with models that evoke bygone good taste and key moments in brand history, minus the repair costs. Often, these watches are just plain gorgeous\u2014worthy alternatives to heirlooms.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Asprey’s Vintage Regulator\u2014from the 300-something-year-old British luxury brand favored by royals and rock stars\u2014takes inspiration from the company’s 1930s regulator clocks. With a white gold face, blue hands and an alligator strap, it is masculine elegance personified. IWC Schaffhausen’s Portuguese Hand-wound 5454 dips into the company archives to revive an old line\u2014super-precision pocket watch-style wristwatches originally launched 70 years ago. The sapphire crystal front refracts light in such a way that the black face can take on a bluish cast, a nice effect for a watch that’s all about gentlemanly restraint without an overtly retro look. Meanwhile, Montblanc, IWC’s cousin in the Richemont luxury group, has rolled out its TimeWalker Large Automatic, a handsome stainless-steel watch with a pleasing hybrid design: old-school, no-nonsense simplicity with vaguely futuristic numerals that suggest “Battlestar Galactica.”<\/p>\n

You can’t get too far into the realm of new-old timepieces without encountering militaria. Vintage aviation has always made Bell & Ross tick, along with a flair for instant history. (The company was founded in 1992.) The BR Original 126\u2014part of the so-called Vintage Collection\u2014hearkens back to the days of B-17s over Midway, thanks to an intrepid design team that conducted extensive reconnaissance missions, researching watches worn by WWII-era aviators. Legibility is always an imperative at Bell & Ross, and large-type numerals at the “12” and “6” positions give these watches the feeling of cockpit instruments.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Collector Vintage Watches<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n