Rolex, one of the oldest watch brands, has been making quirky and creative watches, if not always. I firmly believe that this record comes not just from the “because we can” approach, but from the “because we must” approach. This is an important question to ponder, not just for us watch aficionados, but also for Rolex’s competitors.
All too often, I see how convenient it is to look at high-end watchmaking as the proving grounds for technical refinement, engineering capability, and manufacturing complexity in isolation. Creative replica watch designs, by contrast, tend to have a “take it or leave it” element that is almost considered irrelevant if there is enough technical importance to divert attention from the tedium caused by uncreative representations.
That said, I truly believe that the extent to which a brand is creatively exciting matters to every one of us watch-lovers — we just don’t talk about it as much as we do about pricing, watch movement performance, or the controversies around design elements. A brand’s ability to occasionally take itself less seriously is a rare and important treat. If a brand isn’t relevant in its design, it will soon grow irrelevant in other ways, as well.
We must stick to the point of discussing this new Daytona and not go off-topic too much, but what is a thought-provoker if not such a watch from replica Rolex? It makes me think of other brands I really appreciate and have owned previously: IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre. Two mighty-awesome brands with fancy factories, rich histories, and more established watch collections than one could shake a stick at… and just see how much less time we have recently spent talking about these two.
They, and other established brands like Blancpain and Breguet, enjoy less time in the limelight than they used to just several years ago. And while they can survive on luxury conglomerate money and by selling bucketloads of basic Reversos, vintage-inspired “novelties,” and the rest, wouldn’t you agree that there used to be so much more buzz when we had charming Master Compressors, crazy Extreme LABs, high-tech Ingenieurs and the like?
Sure, we might have ended up buying base Reversos and classic IWC Pilots just the same, but we have contemporary replica watches that attract us to these brands, not just ambassadors, partners, and products that live exclusively in the past. However, my point is that they should not be limited to technical excellence, but should also focus on modern aesthetics.