Shines under pressure
The C60 Elite 1000, with a titanium case and fulllume bezel featuring top grade Super-LumiNova®, gives a glowing performance all the way down to 1000m. It more than holds its own against other professional dive watches – at a price point they can’t reach without cracking their profit margins. Do your research.
christopherward.co.uk
Loupe. The Magazine of Christopher Ward.
You won’t have missed that the inspiration for Issue 17 is colour – bold and beautiful. As Loupe’s new editor, I wanted to bring in some new voices and fresh contributors, always starting with the watches as inspiration. Here, in a quick re-ordering owing to Coronavirus, more of which on page 10, we’re introduced to the mesmerising new C60 Sapphire, while old horological hand Matt Bielby explores the new C65 GMT Worldtimer. Elsewhere, we talk fancy footwork with the females of football, and play with paint with painter Jamie Gallagher. I hope you enjoy reading Issue 17 as much as the team and I have enjoyed making it. Helen McCall
We are optimists We needed to be when we decided 15 years back that the thing we wanted to do more than anything else was to set up a luxury watch brand that broke every watch industry convention of distribution, pricing and customer service. We got lucky because enough of you wonderful watch enthusiasts out there backed our belief that there was a different, better way to create quality Swiss watches. Today, it has possibly never been more difficult to remain optimistic given what we are all living through. And yet, when one considers the journey that has led us to create a watch as fine as the new C60 Sapphire, it’s impossible not to smile, be thankful to everyone involved in its magnificent creation and look forward with renewed heart (and optimism, of course) to the next 15 years. Stay safe. Mike & Peter
Editor: Helen McCall Art Director: Jamie Gallagher Designer: Sam Burn Photography: Peter Canning, Sam Short and Neil Bedford Cover: C60 Sapphire
1 Park St, Maidenhead, Berkshire SL6 1SL christopherward.co.uk
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Contents Features
14 – 19
What lies beneath
Full disclosure – that’s what the new C60 Sapphire offers, just like CW, the company which produced it
21 – 25
The unseen
Film poster gurus Feref are an entertainment powerhouse like no other. They recently exhibited their unearthed archive, Feref Unseen
26 – 29
All around the world
30 – 35
Paint power Lose yourself in the deeply textural paintings of Jamie Gallagher. Plus: making paint from mummies
36 – 39
League of their own Women's football is fast becoming a major spectator sport. New contributor Anthony Teasdale investigates
40 – 43
What lies beneath 14 — 19
The List
The first Worldtimer to be introduced to the C65 range, the C65 GMT Worldtimer gives time to travellers and homebirds alike
Enigmatic, predatory, pretty effing scary - we take a look (from a safe distance) at fourteen tigers
Hour world 26 — 29
Regulars 7 – 12
45 – 50
The Brief
Insight What, why and how CW do it. Spencer Hart from T3 and Mike France face off over smart watches, and the angel is in the detail for Great Watch Collector Bethenny Frankel
A smorgasbord of newness for your delectation, a new website on its way, plus new Loupe contributor, horological polymath Adrian Hailwood
Colourmen 30 — 35
Contributors
Matt Bielby
Anthony Teasdale
Spencer Hart
Film, TV, gaming and watches form the subjects of Matt's prolific journalism and editing
Tony edits Umbrella and Quintessentially when he’s not admiring the brutalist architecture of Benidorm or watching football
Fronting up for T3, Spencer spends warm summer days indoors setting up new technology (and swearing when it doesn't work) 5
The C1 Moonglow “In the world of haute horology, a handful of makers have done intriguing things, but in the realm of the affordable watch, only Christopher Ward has tackled this challenge.� Worn & Wound
christopherward.co.uk
News, reports & innovations. This issue: New watches, new people, new systems and Bob Dylan’s latest opus.
What is [Project] Matrix?
Change of guard
Since receiving £6.25m from the British Growth Fund in Summer 2019, Christopher Ward have been focusing investment on critical infrastructure – people, processes and new systems - to support the rapid growth of the company. Head of Operations, Sammy Benson, has been the fulcrum of several interlinked systems projects, known internally as ‘Project Matrix’. “Knowing our customers – that’s what CW is all about,” says Sammy. “We’re upgrading our website and customer databases to give us greater flexibility and security, allowing us to serve customers even better. On June 2nd it will have been 15 years since CW’s first two watches went on sale on the first website, so it feels timely to be refreshing things now – the online world has moved on a lot since then!”
