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I understand that shaving off a few mm means a drastic re-design from an engineering perspective. The engineers would say to me, “You’d need a technical redesign of the Caliber 238. You do realize there are 242 components, right?” To which I would channel my reply in the voice and gall of Roman Roy, “I don’t know, just make everything smaller! And gold! Black and gold.”
I understand that shaving off a few mm means a drastic re-design from an engineering perspective. The engineers would say to me, “You’d need a technical redesign of the Caliber 238. You do realize there are 242 components, right?” To which I would channel my reply in the voice and gall of Roman Roy, “I don’t know, just make everything smaller! And gold! Black and gold.”
The lumen watches are absolutely fascinating, both intellectually and visually. The see-through dial gives us a rare glimpse of the dial-side of the movement along with all the extra bits of lume (hence the “lumen” name). Because of this, the lumen treatment works best on watches featuring complications as opposed to simple time-only watches (like Lange’s 1815 model). But what if we met somewhere in the middle?

Never wear something just because other people are wearing it. Never wear something just because you think you should. Feeling hip will never outweigh feeling comfortable and confident — in fact, if hip is not right for you, you’ll actually feel insecure and self-conscious. Your clothes should always empower you.
It’s a brand for purists. They’re not going to surprise us with a hype-watch that feels out of place. Everything they do is predictable – but then there’s the lumen series. It’s a bit of counter-culture within the brand’s own range. Lange has taken three models: the Lange 1, the Datograph, and the Zeitwerk, and installed a smoked, translucent dial along with loads of lume where it previously wasn’t. While the stealthy, spooky design language isn’t very “Lange,” the execution certainly is.
The lumen watches are absolutely fascinating, both intellectually and visually. The see-through dial gives us a rare glimpse of the dial-side of the movement along with all the extra bits of lume (hence the “lumen” name). Because of this, the lumen treatment works best on watches featuring complications as opposed to simple time-only watches (like Lange’s 1815 model). But what if we met somewhere in the middle?

The lumed bezel remains for dive use but is now fully marked like that of a Mil-Sub (swoon). Moving on, we see the rehaut has been repurposed for a 24-hour GMT scale that corresponds to a matched orange GMT hand. No date is present in the render, but I wouldn’t kick it out of bed. Functionality would be based on a version of the BB GMT’s MT5612, with proper local jumping GMT support. In my mind, the key here is to protect the Pelagos’ true use as a dive watch, but add a useful and vacation-friendly GMT feature.
Grand Seiko makes its share of chronographs, but a search of their website reveals all Spring Drive models, most with a decided bent toward the large and the sporty. While Spring Drive is in itself one of the reasons I love this Japanese watch company, my ideal Grand Seiko chronograph would feature a mechanical movement – Hi-Beat, if I can really dream – and it would land south of 40mm in diameter.
But as much as I love two-tone, there is no substitute for solid gold. Over the last year or so, I have fallen hard for gold watches – and my jealousy of Jack’s Day-Date is also well noted. So when it came time for me to wish upon a horological star, I looked down at my wrist and thought, “This Explorer would look SICK in solid gold.”

Start with a black-on-black pairing of the dial and strap, throw in some subtle, dark blue accents for a bit of “look closer and you’ll see” charm, keep the well-proportioned 35.5mm diameter and 8.9mm height of the case, and what you have, in my opinion, is the ideal watch for the discerning collector who wants a classic dress piece profile without the often exorbitant classic dress piece price.
One of my favorite vintage Heuer chronographs (alongside my beloved Heuer Kentucky) is the Autavia GMT with a red-and-blue “Pepsi”-style bezel. It uses color in such a compelling manner and is busy in all the right ways – I just love it. And ever since we saw TAG Heuer add a “true” GMT module, with local jumping hour, to its flagship skeletonized Carrera in 2018, I’ve been waiting for them to bring it back.
So, now that you’ve seen our dreams, would you like to share yours? Drop a comment below with a summary of your dream watch and we might just give it the Photoshop treatment in a future story, just like this one. It could be a subtle tweak to a current model, a new dial color, or more, but we’d love to know what you think is missing from the watch world.