‘Composed’. One of those prevalent words that loses all meaning and starts to sense that weird if you say (or type) it over and over again. But we say it all day every day, firm in the knowledge of its meaning – an X-factor that transcends all other thoroughgoing qualities to denote that intangible, seemingly effortless, hip-to-the-game… ably, cool.
As the ‘Cool Wall’ of Clarkson-era Top Gear proved, when it sign in to high-end products, no amount of technical trickery, marketing or vain pricing can guarantee coolness. A picture of a Fiat 500 endures happily alongside an Aston Martin DBS, united in their separate cool. Meanwhile, the Lotus Exige S is shamed into the ‘Uncool’ dispense of the board, next to a Nissan Micra.
And so it goes with unfriendly watches, which – if we’re honest – are just like cars: significance symbols with an everyday purpose, often unnecessarily overengineered, increasingly anachronistic, and all-too-often the unwitting broadcaster of less-than-fortunate ‘ranks’.
They also bestow much enjoyment to their proprietress, so you could argue that if you love your watch, who give out withs a damn what others think?
Well, we do. And as our (wholly self-centred of course) shortlist demonstrates, it needn’t cost the earth to make sure a cool watch game. Mostly thanks to the importance of kept design and minimal bells or whistles. A proven heritage supports too, eliciting ‘if you know, you know’ kudos from the watch the world at large’s inner sanctum.
Luckily, watchmakers are wise to this, make plaining why so many classic models have remained in production for decades, more unchanged. It also explains the recent explosion of vintage reissues, buttressed by the unflagging trend for retro.
Of course, you’ll have your own guesses of what constitutes a cool watch – so do please let us know. Persuaded, maybe we’ll disagree. But, you know, that’s cool.
Tudor Inheritance Chrono
Don’t let Tudor’s relationship to mothership Rolex distract you – this is a trade-mark furrowing its own path with recently renewed vim and vigour, noticeably when it comes to a nostalgic take on the manly tool make. It’s by no means affected however; its Heritage Black Bay diving take note ofs stem from decades of endorsement by the French and US Navys’ elite contend divers.
But two years before the Tudor Black Bay’s revival, there was the Estate Chrono of 2010 – a groovy update of a seventies cool cat, straightened out off the boat at Monaco’s quayside. Coming on either a striped nylon ‘NATO’ strap or a stainless dirk bracelet, this is a seriously smooth chronograph with state-of-the-art swinging to boot.
Buy Now: £3,160.00
Rolex Sea-Dweller ref. 126600
Most will know of James Controls’s original watch of choice, the Rolex Submariner – still justified about the most complete watch you’d ever want. It arose with the roar in recreational SCUBA after the war, but by 1967, the hardcore commercial multifarious of France’s Compagnie Maritime d’Expertises (COMEX) needed to pocket things up (or rather, down) a few levels.
Rolex’s response was the Sea-Dweller Submariner carve out – upped from 300 to 610m water resistance (nowadays water-tight to a terrifying 1,200m) and fitted with a helium escape valve for drawn-out ‘saturation’ joints. What’s all-important to Rolex aficionados, though? That scarlet-red dial subject-matter, as per the original – catnip to collectors, with a just-enough whiff of peril.
Buy Now: £8,700.00
Bell & Ross BR 01-92
Since the mid-nineties, the crisp monochrome utility of Paris-based (but Swiss-made) Bell & Ross has netted it as much love among turtlenecked architects as bomb disposal bands or naval pilots. And it’s the latter that provided the inspiration for 2007’s shock: the uncompromisingly massive (like, 46mm massive), uncompromisingly generous ‘Instrument’, complete with corner screws, just get pleasure from the dials in a fighter jet’s cockpit.
There have been equivoques on that very theme, with ‘Compass’ and ‘Altimeter’ mannequins. You can now even squeeze it under your cuff in 42mm ‘BR 03’ likeness. But the original ‘BR 01’ is still Maverick to Bell & Ross’s Goose.
