Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/the-great-anti-hype-watch-rediscovering-the-appeal-of-panerai/
With some amusement, I’ve also observed Gen Z “discover” Cartier, which they’ve leaned into so hard it’s even earned some of them much-deserved helicopter rides to the manufacture. The prevailing love for shaped watches and hardstone dials (apparently “semiprecious” is an offensive term, who knew the stones were so sensitive?) has seen Piaget come back powerfully. It seems that every woven-bracelet, quartz jewelry watch in your grandparents’ back drawer, from the Patek Philippe reference 3733 to the Audemars Piguet Gilbert-Goschen-bracelet-equipped Cobra ref. 5403, is making a return to the spotlight.
One of the great things about the post-hype era in watch collecting is that we’ve entered an inflection point, where the watch world has splintered off into myriad tribes. And you can love whatever you like.
At the same time, it seems that every new upstart independent watchmaker has decided to champion hand finishing. Says legendary Singaporean retailer Michael Tay, “It’s the fashion now to be hugely focused on hand finishing. That’s great. But it’s also far easier to execute than a significant technical breakthrough, such as those created by François-Paul Journe, because there is no risk with finishing. You either do it yourself and it’s just very time consuming, or you pay others to do it for you. You are not sending out watches with a major innovation that may also not work. You are not staking your reputation on something new.”
While this is all great, if you judge horological tastes purely by social media, you would think that the modern watch world belongs exclusively to small, shaped watches with woven precious metal bracelets and hardstone dials. If you judge it based on the innumerable Instagram reels bombarding our feeds, invariably narrated by some laconic Gen Z hipster, it sometimes feels as if the world we live in today, and the prevailing taste in watches, has been reframed according to the narrow perspective of that one guy in a dress on the quad lawn with the jump rope.
But what if you are not a brand that makes small watches? What is the relevance of the Panerai Luminor Marina or the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore in a world fixated on the ever-shrinking watch? To me, these watches are more relevant than ever. While I have been waxing lyrical on the merits of the 36.5mm dress watch since 2018, and continue to assert that the Chopard L.U.C 1860 is the most perfectly executed modern dress watch, the bias that social media places on “quirky” horology is exactly the reason I find myself strapping on a Panerai on a daily basis.
Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/the-great-anti-hype-watch-rediscovering-the-appeal-of-panerai/