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bradurani
·It's 2021. Two weeks ago, a 126 foot long rocket, 330 million miles from home, dropped a rocket-propelled landing capsule at a precise location 7 miles above the surface of Mars. Travelling at twice the speed of sound, the capsule deployed a 70 foot supersonic parachute. At 200 miles per hour, it started a controlled rocket burn, gently lowering an SUV-sized, aluminum rover onto the red planet. Last year, a vaccine that would have taken 10 years to make 20 years ago, was developed in a year.
It's an indulgent stretch of the imagination to draw parallels between human-kind's greatest achievements and the evolution of luxury mechanical wristwatches. Mechanical watches are, after all, anti-technological by their very existence. That hasn't stopped us, however, from charting a driven and inspired course of slow but steady improvements in these pieces of unnecessary mechanical man-jewelry, nor should it.
Not everyone is on board with the changes. New styles, new brands and - germane to this article - new materials abound. Meanwhile, many of us - or perhaps most of us - are more drawn to watches that look like our fathers' watches than to something from our own time. Watch design is a rich and rewarding playground for the aesthetic application of material science. Every year, at least 100 watch brands present us with a smorgasbord of mixed materials and we vote for the winners with our dollars. While few give the thumbs-down to a more scratch-resistant ceramic bezel, or an anti-magnetic silicon hairspring, we've been slower to embrace cases made entirely from modern metals. Or perhaps "slower" isn't the right word for it. "Slower" implies we'll get there eventually, but in 2021, the momentum is clearly in the backwards direction.
Some say it's the weight. Some like it's luster. Most just haven't stopped to consider whether they'd rather have something else. Regardless, steel reigns as the case material of choice in 2021, and we're all the poorer for it. To start with, it scratches. Ask any vintage collector what the bane of their existence is, and they'll usually reply "polished cases" even before waxing angrily about unscrupulous sellers, mismatched bezels and lack of spare movement parts. Yet here we are spending our dollars in a way that ensures this problem will never go away.
Ceramic and titanium watches are just all around, unequivocally better materials in every aspect of comparison. I don't even have to explain why. You already know why.
The "I don't like ceramic because it's too light and therefore feels cheap" camp has a valid concern. Perhaps manufacturers could pair scratch-free ceramic cases with tungsten rotors to give us the durability we need with the comforting weight we enjoy? Or perhaps the heavy-weight camp should just give light-weight a try. A light watch feels weird when you're unaccustomed to it, standing in the showroom trying it on. But familiarity breeds comfort, and I'd be willing to bet that most buyers would adjust very quickly, and learn to enjoy and prefer the lighter watch.
A light watch disappears until you look at it. But when you do look, the beautiful exotic glow of titanium or the dull alien sheen of ceramic reminds you that you're wearing something special. A watch made of advanced materials is the modern man's watch. It's the watch for the Tesla crowd. It's the watch for the Mars Rover crowd. It reminds you that you're a member of the elite fraternity of watch connoisseurs who bought something high-tech, something well-made, and yes… something expensive.
"So what", you say. "We can have both". "You can have your titanium, and I'll take my steel and we can both be happy", you claim. Sadly, this isn't the case. Great brands making their best watches in steel are depriving us of the even-better watches they could be making in modern metals.
Consider Grand Seiko. This is a brand that's doing everything right. They're doing things nobody else is doing right now (while still being relatively affordable). Grand Seiko has created a design language that's completely unique. They've incorporated subtle nods to their history in their case design, but the watches are unmistakably 21st century designs. However they've regressed in materials. The SBGA211 Snowflake - the landmark piece that really showed that they'd arrived - is titanium. Two of last year's Four Seasons models - the SBGA413 Spring and SBGA415 Winter are titanium. This year's new Seasons GMTs are steel. The SLGH005 White Birch - Grand Seiko's showpiece model that brings their incredible new 9SA5 dual-impulse high-beat caliber into regular production - is steel. They didn't do this because they wanted it that way, they did it because you wanted it that way.
Other brands are taking models that started in advanced materials and back-porting them to steel. Take Bulgari's Octo Finissimo. There was no reason for them to make a steel version of that watch. None. Except that some of you will buy it. It's marketed as the sports version, but sports watches are supposed to be tough, and titanium is tougher than steel.
