Summer 2021

REVOLUTION DIGITAL

Celebrating the Machine with a Heartbeat

REVOLUTION DIGITAL4 min read
Founder’s Note
One surprising takeaway from the last year and a half is that people have been buying watches like crazy. Seriously, like they were going out of style. So, of course, the question is, why? Part of it is that people have gotten it in their heads that
REVOLUTION DIGITAL1 min read
Revolution Digital
FOUNDER & EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Wei Koh @wei_koh_revolution GLOBAL CONTENT EDITOR Joyceline Tully joytully@revolutionmagazines.com EDITORIAL HEAD, ASIA / ONLINE Sumit Nag sumit@revolutionmagazines.com MANAGING EDITOR, ONLINE / ECOMMERCE & EDITOR AT LARG
REVOLUTION DIGITAL2 min read
Contributors
The founder of TudorCollector.com, Ross Povey is regarded as the world’s leading expert on vintage Tudor watches. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Revolution magazine in the UK. He has contributed to influential horological publications including T
REVOLUTION DIGITAL8 min read
At Face Value
Much has been said about the indisputable elegance of the Reverso, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s ageless icon that turns 90 this year. Indeed, in a world obsessed with stainless steel sports watches, the Reverso has etched its place amongst the horological pant
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Doing The Math
Montblanc’s Villeret facility — the historical home of Minerva — has long been home to some of the finest, traditionally made chronograph movements in Switzerland. In April this year, the brand has announced a new calibre, the Calibre MB M14.08 that
REVOLUTION DIGITAL4 min read
Octo Redux
When I first set eyes on the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo back in 2014, I was blown away by the sheer audacity of this timepiece. While today it’s clear that the ultra thin integrated sports watch category is one of the most hotly contested, this wasn’t th
REVOLUTION DIGITAL14 min read
WATCHES & WONDERS 2021… & MORE
Twenty Twenty, the greatest global pandemic we’ve collectively experienced in our lifetimes has, in the words of Cartier’s CEO Cyrille Vigneron, been “the great revelator” — a seismic event that has separated the wheat from the chaff. Strong brands w
REVOLUTION DIGITAL8 min read
Racing Into The Future
Following 2020, the year in which we collectively experienced the greatest seismic upheaval to our lives, which everyone describes as generating five years of accelerated change in terms of digitisation and e-commerce, what will be the prevailing the
REVOLUTION DIGITAL6 min read
Par Excellence
Something is going on at Vacheron Constantin in terms of them hitting their stride with successive launches of damnably great watches each and every year. Case in point: right out of the gate, Vacheron Constantin has launched two of the very best wat
REVOLUTION DIGITAL10 min read
Prime Position
What is interesting about the title prima ballerina assoluta or, in English, “absolute first ballerina”, is that there is no specific pathway to this greatest of honour. A ballet company can decree it; public opinion and consensus can formalise it. I
REVOLUTION DIGITAL9 min read
The Next Big Thing: De Bethune
The world is once again in the throes of its epic love affair with independent watchmaking. I mean Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights, Tony and Maria in West Side Story’s all-or-nothing, ride-or-die kind of love. Sure, part of this is the
REVOLUTION DIGITAL8 min read
Small Is Beautiful
While the title of this article could easily allude to my very public penchant for sausage dogs, it in fact references what I genuinely believe is one of the most important tourbillon wristwatches of all time. I speak, of course, of the new Chopard L
REVOLUTION DIGITAL7 min read
Joe’s Cool
On my Mount Rushmore of Cool, no, wait, make that seated in my Halls of Valhalla of Cool, presided over by the unassailable king, one Terrence Stephen McQueen, would be, in no particular order, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, James Byron Dean, Bob Marley, B
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Time For Change
In the five years that he’s led Cartier, Cyrille Vigneron has not only brought his venerable maison to its all-time height of success, but he has also become one of the most inspirational and thought-provoking leaders in all of luxury. In his closing
REVOLUTION DIGITAL6 min read
RALPH LAUREN for THE RAKE ‘BEARFOOT NEGRONI BEAR’ WATCH
I described him in my last story with these words: “His countenance is known the world over. His visage has become an obsession for men and women alike. There are legions devoted to his ineffable style, his ability to move effortlessly between sublim
REVOLUTION DIGITAL5 min read
In The Spotlight: Ferdinand Berthoud Régulateur Squelette Fb Rs
While he might not have been the first to do so, Ferdinand Berthoud is revered as the man who created the finest marine chronometers ever made and one of the world’s greatest horological geniuses. Born into a family of distinguished watch and clockma
REVOLUTION DIGITAL4 min readChemistry
Solid Gold
Panerai, the Italian masters of undersea naval exploration, excel at the art of the well-executed dive watch, a genre typically associated with sturdy — if somewhat ignoble — cases made from steel, titanium and the like. But Panerai’s distinctive cus
REVOLUTION DIGITAL7 min read
The Rake And Revolution Boutiques At Patina Maldives
This summer and for the rest of the year, we are going to want to remake our vital bonds with this planet. We’ve lived through an era of seismic change where we’ve been isolated, alienated, disconnected and alone. But now with the rapidly increasing
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The Independents
