From Brew to Urwerk, the world’s best brands delivered the goods.
Watch photos courtesy of brands.
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Over the decade, New York Watch Week has grown from a tiny affair into a massive calendar of events featuring everything from massive luxury brands to the most exciting players on the independent scene. Most important for our purposes is that the event has grown large enough to demand that brands not only show up to meet collectors at functions like WatchTime and WindUp Watch Fair, but also reward us with brand-new pieces.
There has been no shortage of great watches released this week by the likes of Ming, TAG Heuer, and Brew. To be fair, not all of the pieces below are technically NYWW releases, but this week has swelled enough that brands now stuff the calendar to take advantage of the extra eyeballs on the industry.
Brew Metric Chrono Taxi
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Some of the releases below just happen to fall during this week and otherwise have very little to do with NYWW. That makes Brew’s yellow cab-inspired piece an even more welcome addition to this roster of drops. The coffee-inspired brand updated its flagship Metric design with the colors of New York’s most beloved icons. The electric shade of yellow really works for me—I discovered I have a real thing for the color this year—and the checkerboard pattern makes it impossible to mistake what you’re looking at. With “New York” printed at 6 o’clock, the only detail this piece is missing is the ability to shout, “Ay, I’m walking here.” And if you’re asking what this has to do with a brand that takes its cues from the world of coffee, consider what you may need a lot of in the City That Never Sleeps. The new $495 Metric drops Monday, October 19th on Brew’s website. —Cam Wolf
Temporal Works Series A: Romanesque
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The latest addition to Temporal Works, the in-house watch collection from The Armoury, the new Series A: Romanesque features the work of Lee Yuen-Rapati, a London-based watch designer. Housed in a 37mm stainless steel monobloc case, it features a two-piece sandwich dial with an upper silver-white opaline surface. Cut into this facade is a series of ‘Colonnade’ Roman numerals that consist of only two shapes: a long vertical line and a short horizontal line. Inspired by rows of ancient columns, this creative typography reveals a midnight-blue dial base beneath. Powered by an automatic Sellita movement, it can be purchased at Armoury locations in New York and Hong Kong, or at temporalworks.com. —Oren Hartov
MING × Massena LAB 57.09 Secret Honey
Building upon 2021’s handsome 17.09 Honey watch, the new 57.09 Secret Honey sees Malaysian microbrand MING and William Massena’s Massena LAB collaborating once again to spectacular effect. Within a 40mm Grade 5 titanium case is a dial over which three colored sapphire discs are constantly rotating. As they wind, they create a pattern that the duo calls “dynamic guilloché,” activating a kaleidoscope of colors in orange and white lume. The indices, meanwhile, are vaguely hieroglyphic-like in appearance, and even the lugs are unique, with three steps in titanium, yellow gold tone, and rose gold tone. —OH
Ulysse Nardin FREAK [S] Howlite
Ulysse Nardin’s Freak has been blowing the minds of watch lovers since its introduction 25 years ago. The keystone feature of the watch is that it uses the movement as its hands. The new FREAK [S] Howlite takes 2022’s Freak S and puts 95% of the movement’s components in motion and adds a dial made of howlite, a mineral with cool grey-black veining. This one is a North American exclusive limited to just 15 pieces and costs a bit more than a new Porsche 911 Turbo. That's the cost of admission for a watch that looks like it'sout of an Andy Weir novel. —OH
Urwerk UR-300 Time Quantum
New York Watch Week’s most mind-blowing creation comes from Urwerk. The brand tweaked its famous “wandering hours” complication for the new UR-300 Time Quantum: While a fixed minute scale occupies the bottom of the dial, a T-frame moving across a 72° axis features dual hour modules, each of which has two three-sided, rotating prisms displaying hours. As this T-frame completes its journey across the minute track, it jumps forward; the dual hour modules swap places; and the hour prisms spin to reveal the next hour in an incredible mechanical dance. —OH
Hermès H08 Bleu de Malte and Blanc Chantilly
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Since its launch in 2021, the Hermès H08 has come to represent the luxury brand’s revitalized watch department. The sporty tonneau-shaped case is a departure from the brand’s dressier models such as the Arceau and Cape Cod, and even includes a monopusher chronograph within the lineup. Two cool new additions to the collection are debuting this week: while Bleu de Malte mixes a braided glass-fiber composite case, a satin-brushed blue ceramic bezel, and blue accents throughout a sandblasted dial, Blanc Chantilly features a white ceramic bezel and a white lacquered dial. This is one of those watches that's not technically a NYWW debut, but, in an effort to show you all the best stuff coming this week, we're including it. —OH
TAG Heuer Formula 1 Solargraph x Oracle Red Bull Racing
The rebirth of the Formula 1 collection has been a smash hit, bringing back a childhood favorite for millennials while introducing younger wearers to a colorful, more affordable side of the historic brand. A new version made for the Oracle Red Bull Racing team should keep the watch’s hot streak going. The new model features a blue bezel and matching dial with a red minute track and white luminous indices. Unlike many of the other F1s, it ships on a stainless steel bracelet that matches its tonneau-shaped case. The $2,250 price tag is a pretty great deal for a modern TAG Heuer. —OH
Chopard L.U.C. Full Strike Día de Los Muertos
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By far the most metal watch in a week full of them, Chopard’s L.U.C. Full Strike Día de Los Muertos celebrates Mexico’s Day of the Dead in Swiss fashion, with a stylized calavera skull executed with eggshell and blue-straw marquetry in a process that takes some 160 hours. Housed in a 42.5mm 18K ethical rose gold case, the watch is powered by the maison’s L.U.C Calibre 08.01-L, the brand’s first in-house minute repeater, which chimes out the time like it's a tiny gorgeous song. Designed with monobloc construction, its sapphire and gongs are constructed from a single piece of sapphire, which creates a particularly pure and pleasing tone. Visible from the watch’s caseback, the movement has no less than five patents for its exceptionally complex functionality. —OH
Arnold & Son DSTB Stop-Seconds Red Gold Cliff Grey and Platinum Kingsand
Limited to 18 pieces each, the new Dial-Side True Beat Stop-Seconds in Red Gold Cliff Grey or Platinum Kingsand are tributes to the marine chronometer—a type of clock that allowed seafarers to calculate longitude during long voyages, thereby ensuring accurate navigation. A sophisticated in-house movement, the automatic cal. A&S6303, powers a “true beat” (or “dead beat”) seconds display that ticks along once per second like a quartz watch, thus allowing the wearer to determine the time as accurately as possible. Additionally, it features a stop-seconds (or “hacking”) feature, which allows it to be set to a precise time signal. —OH
Oren Hartov is a GQ contributor covering all things horological. He’s written extensively about celebrity watch culture, waxed poetic about the GMT complication, and railed against case sizes larger than 40mm. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music and a military veteran, he can be found playing the guitar, ... Read More