"Give the people what they want!" they say. "Not if it's a worse product" I reply. I don't care if you want your 60s re-issues and vintage inspired pieces in steel. Put on some crappy rayon bell bottoms and slap on that Black Bay or Speedmaster Professional in good old-fashion steel and have a hootenanny. The White Birch and the Octo Finissimo are modern watches though, and in the modern era, there are better materials than steel. I guarantee the designers of Grand Seiko's new GMTs did not want to make them in steel. The marketing department made them do it. They made a worse watch because of your consumer preferences.
There's no universe in which the new Rolex Submariner was going to be anything other than steel, but they could have at least taken a page from Sinn's book, and used a hardening process to make it scratch resistant (paging Tim Mosso!). That they didn't makes you wonder if maybe the polishing room in their service center is - *gasp* - a profit center. Perhaps all of these brands are taking advantage of you, charging you for refinishing when you send your watch in for service, when they could easily sell you a watch that doesn't need it.
Omega should lead the way here by switching its most modern regular production designs - the Seamaster 300s, Planet Oceans and Aqua Terras - to ceramic and titanium across the board. It's too much to ask of them to stop doing vintage reissues in steel, but the regular production Seamasters should all use modern metals... without the insulting price gauge that usually comes with such advances. That would be a killer differentiating feature. It would take what are already the best mid-priced dive watches on the market and make them phenomenal modern marvels of manufacturing.
If you think price is an issue, consider that Casio makes a Titanium watch with a sapphire crystal for $202.00. I'm assuming that's grade 3, not the tougher grade 5, but it's obvious that pricey Swiss brands making watches for grown-ups could make everything in grade 5 without raising prices and without taking a big hit to their margins. I believe ceramic can be made cheap too. They don't want you to think that, because they charge such a premium for it right now, but I don't buy it. If they invested in the infrastructure to give them economies of scale, they could offer you a ceramic watch without the price gouge. But that would take - you guessed it - YOU to want it in ceramic. It would take you scoffing at expensive steel watches and having a nice belly chuckle about how scratched up they'll look after 5 years of daily wear, and not buying one. It would take you being forward-looking, modern and scientific in your watch desires. It's time to give up the steel, folks, and join the modern era.
It's an indulgent stretch of the imagination to draw parallels between human-kind's greatest achievements and the evolution of luxury mechanical wristwatches. Mechanical watches are, after all, anti-technological by their very existence. That hasn't stopped us, however, from charting a driven and inspired course of slow but steady improvements in these pieces of unnecessary mechanical man-jewelry, nor should it.
Not everyone is on board with the changes. New styles, new brands and - germane to this article - new materials abound. Meanwhile, many of us - or perhaps most of us - are more drawn to watches that look like our fathers' watches than to something from our own time. Watch design is a rich and rewarding playground for the aesthetic application of material science. Every year, at least 100 watch brands present us with a smorgasbord of mixed materials and we vote for the winners with our dollars. While few give the thumbs-down to a more scratch-resistant ceramic bezel, or an anti-magnetic silicon hairspring, we've been slower to embrace cases made entirely from modern metals. Or perhaps "slower" isn't the right word for it. "Slower" implies we'll get there eventually, but in 2021, the momentum is clearly in the backwards direction.
Some say it's the weight. Some like it's luster. Most just haven't stopped to consider whether they'd rather have something else. Regardless, steel reigns as the case material of choice in 2021, and we're all the poorer for it. To start with, it scratches. Ask any vintage collector what the bane of their existence is, and they'll usually reply "polished cases" even before waxing angrily about unscrupulous sellers, mismatched bezels and lack of spare movement parts. Yet here we are spending our dollars in a way that ensures this problem will never go away.
Ceramic and titanium watches are just all around, unequivocally better materials in every aspect of comparison. I don't even have to explain why. You already know why.