Not only does Loupe have a new editor (see Editor’s Letter, page 4), but Christopher Ward has a new Marketing Director – welcome Francesca Robinson, who joins from Aspinal of London where she headed up a global performance marketing team. Francesca’s joining at a super-exciting time for CW. “I’m looking forward to working with such an innovative, strategic and forward-thinking team,” says Francesca. “I’ll be focusing on the business’s strategic goals and continuing to grow our relationships with customers both in the UK and internationally.”
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New kids on the block
Did we hear someone say “incoming”?…
C60 Chronograph The core C60 Trident 3 range will be rounded off in some style, with a gorgeous, well-balanced bicompax chronograph. It effortlessly combines all the go-anywhere, do-anything elegance of the hit C60 Trident dive watch, with the cleverness and visual appeal of the chronograph. It was going to be launched in this issue - but then, Coronavirus happened. Coming soon(ish)…we’re working on it. Available soon from £1,695
C65 Dartmouth, black The latest recruit to join the line-up of military-inspired watches made by Christopher Ward with the rubber stamp of the UK Armed Forces, the C65 Darmouth Black, with its black bezel and dial and Old Radium-coloured lume on hands and indexes, joins its best selling blue-dialled brother-in-arms in the Military Collection.
C60 Elite GMT 1000 How to improve on a watch which sold out before it was released? Make it open series and add a GMT function. The C60 Elite GMT 1000 features all the lightness and durability typical of its titanium case, with the ability to tell you the time in two locations around the world at a single glance.
Available now from £795
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Available now from £1,495
It ain’t over til the Meister sings
We'll be back
Since watch shops and ADs all over the world closed their doors in March, there will have been many small to medium sized watch brand casualties, but Christopher Ward are pitching in to assist German brand Meistersinger, known for its mono-hand dials, by offering an alternative retail outlet – the Christopher Ward website.
…to San Francisco. CW was one of many great brands booked to show at Worn and Wound’s Wind Up Watch Fair, set to be held in the city by the bay 27 - 29th March 2020, which owing to Coronavirus was cancelled. Always looking for new and better ways to connect with fans and friends around the world, the CW team can’t wait to get back into going to live events.
A capsule collection of Meistersinger watches is available at christopherward.co.uk
Find out more christopherward.co.uk/cwevents
Mad men Why were some of the UK’s best ‘mad men’ in the Biel atelier learning the ins and outs of watchmaking from Jorg, Frank and the team? As part of their education prior to developing a new communications approach, of course. Expect the best.
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Co lo ur m an ia just released his first new song in eight years, Murder Most Foul. Densely packed with cultural sleevenotes and references to the JFK assassination, it’s been heralded by fans as a paean to current apocalyptic times. Dark, meandering and doomladen, it’s the opposite of the swirling, heady optimism of the late 1960s art and culture that the C65 Chronograph is inspired by. It’s a 17-minute long ballad, this is Loupe 17. Comparisons only true Bard fans (or certain CW co-founders) might see, perhaps – but all adding new perspectives on the rich mix of the fascinating late 1960s scene.
Originally planned for release in this issue (Loupe 17, May 2020), the hotly anticipated C65 Chronograph is just one small thing among many affected by Coronavirus. And to celebrate that important new watch, what a Loupe issue 17 we had planned for you – graphic art collaborators Craig & Karl made some incredible illustrations for the cover. The glorious colour of their graphics acts like a tonic in these surreal times, making the new C65, which we gave them as a starting point, unequivocally playful. You’ll see more in the weeks and months to come. And in an interesting juxtaposition – as regular Loupe readers will know, barely a Loupe issue passes without some mention of The Voice of Protest - Bob Dylan has
The C65 Chronograph is coming soon, from £1,695
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Jamie Barrow had one goal – to go faster than anyone has ever been before.
Half Swiss half English, Jamie has always been interested in timekeeping and applying it to his number one sport, snowboarding. However, since leaving the British Snowboarding team after a horrific accident that had doctors saying he’d never be able to snowboard again, he didn’t let that stop him, and instead, faced the challenge head on. Now holding the official Guinness World Record for the Fastest Speed on a Snowboard Towed by a Vehicle, Christopher Ward are delighted to have helped Jamie in reaching this phenomenal achievement. While he wasn’t expected to attain the fastest snowboard crash on the very same day (at a whopping 180kph!), Jamie’s determination kept him going, and after
three more attempts, he reached the record average of 173.8kph. “Timekeeping is a fundamental part of the record and having everything going to time is so important,” Jamie says. “I thrashed the record, which is great, but I knew I wanted to go faster, so I’m now working on breaking that 200kph mark.” As for the training up to the next record attempt, we can be sure that the C60 Trident Pro 600 will help his timekeeping stay on track.
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Photo credit: Sam Short - Soul Media.
