The Coolest Watches Ever Made
But with typical humility, it soon knew that designer ‘edge’ doesn’t progress in remote, mountainous Saxony. Hence the establishment of Nomos’s design studio at ground zero for cool: east Berlin. Here, its unique modernism is painstakingly evolved at the hands of creative sorts with angular haircuts, fuelled by artisan coffee and avocado on rye.
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Patek Philippe Nautilus ref. 5711
The word ‘cool’ is rarely linked to Geneva’s grande maison of all things exclusive and expensive, steadily nurturing its legacy of refined, hand-crafted dress watches, packaged up in tasteful shades of eggshell and claret. But in the seventies, the luxury sports watch arrived, much to the benefit of the otherwise-stuffy realms of top-end Swiss watchmaking. Arguably it’s all down to one man too, Gérald Genta.
Having designed the previously unthinkable with 1972’s still-iconic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, he effected the same revolutionary thinking at Patek Phillipe. Like the Royal Oak, the Nautilus had a rounded octagonal shape and ‘integrated’ bracelet, and like the Royal Oak it’s still virtually un-tweaked, with even more power to summon the heady extravagance of the disco era.
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Panerai Radiomir Base Logo
Today, Panerai is an established Swiss watchmaker – a jewel in the crown of the Richemont Group – but this former Florentine naval-equipment manufacturer was in the doldrums as recently as 1995, when an unlikely and decidedly un-cool personality played a critical role in its revival. Sylvester Stallone was shooting Daylight in Rome, where he spotted a Panerai Luminor in a jewellers’ window and went on to order a batch for his friends – Arnie included. Word got out and by 1997, Richemont had bought the brand.
The purest of its line-up, named after Panerai’s innovative luminescent paint, draws from the first diving watches made for the Italian Navy’s frogmen in the thirties, sub-contracted to Rolex. The cushion case contours to a slender, rounded-out square, with only the easy-to-grip conical crown and wire lugs interfering with an otherwise perfectly smooth ‘pebble’ of steel. Tales of derring-do, under-the-radar celeb endorsement and gorgeous on the wrist. That’s cool, right?
