I've seen some wild things in my time. I don't even need to include my life outside of watchmaking in that statement for it to hold fast (and yes, I do have a life outside of watchmaking before any smartypants mention that in the comments - it just happens to be very small and stunningly uninteresting). Yes, a life spent at and around the bench has thrown some real treats and travesties my way. I'

After four years and 200 #TBT articles, there is still so much to explore. We’ve discovered some fascinating vintage watches, especially this year. Which feature was your favorite in 2022? Was it a no-pusher chronograph, a watch with epic magnifiers integrated into the crystal, the “only” Bond watch, or a bezel-operated triple calendar??When I look back at the list of watches we

The year is wrapping up in just a few days, and I have no new strap maker to present to you. Instead, I decided to reflect on the ateliers that we featured this year in the Watch Strap Review column. While we try to bring you a new company each month, sometimes it doesn’t work out for various reasons, so we “only” released eight articles in 2022. Still, it’s quite a lot, an

We are seeing a resurgence in interest in the dress watch. It might just be the natural ebb and flow of trends. After a period of dominance for sports watches, we are moving on to the next thing. Still, many watch aficionados have a hurdle to take before getting into dress watches. They might feel they are too formal, too classical, or too old-fashioned. If you feel that way, let me try to convinc

This is only episode six or seven of Fratello Talks, and it’s already the second time we find ourselves talking dress watches. It’s clearly a hot topic, especially when Lex and Thomas get involved. It all started when Thomas chose his Omega Seamaster from the fifties as his go-to “dress watch.” Lex was stunned! How can a watch originally designed for water-based activities

There’s no doubt about it: the watch hobby is an expensive one. Buying a luxury watch easily sets you back a few grand or, potentially, a lot more than that. Last year saw several acquisitions and changes within my collection, and, to make matters worse, my wife and I also bought a new house this year. So buying new watches wasn’t anywhere on my list of priorities in 2023. That was fin

Gilles Lipovetsky is a famous French philosopher of aesthetics who, while recently talking to Spanish newspaper El Pas, said the following: Luxury used to be the rarest, most beautiful, and the most expensive. Today it is also bad taste, ugly, vulgar, and even obscene. But when does good taste turn bad? Let's examine the fringes of good taste in watches with photos of pieces from some well-respec

Taking a watch meant to go into outer space and actually testing it there only seems logical, right? That’s exactly what the ambitious people at Fortis thought. It’s why they embarked on a mission to test watches in space. The brand was part of the Swedish Space Corporation’s SubOrbital Express 3 rocket mission, space testing 13 special Fortis Stratoliner Supernova watches. That

We often hear statements like, This watch is a true classic, or This is a timeless design. Typically, such statements refer to big names in the watch industry, such as and the Submariner, Omega and the Speedmaster, or Audemars Piguet and the Royal Oak. That’s either because their designs are simple and indeed timeless or because they were novel and odd when they first came out. What they al

Sunday Morning Showdown has become a Fratello tradition. Every Sunday morning, two Fratello writers go head to head, fiercely defending the timepieces of their choice. In 2024, we have seen lots of heated battles and even more heated debates in the comments section. The series seems to be a trigger for some strong opinions fueled by the writers’ picks and the arguments that accompany them. T

Although Chuck Maddox wrote that the only true Mark V is a Speedmaster Mark V with caliber 1045 movement, I hereby add the German Special from 1982 with caliber 861 movement to ‘Mark V’ as well. ??Yesterday (and today) a fellow from a large ICT company configured a server for one of the companies I work for, I noticed at lunch that he was wearing a Speedmaster ‘Mark V’. It

Since Maurice Lacroix introduced their Masterpiece series (around 1990), they are able to compete with brands like Chronoswiss, Omega, Ebel and probably some more established brands. Maurice Lacroix is a relatively new player (1975) and in 2006 they introduced their manufacture chronograph movement. Maurice Lacroix produces 150.000 watches per year, of which 40.000 watches have a mechanical moveme

Today, on the last Speedy Tuesday of 2014, we feature one of the rarest Omega Speedmaster watches you’ve seen so far here on Fratello Watches.During our visit to the Omega Museum in November, we were shown this beautiful white dial Omega Speedmaster. On first sight, this watch looks a bit like a customized white dial Omega Speedmaster (like the ‘modding’ of Speedmaster watches we

Just before year-end and thus before the 150th anniversary of the Zenith Manufacture, Bert and I visited the impressive and big building in Le Locle (Switzerland) to see with our own eyes what Zenith is about these days.A friend of mine collects (mainly vintage) Zenith El Primero watches and I’ve always been very interested in their classics like the Chronomaster (with moon phase) and their

P-51 rang a bell with me, as I read a lot of Buck Danny comic books when I was younger and I have a dad with a huge interest in WW2. However, when Jonathan Kamstrup (CEO of REC Watches) told me this watch had a dial made of a metal sheet from a 1960’s Mustang car, the use of the P-51 type confused me a bit. According to REC Watches though, the designer of the original Ford Mustang car compar

With only a day to go, 2016 has come to its end. It was a very interesting year for the watch industry and for watch collectors. The watch industry is currently going through a rough time, but still managed to come up with some very interesting watches this past year.State of the watch industry2017 will likely be an even tougher year for some brands, which means we haven't seen the end of the cris

What good can come out of sending a vintage watch nerd to interview a modern independent artisan?There are not many international watch events in Slovakia, where I am based. None, actually. This changed, however, when ArtyA organized an introduction event in Bratislava as they will be officially represented in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Austria. I was asked to join this event a

The best watches of 2019 according to our editorial team, an overview of over 30 different watches!We’re looking back at a very successful year for Fratello. We grew tremendously, not only in reach but also in the quality and quantity of our content as well as the number of contributors to Fratello. We hired a head of operations, Daniel, who’s responsible for almost everything besides

Old Bamford’s been busy this year, but despite his interesting work with LVMH, his own brand, and our friends at Time+Tide, he found time to collaborate with Casio on one of my favorite G-Shock limited editions of recent times.Funny story: I am so anal about my watch collection, I decided that I needed exactly two more G-Shock squares in my collection to fill one row of six cushions in my Ca

It points out that, in 2020, here on Fratello, I wrote 38 articles. I’m writing because I’m passionate about watches, so I liked writing every one of the articles. But there’s liking and loving. Some of them I enjoyed probably only a tiny bit more than others. Looking back on this strange year, I noticed that I love to write in-depth articles about watches that I really know well