A Day in the Life Adrian Hailwood. Self-confessed wearer of many horological hats, Adrian is set to bring Loupe a four-part horological masterclass starting in September 2020, so lets get to know him a little better first…
A nicer nerd is hard to find
Early morning – what’s your routine? My routine is…no routine. It could be a 05.30 alarm to get on the road ahead of the morning rush for a distant client visit or a leisurely family breakfast followed by a commute upstairs to my office. It all depends on what’s in the diary. What do you do, exactly? I wear a wide range of horological hats, everything short of watchmaking (although I have been known to dabble on my own watches). I write on watches and watch culture for a number of print and online publications, I consult, consign and catalogue for auction houses, I appraise watch collections for insurance purposes, I provide valuation and authentication advice to the watch trade, I teach a course on Identifying Franken & Fake watches and I also help clients either buy or sell watches, sometimes both. What’s your experience and how did it lead you to your current role? My background is in luxury retail. I started in watches and jewellery with Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, then specialised into watches, and ran Breguet’s London Boutique for 7 years. I left retail for the worlds
of auctions and writing when, after 20 years and the birth of my daughter, my wife and I decided to move back out of London. What’s your typical day at work? A typical day, if I ever have one, can be quite solitary; once I have moved the cat from in front of the laptop, it’s a mixture of research and writing, with calls, emails and a blizzard of WhatsApp messages to break things up. The benefit of working from home is the chance to have lunch with my wife if she is not at work, or to go out and stretch our legs on a country walk. It’s great to get out and meet people, whether a single passionate collector whose watches I am valuing, or a classroom full of professionals exploring the world of fakes. How do you relax after work? The watch world can be quite London-centric and as I live up in rural Worcestershire I often miss the usual cycle of brand launches and events unless I have a reason to be in town. If I am in London on the right day I try to drop into the ‘Time4aPint’ watch get together. A nicer bunch of nerds is hard to find, as likely to coo over an unusual Timex as the latest Patek complication. Client visits for watch valuations can happen in 12
the evenings as I try to accommodate their work commitments. Otherwise it is family time or practising Taekwondo patterns with my daughter ready for our next gradings. Best and worst parts of the job? The best part of the job is that every day is a school day. No one can know everything and there is always something new to discover. The greatest moments are when you discover some part of watch history we have all accepted as fact, isn’t actually true… rare but exciting when you stumble across them. Worst is the blank sheet of paper and a looming deadline when the imagination just won’t kick in. My Plan B (if I wasn’t doing this, I’d be a….) If I wasn’t tinkering with little machines I’d probably be working with bigger ones, vintage cars for example, that and fully embracing the rural lifestyle running a craft cider brewery.
So last century
This new iteration of our C3 Grand Tourer blends the vintage aesthetic of dashboards from classic sports cars with a domed sunray dial in iconic British Racing Green. Although unashamedly retro and loaded with nostalgia it’s powered by a supremely accurate and effortless Swiss quartz movement. Luxury and performance combined, at a price that’s surprisingly yesteryear. Do your research.
christopherward.co.uk
C60 Sapphire
We suspect you did a double-take when you saw this watch on the front cover; it’s certainly what people do when they see it the flesh. We’re always suggesting new Christopher Ward pieces are striking or attractive – and indeed, they are – but this is a step above and beyond. “Everyone who’s seen the C60 Sapphire has been stopped in their tracks,” says Mike France, Christopher Ward CEO and co-founder. “They’ve simply gone, wow. The message is clear, really: if you want to get noticed, this is the one.” The C60 Sapphire is a watch born from a few different impetus. The first is simply that it seemed the right time: with the C1 Moonglow, Christopher Ward had cracked – a word we don’t use lightly, as we’ll explain in a moment – the trick of creating sapphire crystal watch dials, so it seemed a shame not to make more of them. It didn’t hurt that the Moonglow had been extremely well-received, and a huge commercial hit too. “It’s actually become our best-selling single watch,” Mike says. “Make no mistake, the Moonglow is a monster.”
"Everyone who’s seen the C60 Sapphire has been stopped in their tracks"
Then there’s the idea of transparency, which is integral to the Christopher Ward brand in all sorts of symbolic ways, but with a sapphire-dialled watch can be rendered literal too. “A transparent dial is a nice reflection of our core company philosophy,” Mike says. “One of the great joys of owning a mechanical watch can come – in many cases – from viewing the movement through an exhibition caseback, so how much better to open up the front of a watch too? That way you’d be able to see the inner workings while it’s actually on your wrist.” The third impetus was a purely aesthetic one. Hey, just look at this thing. “But although the C60 Sapphire is beautiful here on paper, it’s even more incredible looking in the flesh,” Mike says. “The finished version has exceeded all expectations, being gorgeous to look at – and technically brilliant too.” Or, in other words, if the Moonglow was a monster, meet Son of Godzilla.