The "I don't like ceramic because it's too light and therefore feels cheap" camp has a valid concern. Perhaps manufacturers could pair scratch-free ceramic cases with tungsten rotors to give us the durability we need with the comforting weight we enjoy? Or perhaps the heavy-weight camp should just give light-weight a try. A light watch feels weird when you're unaccustomed to it, standing in the showroom trying it on. But familiarity breeds comfort, and I'd be willing to bet that most buyers would adjust very quickly, and learn to enjoy and prefer the lighter watch.
A light watch disappears until you look at it. But when you do look, the beautiful exotic glow of titanium or the dull alien sheen of ceramic reminds you that you're wearing something special. A watch made of advanced materials is the modern man's watch. It's the watch for the Tesla crowd. It's the watch for the Mars Rover crowd. It reminds you that you're a member of the elite fraternity of watch connoisseurs who bought something high-tech, something well-made, and yes… something expensive.
"So what", you say. "We can have both". "You can have your titanium, and I'll take my steel and we can both be happy", you claim. Sadly, this isn't the case. Great brands making their best watches in steel are depriving us of the even-better watches they could be making in modern metals.
Consider Grand Seiko. This is a brand that's doing everything right. They're doing things nobody else is doing right now (while still being relatively affordable). Grand Seiko has created a design language that's completely unique. They've incorporated subtle nods to their history in their case design, but the watches are unmistakably 21st century designs. However they've regressed in materials. The SBGA211 Snowflake - the landmark piece that really showed that they'd arrived - is titanium. Two of last year's Four Seasons models - the SBGA413 Spring and SBGA415 Winter are titanium. This year's new Seasons GMTs are steel. The SLGH005 White Birch - Grand Seiko's showpiece model that brings their incredible new 9SA5 dual-impulse high-beat caliber into regular production - is steel. They didn't do this because they wanted it that way, they did it because you wanted it that way.
Other brands are taking models that started in advanced materials and back-porting them to steel. Take Bulgari's Octo Finissimo. There was no reason for them to make a steel version of that watch. None. Except that some of you will buy it. It's marketed as the sports version, but sports watches are supposed to be tough, and titanium is tougher than steel.
"Give the people what they want!" they say. "Not if it's a worse product" I reply. I don't care if you want your 60s re-issues and vintage inspired pieces in steel. Put on some crappy rayon bell bottoms and slap on that Black Bay or Speedmaster Professional in good old-fashion steel and have a hootenanny. The White Birch and the Octo Finissimo are modern watches though, and in the modern era, there are better materials than steel. I guarantee the designers of Grand Seiko's new GMTs did not want to make them in steel. The marketing department made them do it. They made a worse watch because of your consumer preferences.
There's no universe in which the new Rolex Submariner was going to be anything other than steel, but they could have at least taken a page from Sinn's book, and used a hardening process to make it scratch resistant (paging Tim Mosso!). That they didn't makes you wonder if maybe the polishing room in their service center is - *gasp* - a profit center. Perhaps all of these brands are taking advantage of you, charging you for refinishing when you send your watch in for service, when they could easily sell you a watch that doesn't need it.
Omega should lead the way here by switching its most modern regular production designs - the Seamaster 300s, Planet Oceans and Aqua Terras - to ceramic and titanium across the board. It's too much to ask of them to stop doing vintage reissues in steel, but the regular production Seamasters should all use modern metals... without the insulting price gauge that usually comes with such advances. That would be a killer differentiating feature. It would take what are already the best mid-priced dive watches on the market and make them phenomenal modern marvels of manufacturing.
If you think price is an issue, consider that Casio makes a Titanium watch with a sapphire crystal for $202.00. I'm assuming that's grade 3, not the tougher grade 5, but it's obvious that pricey Swiss brands making watches for grown-ups could make everything in grade 5 without raising prices and without taking a big hit to their margins. I believe ceramic can be made cheap too. They don't want you to think that, because they charge such a premium for it right now, but I don't buy it. If they invested in the infrastructure to give them economies of scale, they could offer you a ceramic watch without the price gouge. But that would take - you guessed it - YOU to want it in ceramic. It would take you scoffing at expensive steel watches and having a nice belly chuckle about how scratched up they'll look after 5 years of daily wear, and not buying one. It would take you being forward-looking, modern and scientific in your watch desires. It's time to give up the steel, folks, and join the modern era.
