Roll up, roll up! The summer has hit The Hague, and Fratello is keen to celebrate. After the fizzing success of March Mania, we are back with the Summer Splash. A new knock-out competition conceived to find the very best summer watch out there, according to YOU, the Fratelli. And guess what? You can win prizes! No, there won’t be a watch available this time, but there WILL be some of the fin

It’s been a bit of a wild ride over the past month for one of our favorite independent brands: MING. On social media platforms, pictures began surfacing with hour and minute hand misalignment. The MING x Massena LAB watch, with its independent hour adjustment, was showing some random issues. We now have some further info direct from the brand.I’ll start this off with a fairly obvious a

Blancpain's Air Command is a pilot's watch that hails from the 1950s. The historical Swiss brand calls it “a legendary chronograph”, and reportedly, there are fewer than a dozen specimens in existence. Other than a number of Trilogy models with Fifty Fathoms cases and bezels spanning from 1996 to 2003, the Air Command never got a series release. That was until 2019, however, when Blanc

Smashing through the world's preconceptions of what a timepiece represents, Greubel Forsey inhabits its own microcosmos. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Stephen Forsey or Robert Greubel recently passed through a wormhole in space and time. Such is the sheer otherness of their “watches” that the word alone seems almost banal. The GMT movement in the new Greubel Forsey GMT Balancier

Gene, Gene, the Cinnabon machine! I don’t think that I’ve ever purchased a watch after seeing it on the screen… until now. I had to dig deep for this one to the tune of $47.92 including free shipping. The end result? The Casio WV-59 Wave Ceptor is a cool watch!A couple of weeks ago, my partner in crime Balazs and I recorded an episode of Fratello On Air, and we focused on Casio.

Alpina shows us the Alpiner Extreme Regulator at the 2022 edition of Geneva Watch Days. This watch marks the rebirth of a flagship model from 2005. While the original was a 48mm monster, the new version is a lot more subtle. It is smaller and fitted with some refined details. Don't be fooled, though. It did not get soft.The Alpiner Extreme Regulator is still a hard-as-nails bit of kit, just in a m

We each have our own reasons for buying a watch. Once upon a time, you bought that first watch, and it was “your watch”. But then you bought another… and another, amounting to a full watch collection. Each subsequent purchase is reasonably justified financially, rationally, and emotionally, right? Well, maybe you can fool yourself, at least for a while, but you can’t fool u

The Gallet “Clamshell” Multichron 30 is one of my favorite Gallet chronographs. It is so perfectly balanced that it makes 37mm look meaninglessly big, and I mean it. Not a single one of my 34mm watches gets as much wrist time as this does.All of the so-called “Clamshell” chronographs are highly regarded among collectors. However, the Gallet “Clamshell” Multichro

It’s been over ten years since the relaunch of Czapek & Cie in 2011. At the time, the watch world could dismiss the decision to relaunch as another manufacturer in the “reviving name” game. But Czapek’s heritage originates from when real-life watchmakers like Franciszek Czapek and Antoni Patek were alive and kicking. The 19th century was the barnstorming era before the

Alpina released the very limited Alpiner Heritage Carree Mechanical 140 Years to great applause earlier this summer. The watch community seemed to agree that the concept and the design were spot on. Unfortunately, since the watch was built around rare calibers from 1938, the model was limited to just 28 pieces. Chances are you either missed out or felt the $5K price tag was a little too much for a

Black and blue sunray dials were already available. Two three-piece lacquer dials, on the other hand, are new to the Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris Chronograph watches. The dials showcase JLC's artisanal skills housed within the manufacture in Le Sentier. And since the dial is the face of the watch, the new ones with a completely different finish give the watches a completely different look. There's a b

Hautlence is back with one of its famous TV-screen-shaped designs. But Hautlence wouldn’t be Hautlence if what we’re watching on that TV weren’t equal parts mechanical mastery and artistic aptitude. The brand itself calls this new Sphere Series 1 a playful watch. But when I look at it, I’m immediately impressed by the sheer complexity and technical know-how that went into i

The London-based brand Mr Jones Watches offers an impressive variety of genuinely creative timepieces, often presented in a lighthearted manner. This differentiates the brand from many others that try hard to lend themselves a rather serious image. Very few Mr Jones watches possess traditional hands to indicate the time. Some of the designs make you wonder if it really is a watch you're looking at

Straight out of the gate, I am a fan of Vantablack. As someone who naturally gravitates towards black in clothing and watches, the intense nature of Vantablack is intriguing and wonderful. And when it comes to watches, the combination of red gold and Vantablack is a winner. H. Moser & Cie. has proudly created some amazing timepieces with Vantablack that had people talking. For Geneva Watch Day

Welcome, dear Fratelli, to this week’s episode of Fratello Talks. If you’ve not been living under a rock, you’ll likely have been following along with all the latest from Geneva Watch Days. Today, RJ, Morgan, and Nacho come together to chat about some of their favorite watches released this week. We’ll feature highlights from Oris, Doxa, Laurent Ferrier, MB&F, and more!

The Swiss brand Reservoir is known for unusual tool watches that don't follow the usual recipes for dressy, small-vintage, or future-cool. Instead, it inhabits the same instrument sphere as IWC, Bell & Ross, and Porsche Design.For me, being sometimes under a barrage of press releases and Instagram tags, the brand has a big charm of its own, even if the Airfight Chronograph seems to take it all

I was surprised and intrigued when word got out last year that Daniel Roth would make a comeback. As a fan of Roth’s watches, I was eager to find out whether the LVMH designers would honor his famous double-ellipse case design in style. When the Daniel Roth Tourbillon Souscription came out in March of 2023, I couldn’t help but smile. Seeing that familiar style that I love so much retur

As someone who lives and breathes watches daily, I make it my business to keep track of as many brands and new releases as possible. However, there are a select number of brands that I avidly follow. Laurent Ferrier is one of them. The company designs piercingly clean watches that resonate with me. Today’s new Classic Auto Sandstone is exciting, but with a date function, is this as captivati

Have you ever seen or heard something and said to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that?” That’s exactly what I did when I saw the press release for this collaboration between H. Moser & Cie. and Studio Underd0g. At first glance, these brands couldn’t be any more different. The first makes high-end watches, often from various precious metals and with complicated,

A brand that did not get much coverage here is H.Moser & Cie, until today! For MotoringExposure, I’ve written an article on this independent manufacturer. Their line-up of Mayu watches is impressive and definitely worth considering if you are in the quest of buying a precious dress watch.I think these dress watches are pretty special, especially the one above with its brown dial and pall