According to the latest news, an increasing number of watch brands are harnessing the sartorial flair of tailoring houses to create the ultimate ‘dress piece’.
People tended to wear a branded fake watch when wearing a suit, especially on a normal occasion. But the connection abruptly ends. Or does it? Actually, a large number of fashion brands have launched their own timepieces collections, and it’s the turn of tailors proper to transform our wrists into another source of sartorial status-signaling.
In this guise, Ermenegildo Zegna has form, having worked in the past with Girard-Perregaux to celebrate its centenary in 2010. This year, the Florentine house returns with its Monterubello Travel replica Watches. Featuring big date, moon phase, and GMT functions, limited to 25 pieces, it follows three hand-with-date and chronograph models that surfaced.
However, the nexus of tailoring and timekeeping has been reached in the latest collaboration between Lapo Elkann’s design studio, Italia Independent, and Hublot, the Geneva manufacture that embodies, in their words, “the art of fusion”, for which Elkann’s favorite tailor, Rubinacci, has provided examples of vintage fabrics hauled from its Neapolitan vaults. The results are impressive, with six examples of its hallowed cloth incorporated in both the strap and the dial of a limited series of Classic Fusion Chronographs, a technical and aesthetic feat that indicates Elkann’s pursuit of highly individual style signifiers.
The union of nontraditional materials and top-end watchmaking is nothing new to the fake Hublot, and this collaboration comes hot on the heels of its line of watches in partnership with Berluti, for whom it integrated its famed leather into dials to dramatic effect. But for Italia Independent, it has made something rather more personal, as Elkann explains: “As a creator, I have always put customization and bespoke designs at the heart of my different projects. And these are really extremely elegant patterns – Prince of Wales, houndstooth, tartan – but they also come from a tradition of Neapolitan tailoring. Having seen what they have done with Berluti – and having a legitimacy myself in tailoring – I wanted to bring this to the replica Hublot, a company where the impossible is never impossible.”
But then terroir is absolutely important to the tailoring/timepiece interface: in recent days, Tom Ford announced his first line of fake watches, in collaboration with Bedrock, the company behind Shinola, a replica watch brand based in Detroit, Michigan. However, in line with industry expectations, Tom Ford’s collection will be Swiss-made, still a great signifier in the world of perfect timepieces.
- Is this the most beautiful movement ever made?
- Big Success of TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45 fake Watch