FRIDAY WIND DOWN: 19th February, 2016
Felix Scholz
Sit down, relax, take off your shoes. Here, let me pour you a tall glass of Pinot Noir, because this is Australia and summer is nowhere to be seen. It’s weird weather in Melbourne, the working week is done – so it’s time to kick back and enjoy our weekly wrap of watch news. It’s time for the Friday Wind Down! P.s – if you’re reading this on a desktop you’re doing it wrong.
What happened:
We discovered the ‘WatchIQ’ app – a simple, and surprisingly addictive iPhone quiz game that tests your watch recognition skills. We suspect that if you’re all over AP and Rolex reference numbers you’ll own this game.
We noticed that Ellen DeGeneres was wearing a good-looking Bulgari Octo chronograph earlier this week, the latest in a long line of solid wrist-choices. She’s well known for her penchant for modern and vintage Rolex and was recently spotted wearing a particularly nice vintage Daytona 6265 when she interviewed President Obama. We’ve also noted that the new Everose Yacht-Master has been in high rotation, and our eagle-eyed Instagram followers also report her wearing AP as well. Deployant has compiled a pretty comprehensive gallery here.
We put up a list of six of Hollywood’s best showing some A-grade casual wristwear, but there’s such a thing as taking casual too far, as the Bieb (who makes his debut appearance in the Friday Wind Down, congratulations JB!) demonstrates here. Where he’s playing the piano shirtless. If we just ruined your Wind Down we’re SORRY.
Interestingly enough he’s wearing a $200 quartz Bulova. We tried to sleuth this one out for you, but wound up caught in the next gen product placement/entertainment/retail site looklive and ended up buying Bieb’s entire wardrobe.
What really mattered:
Two of the most well respected names in watch journalism – Jason Heaton and James Stacey launched ‘The Grey NATO’ – a podcast looking at adventure, diving, cars, gear and (obviously) watches. Definitely one worth subscribing to, great work guys!
The week in numbers:
Switzerland V Germany. We lined up the horological heavyweights and had our Instagram followers weigh in on what country their #grailwatch hailed from.
9: Votes for Germany, giving them a shock win over the Swiss old guard. We suspect that most (read: all) of those grail watches have A. Lange & Söhne on the dial.
6: Votes for Switzerland. Which is pretty crazy when you think about it. The rise of ALS really is extraordinary.
1: Vote for Japan. From @Seikoobsession We did not fall off our chairs.
1: Vote for Finland. This commenter made it clear he was gunning for Stepan Sarpaneva, though Kari Voutilainen is another exceptional Finn.
1: Vote for France. Maybe Lip? Or a vintage French-cased Heuer? Marie Antoinette’s Breguet?
1: Vote for Sicily (we’re looking at you @crunchylatte). We’re not entirely sure what’s going on here, but given Sicily’s rep we’re not going to say anything.