Love or hate it, the MoonSwatch certainly stirred things up this year. Here at Fratello, most of us are fans of the watch, and nearly everyone was able to get one (or several) from the Swatch boutiques. But I’m wondering what the next step for Swatch will be. Will we see more collaborations with other brands, or will we see a few new variations of the MoonSwatch?Creating new MoonSwatchesI do

After a hiatus, I'm stoked to kick off a new series of Hashtag stories, where I put on my style-centric glasses and pick a matchy-matchy group of watches, gear, sneakers, and accessories. If there's a need for a disclaimer, it's here: there is no incentive from brands here, nor have they been notified of any inclusion in this #holidaycolors feature.Yes, the holiday season is here, with Thanksgivin

I noticed that we haven’t covered that many Orient watches here on Fratello. This surprised me a little as the Orient Bambino is the affordable automatic dress watch of choice for watch enthusiasts who are just getting into this hobby. It’s kind of like what the Seiko SKX007 is for automatic dive watches. Recently, the Japanese brand launched four colorful limited editions of the Bambi

Yema and I go back, way back. Well, back to 2021, actually. One of the first articles I wrote for Fratello was on a Yema watch…and not just any Yema watch. The Navygraf Marine Nationale GMT Limited Edition I wrote about marked the start of Yema's military career as an official partner of the French Navy. The French Navy, or Marine Nationale, has been sailing the seven seas since 1626, making

Let’s start this review with a confession: I hate this time of year in the Netherlands. With gray skies for days on end, endless wet streets, howling winds, and inhospitable temperatures, it’s not always the most enjoyable place to be. It’s not necessarily that I can’t handle these conditions individually, but together, they are rather depressing. Combine cold temperatures

In 1993, 21 years after the introduction of the Royal Oak, Audemars Piguet introduced the Royal Oak Offshore. It was time for an evolution regarding the Royal Oak collection, to make it more rugged, more sporty and – perhaps – younger. The Offshore is the most popular Audemars Piguet collection without a doubt. Some purists though, might prefer the ‘normal’ Royal Oak collec

It’s Speedy Tuesday, the moment you have all been waiting for! This week, we have a numbered edition in store for you. It means it is not limited or a special edition, but a ‘regular’ collection model with an individual number. Yong Wee from Singapore, one of our readers and fans of ‘Speedy Tuesday’, sent us photos of his much beloved Omega Speedmaster Professional re

In our on-going quest for affordable mechanical watches I stumbled upon Oris. Oris is a brand that only produces mechanical watches, there is not a single quartz watch in their catalog. Besides that, it is an independent brand that has produced watches from this little Swiss village called Holstein since 1904. Their key to success is perhaps best captured in their slogan “real watches for re

Our host with the most, Mike is on holiday now so he passed on the torch for this week's #tbt. However as you can expect when I get to do this every once in a while it is always a bit out of the ordinary. As some of you might remember I already wrote about this model over a year ago. That was among my very first articles published on Fratello Watches about? Cool and Affordable Vintage Pieces. This

LEVILLE was started in 2018 Jan, a group of watch-addicts with the passion and constancy of the traditional watch craftsmanship. They believe that the most timeless and desirable timepiece must be the traditional one. They would like to awaken people's mind about the core function of a watch, thus create their brands.They believe that every city has its own uniqueness. It represents the best of it

Often times the unsung heroes of the watch industry are the movement manufacturers. Not every brand has the capacity to create in-house movements (or dials, cases, bracelet for that matter). This is when a movement manufacturer comes into play. As you know the largest companies these days catering for the whole industry are ETA (company of Swatch Group), Sellita?and Seiko. Of course, many other br

Four years after our first review of ColaReb straps, we have decided to take another look at their new pieces, including a pair of 100% Vegan straps.As Balaz's wrote in this last Watch Strap Review, we do not review straps for money. We either review straps we bought previously and considered them interesting enough to be introduced to you, or we select straps from manufacturers that approached us

The Moonwatch is undoubtedly the most popular Speedmaster model and always has been. But there are variations that we consider to be very interesting as well, and worth collecting. The Speedmaster Mark II 145.014 is such a reference, for example.For a long time, I neglected the Speedmaster Mark II, officially a Speedmaster Professional Mark II, as well. Mainly because of the case shape, which didn

There are some articles that come easier than others. Sometimes the words just flow. This was not one of those times. Understandably, I found myself wondering why? After spending more than a month with the Baltic Aquascaphe GMT on and off my wrist on both the supplied bracelet and the spare rubber strap (my preference), I think I figured out why.Some releases are loud; some releases are quiet. Whi

There’s always been a bit of hostility between smartwatches and watch aficionados.? And yet, although I call myself a watch lover, I don’t experience this negative feeling. And so it wasn’t too much of an effort to wear the TAG Heuer Connected for a few weeks daily. Mostly, I enjoyed using it as a regular watch and as a stopwatch for cooking purposes. But using it as an activity

If you like smartly designed, highly unusual watches with a Scandi vibe, you’re in luck. Anders Brandt, a co-founder of Danish brand Arcanaut, sat down with Rob Nudds to explain the thinking behind one of the most culturally interesting watches out there.Rob Nudds: Hi Anders, thanks for sitting down with us at Fratellowatches.com.Can you tell us where your watchmaking journey began? Does it

If there is something that drives Breitling collectors nuts, it's all the online listings where sellers claim that Sicura was a sub-brand of Breitling. Or, more controversial still, that Sicura watches were produced by Breitling or even that a Sicura watch is effectively a Breitling watch in disguise. Let's make it clear once and for all. To help us, let’s focus on the witty Sicura Rally GT

It can be a tough job to stand out from the crowd in the dive watch scene, especially when that's the microbrand dive watch scene. It seems that around 95% of microbrands these days create dive watches using cookie-cutter, off-the-shelf designs which lack any natural creativity or thought. The same definitely cannot be said about the Greek microbrand Ianos, which returns for its second outing as a

Not too long ago, I wrote about the best Seiko JDM releases of the last 25 years. The next step was obviously to pick the best Grand Seiko JDM releases. But it’s not that simple. Ever since 2010, Grand Seiko has officially had an international focus. So JDM releases would technically be releases created in collaboration with Japanese retailers or the special Grand Seiko boutique editions. On

A-11 wristwatches were manufactured during WWII according to a U.S. military standard. American watch companies like Elgin, Waltham, and Bulova produced these watches. Most of them had white hands and Arabic numerals, as well as 60-minute graduations on their plain black dials. They were housed in, by today’s standards, small 32mm chrome-plated brass cases, and it’s believed that at le