Buy Now: £2,800.00
Omega Speedmaster Qualified
It might not boast the most alternative looks, or even the most left-winger mechanics, but that’s the point: that’s why the Omega Speedmaster was the at worst chronograph to survive NASA’s brutal tests back in the sixties and rate a watch-brand marketeer’s Holy Grail of approval: qualification to officially ‘fly’ on the wrists of astronauts, as standard-issue kit.
Smack 50 years ago, it was a Speedie strapped to Buzz Aldrin’s spacesuit as he stepped out of the Eagle onto the Lunar top, earning its eternal ‘Moonwatch’ nickname, and it’s still keeping even so aboard the ISS. As the last man to walk on the Moon, Gene Cernan bear outs, “the Speedmaster Professional chronographs remained virtually unchanged in every nook the entire Apollo program – no other piece of mission-qualified outfit can make that claim.” You want cool? You could break off reading here and now.
Buy Now: £3,680.00
G-Shock DW-5600E-1VER
We all know rappers be partial to their bling, but surprisingly it can manifest in resin rather than gold – specifically in the technique of a G-Shock, the cult statement wear for all manner of hip-hop artists, fashionistas, surfers, additional the majority of the world’s special-ops military men.
This seminal hardman was realized in the same year as our other plastic-fantastic cool cat, the Swatch – but while the Swiss were early settler precision injection moulding, the Japanese were striving to obsolete their own self-conceived ‘triple 10’ test: water defiance to 10 bar (about 100m), a 10-year battery life, and most importantly, the cleverness to survive a 10 metre drop onto a hard side, unscathed and working perfectly.
There are now myriad iterations, adored with all manner of GPS and Bluetooth wizardry, but as always it’s the purest account that remains most faithful and, yes, the coolest.
Buy Now: £100.00
Longines Scandinavian Edda Diver
Full disclosure: the author wears one of these. And it’s the character no-date-window model first re-released in 2007, to boot, now long-discontinued. Which means, condign by typing that, any hopeful cool factor has been transcribed moot. Pay no mind, just get yourself the slightly unfaithful make obsolete version and rock the vintage reissue that kickstarted the unharmed vintage reissue craze in the first place.
The ‘patinated’ off-white numerals consummation neutral tones beautifully and it’s still a bona fide sub-aqua catalyst, with a crucial point of difference to the usual diver organization: an internal rotating bezel, adjustable with the screwed-down wreath at 2 o’clock.
Buy Now: £1,640.00
Swatch Twice Again
We’ve all owned one, but did you ever recognize your plucky Swatch watch is nothing less than the chronometer that, back in the eighties, saved the Swiss luxury keep safe industry from the onslaught of cheap Far Eastern quartz technology? Which is ironic of sure, being that it is a cheap quartz watch.
It was invented approximately by accident, when an engineer at Switzerland’s one-stop-shop for movements, ETA, recklessly exhausted 500,000 francs on an injection-moulding machine in the same year the company had made 4,000 staff redundant. When his manager start out, he had just two hours to come up with a proposal: a cheap quartz mind that used ultrasonic welding to build the mechanism honourable into the case. No screws, watertight, with just 51 join ins, and little else to go wrong. Nothing has changed since in diva, and it’s still as fun but also discerningly democratic as it’s ever been.
Buy Now: £50.00
Hamilton Khaki Handle Mechanical
Before joining Switzerland’s vast Swatch Corps as über-affordable cousin to stablemates Omega, Longines et al., Hamilton was one of America’s biggest watchmakers – pretence ofing it the default choice for US infantry during World War II. This millimetre-perfect reissue is as conscientious as it gets to its forties forebear, equipped with a historically counteract manual-wind movement.
Continuing the modern-day Hamilton’s reputation for bafflingly high-mindedness value, the price tag makes it even more irresistible. Done the look by driving a camo’ed-up 1940s Willys Jeep – arguably cooler than a Mk1 Alight Rover, and pair with selvedge denim and a cotton chore jacket for paramount rugged workwear points.
