Cutting Shapes
Asymmetrical watches are making a comeback in 2024.
The guys who write ad campaigns for Rolex and Patek want you to believe that the watches they make will be as relevant in 100 years as they are today, the reality is that watches go in and out of fashion—just like everything else.
What this means is that if you’re a fan of asymmetrical and weirdly shaped watches, 2024 is shaping up to be one of the most exciting times in new watch releases since the late 1960s.
Audemars Piguet has dropped their larger-than-it-needed-to-be Remaster02, and Cartier’s shapely supremacy continues unabated, fuelled in no small part by the excitement of the Crash. More exciting than the old guard riffling through their archives, though, is the new crop of up-and-coming asymmetrical designs. Before we chat about Bernaron, Toledano & Chan and Anoma, it’s worth having a quick recap of the history of shaped (and unusually shaped) watches.
For a solid overview of the key beats in the story so far, Neha Bajpai’s retrospective at Revolution is a good place to start. A Collected Man (unsurprisingly) also has some great resources. Russell Sheldrake’s story on unusual Patek designs is worth a read, and if you don’t mind me tooting my own horn, I wrote a nice little story on dial symmetry for them a few years back.
One name that pops up frequently in this story is that of Gilbert Albert (whose name, I am ashamed to admit, I pronounced with hard Ts up until far too recently). For a solid moniker on Albert, it’s hard to go past this piece in Collectability.
Now that you’re fully up to speed on the historical antecedents for today’s geometry-bending masterpieces, it’s time to explore some of the latest. We were earlier than many on the Sylvain Berneron hype train. We chatted to him in October last year before his production capacity was sold out, and he had become the indie-darling of Geneva Watch Week. Also, while he was still working at Breitling, but that is beside the point. Berneron’s take on asymmetrical design is painstakingly fastidious. If you’re looking for a quick buck, getting a custom-made shaped movement is not the way to go about it.
Offering a different perspective on non-linear shapes is Toledano & Chan. Phil Toledano is an OT: regular, and the other week, he made a third appearance on the show, discussing in his typically charming ‘Englishman in New York’ manner, his debut watch, the B/1 made with his partner Alfred Chan. Inspired by Brutalism (and, we suspect, the Rolex Midas), this watch is an impressive debut, with a Chinese-made case and bracelet that seems to punch well above its weight.
These two notable examples have been joined by a third: the Anoma A1 (Like the B/1, the A1 is another example of a fun watch compensating with a boring name), which, according to all the relevant laws of statistics, makes asymmetrical watches a certified trend. I, for one, hope this trend catches on, anything to shake up the hegemony of safe, circular watches.
Felix