My Favorite Piece From Watches & Wonders, Day One

This GMT is a pure throwback to ‘80s opulence, which is great if you’re into that type of thing. (I am, but one fellow attendee told me it wasn’t for him because he isn’t an “arms dealer” lol.)  Precious metals like gold and platinum weigh a lot—they’re substantial, so when you strap the thing on, you can tell that it must be really valuable. And yes, you might also feel like an arms dealer. There’s something villainous about this watch, but in a smiling-devil-emoji way. One cool thing I learned about this watch in my meeting: It’s the first GMT done up in black and gray. Typically the GMTs get goofy fountain-soda nicknames—the Pepsi, Root Beer, Coke, Sprite—but this one is going to be tougher to christen. The Johnnie Walker? Please reply to this email if you’ve heard any good potential nicknames. 

The Rolex team also had last year’s massive FIFTY millimeter Deepsea on hand, and I tried it on side-by-side with the new titanium Yacht-Master. At 42 millimeters, the YM is not tiny, but it looks like a tugboat next to the titanic Deepsea. 

Once you’re done at Rolex, they send you on your way with a beautiful Rolex-green suede tote bag—meant to mimic the calfskin underside of the new 1908’s leather band, I believe—filled with goodies. This year, it’s a box of chocolates and a cute little coin pouch. 

The Best Sounding Watch

I met with Montblanc’s global managing director Laurent Lecamp, who has a handy backstory for seemingly every design choice the company makes. The new gray-dial Iced Sea (known as the “Ice T” among its fans) is inspired by the color of the stone on the Mont Blanc mountain above 8,000 meters. Why 8,000 meters? Because there are only 14 peaks higher than 8,000 meters in the world, according to LeCamp.