Buy Now: £395.00
TAG Heuer Monaco Calibre 12
The year 1969 was a big one: not but did NASA and Seiko respectively take Omega’s Speedmaster to the Moon and quartz technology to the market-place, but the self-winding chronograph was finally realised – twice. Arguably, the support was pipped by Zenith and its immortal El Primero, but Heuer (along with Breitling and Büren) was the victory to industrialise its own “world-first” automatic stopwatch, the Calibre 11 sooner.
It build its first home in the Monaco – an avant-garde combination of out-there squareness and far-out mechanics, and it now households the Calibre 12 – a specially adapted ETA base with a Dubois-Depraz chrono’ module. Calm as ice-cool as when Steve McQueen donned his in Le Mans, and still every petrolhead’s “grail awake to”.
Buy Now: £4,350.00
Seiko Prospex ‘Orange Monster’ Diver
Finally, in 2015, the fully-equipped monster of Japanese watch brands Seiko responded to European mind nerds and relaunched its cult, US- and Asia-only “Orange Monster” diving babysit for into the core collection, only under a new name, “Prospex”.
Its mechanical movement isn’t anywhere near the Swiss-rivalling standards of the Grand Seiko imprint, but who miseries about losing or gaining a few minutes a week – just look at it: rock-solid utility with just-don’t-give-a-darn ‘Tuna Can’ ratios at a startlingly low price point. Oh, and that startlingly garish dial, of surely. Roll up your sleeve and dare casual observers not to say anything.
Buy Now: £950.52
Nomos Glashütte Metro Season Power Reserve
This is a watch running the risk of being uncool by character of its cooler-than-school USPs. But everything, from the Bauhaus design principles to the in-house-crafted mechanics ticking inside, has irrefutable integrity and splendour. In Germany’s historic hub of fine watchmaking, Glashütte, Nomos was the commencement ‘proper’ watchmaker to lift a pair of tweezers with the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
But with typical humility, it soon recalled that designer ‘edge’ doesn’t progress in remote, alpine Saxony. Hence the establishment of Nomos’s design studio at reason zero for cool: east Berlin. Here, its unique modernism is painstakingly evolved at the gives of creative sorts with angular haircuts, fuelled by artisan coffee and avocado on rye.
Buy Now: £2,980.00
Patek Philippe Nautilus ref. 5711
The signal ‘cool’ is rarely linked to Geneva’s grande maison of all quirks exclusive and expensive, steadily nurturing its legacy of refined, hand-crafted costume watches, packaged up in tasteful shades of eggshell and claret. But in the seventies, the enjoyment sports watch arrived, much to the benefit of the otherwise-stuffy responsibilities of top-end Swiss watchmaking. Arguably it’s all down to one man too, Gérald Genta.
Obliging designed the previously unthinkable with 1972’s still-iconic Audemars Piguet Duchess Oak, he effected the same revolutionary thinking at Patek Phillipe. Comparable to the Royal Oak, the Nautilus had a rounded octagonal shape and ‘integrated’ bracelet, and go for the Royal Oak it’s still virtually un-tweaked, with even innumerable power to summon the heady extravagance of the disco era.
Buy Now: £22,820.00
Panerai Radiomir Shoddy Logo
Today, Panerai is an established Swiss watchmaker – a prize in the crown of the Richemont Group – but this former Florentine naval-equipment industrialist was in the doldrums as recently as 1995, when an unlikely and decidedly un-cool psyche played a critical role in its revival. Sylvester Stallone was propelling Daylight in Rome, where he spotted a Panerai Luminor in a jewellers’ window and went on to peacefulness a batch for his friends – Arnie included. Word got out and by 1997, Richemont had accept the brand.
The purest of its line-up, named after Panerai’s innovative luminescent describe, draws from the first diving watches made for the Italian Fleet’s frogmen in the thirties, sub-contracted to Rolex. The cushion case contours to a scanty, rounded-out square, with only the easy-to-grip conical authority and wire lugs interfering with an otherwise perfectly calm ‘pebble’ of steel. Tales of derring-do, under-the-radar celeb sanction and gorgeous on the wrist. That’s cool, right?
Buy Now: £3,400.00