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The Ogs
Daniels was the first watchmaker who could conceive and craft a timepiece by hand, out of raw materials. In a time when the industry was on the cusp of being decimated by electronic and quartz watches, he dedicated his life to making his own timepiec
REVOLUTION DIGITAL10 min read
The English Legacy
Defining “independent watchmaking” is almost an impossible exercise. Ask any number of watch aficionados and the chances are you’ll probably get just as many differing answers. The reason for this is that the field today tends to be more of a spectru
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The Early Visionaries
Crucial to the development of independent watchmaking was the creation of a common front that celebrated the creativity and artisanal skills of like-minded individuals, who were increasingly embattled in a quartz world. In 1985, two watchmakers and l
REVOLUTION DIGITAL4 min read
The Rock Stars
Greubel Forsey has, since the company was launched in 2004, pushed the limits of chronometry and craftsmanship to the extreme in a way few others have, while developing an inimitable three-dimensional style of movement engineering. Founded by Robert
REVOLUTION DIGITAL13 min read
MY FOUR FAVOURITE INDEPENDENT WATCH BRANDS & THE HUMAN BEINGS BEHIND THEM
When I first conceptualised this issue of Revolution, I imagined it to be an exhaustive, didactic and encyclopedic look into the world of independent watchmaking, from its OGs like Franck Muller all the way to its latest rock stars like Rexhep Rexhep
REVOLUTION DIGITAL3 min read
The Persistence Of Memory By The Hour Glass
Over the past three decades, watch collecting has experienced a surge in interest, primarily centred around industrial heavyweights, namely Rolex and Patek Philippe. But in the last couple of years, both the wide-eyed newcomer and seasoned collector
REVOLUTION DIGITAL5 min read
The New Breed
A Japanese industrial designer who is a self-taught watchmaker, Hajime Asaoka began watch production in 2005 and released his first Tourbillon in 2009. He designs and fabricates majority of the watch parts in his workshop in Tokyo. In 2019, Hajime As
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THE HUMAN STORIES BEHIND MB&F’S LEGACY MACHINES
It’s been a decade since Max Büsser introduced us to his Legacy Machine watches that not only revealed a whole new dimension to his brand MB&F, but are also universally lauded by even the most discriminating watch collectors. To be fair, by 2011, Büs
REVOLUTION DIGITAL8 min read
Trailblazers: German Independent Watchmakers
There is no denying that independent watchmakers are popular right now. Looking at any major auction results or pre-owned market sales, you will see the jaw-dropping prices of F.P. Journe and Philippe Dufour watches. New projects announced by MB&F or
REVOLUTION DIGITAL5 min read
The Rise Of Microbrands
The independent microbrands first began to appear in the early 2000s, thanks to the accessibility of direct-to-customer sales via online forums and e-commerce. Since then, the watch industry has seen a rise in these nimble, niche-centric companies th
REVOLUTION DIGITAL2 min read
The Constructors
Candaux is best known for his work at Jaeger-LeCoultre where he was responsible for the bulk of innovations related to the maison’s chiming watches, creating the Master Minute Repeater as well as the Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie. In 2011, Canda
REVOLUTION DIGITAL17 min read
THE ILLUSTRIOUS ALUMNI OF AUDEMARS PIGUET RENAUD & PAPI
At the time, the introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch in the 1970s was widely believed to have sounded the death knell for the Swiss watch industry. But the mechanical watch, through a miracle of selective evolution, defied its doom and m
REVOLUTION DIGITAL11 min read
The Rules Of (chronograph) Engagement
One of the most famous chronographs in history is the Omega Speedmaster worn by astronaut Jack Swigert on the near-disastrous flight of the Apollo 13. With the spacecraft embattled after one of its oxygen tanks exploded on April 13th, 1970, the crew
REVOLUTION DIGITAL10 min read
Pandemic-proof Luxury
Sweeping away years of scepticism around online sales, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the auction world into an incredible phase of experimentation last year. In a bid to find newer ways to connect with their clients amidst a global health crisis, luxu
REVOLUTION DIGITAL7 min read
Women Watch Collectors:
Despite the sudden media attention, the Clubhouse-inspired chatter and the label of there being a “new movement” on the horizon, the truth remains that women have been interested in and have also (gasp!) collected watches for ages. The first known wr
REVOLUTION DIGITAL6 min read
Mr Talking Hands On: The Chronograph Dilemma
THIS IS THE FIRST OF A REGULAR COLUMN BY MR TALKING HANDS OF WATCHFINDER.COM Back in the 1800s, when the wristwatch was just a twinkle on a lady’s arm, watches worn by men were to be found elsewhere, namely in the waistcoat pocket. King Charles II, f
REVOLUTION DIGITAL9 min read
Independent Watchmaking — Collector’s Edition
Chief financial officer for a medical device company by day and passionate watch collector the rest of the time, Asarpota, otherwise known as @chicago_watch_lover on Instagram, started his watch collection over three decades ago, and to date, it comp
REVOLUTION DIGITAL3 min read
Berend Bulang — The Rising Of The Son
The story of Bulang & Sons started in 2012, when founder Bernhard Bulang turned his passion into his profession. A successful design and branding agency owner in the Netherlands, he was a serious collector of important vintage Rolex watches and co-fo

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