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For Adrian Buchmann, CW’s head of product design, the joy of the C60 Sapphire comes from being able to take everything he’s learned from the C1 Moonglow and the various Christopher Ward Apex watches – the most sophisticated line the company has ever attempted – and apply them to a more accessible piece. “Though it’s been a hard road at times, with some bumps, we now know exactly what we’re doing when creating sophisticated pieces like the Sapphire,” Adrian says. “When you mix the best things we've done with the JJ Calibre watches with the best of our dive watches, this is what you get.” Getting to a place where this watch was possible at all was no easy feat, and much of that comes from the delicacy of a sapphire dial. It’s one of those strange facts of life that something as hard as sapphire – “you could attack it with a screwdriver and you wouldn’t be able to scratch it,” Mike says – is extremely brittle when you machine it.
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"Until now, people have considered the most durable dials ever to be Omega’s ceramic dials or perhaps Patek Philippe’s enamel ones, but sapphire is way better than either.”
“Just like stone dials, which are also very hard, sapphire is easy to damage during the production process,” Adrian explains. “It’s the same with any hard material; every time you put it under tension, it’s a risk. There are many things that can go wrong and mean you might reject each one, so the reason you see so few sapphire dials is simply that watch companies don’t like to risk such a high rejection rate.” The sapphire here – and, indeed, any watch sapphire – is grown in labs as a sort a pillar (a ‘carrot’ they call it in French, which we like rather better, as it is indeed pointy at one end) that you slice across into little discs. “Then you have to flatten them perfectly, drill little holes in them, and polish and machine them,” Adrian says. “You have to apply the indexes, and then the Super-LumiNova® by hand. There are 20 steps and over 80 operations to create one of these dials, and something can go wrong at virtually every one.” One thing that might not be apparent, for instance, is that this dial is in two pieces: the clear sapphire itself, and the coloured polycarbonate wafer just
beneath it, which adds the glorious colour. “On early samples, the dials proved to be more opaque than we'd hoped, so we worked hard to reduce the thickness of the crystal to compensate,” Mike says. “It’s now down to about 1mm, which makes all the difference.” An additional advantage of sapphire crystal is that it will keep on looking perfect and unblemished for far longer than any other dial material. “Until now, people have considered the most durable dials ever to be Omega’s ceramic dials or perhaps Patek Philippe’s enamel ones,” Adrian says. “But sapphire is way better than either.” Though the transparent blue dial is the most striking aspect of the C60 Sapphire, it’s by no means the only string to its bow. Pleasing details abound, from the way the display caseback shares the same two-piece construction as the dial – so the movement appears to be blue from the rear as well as the front – to the four functional screws holding the dial down. Then there’s the date wheel, entirely visible at all times, with one day highlighted in the window at three.
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The bezel is different to those of other C60 Tridents too, made of steel – and so reminiscent of the bezel on the last generation C60 Trident 316L. Steel takes colour in a different way to ceramic, and here it has to be applied by hand; indeed, says Adrian, the amount of work that goes into this “is quite eye-opening.” The final thing to make clear about the C60 Sapphire is that, like the rest of the C60 Trident range, it’s a seriously heavy duty dive watch, despite it’s almost delicate beauty, and perfectly capable of operating up to 600m down. “Adrian and I actually met with an eminent watch journalist recently, and he was looking at some of our diver’s watches with exhibition casebacks and even he thought those might limit their ability to go deep,” Mike says. “And it’s just not true. After all, if it was, surely having a sapphire crystal on the front would mean a watch couldn’t operate at depth either?” Inside, a Sellita SW200 movement is decorated with Christopher Ward’s twin flags logo, while the initial strap offering comprises two hybrids – one in blue, the other orange-and-blue – and a stainless steel bracelet; all quickrelease, of course. All in all, then, this is a remarkable piece: as striking as the Moonglow, but perhaps even more beautiful – that blue! – and more accessible: just £795 on a hybrid strap, £895 on steel. “I think it’s a watch we can genuinely be proud of,” Mike says. “There aren’t many diver's watches that open the movement from the front, and there aren’t any at this price point. One thing is guaranteed: it’s a sure-fire conversation starter, and bound to be noticed on your wrist.” The C60 Sapphire is available now, priced from £795
Here comes the sun*
Water resistant to 150m. Perfect for British summers.
*
Come rain or shine the C65 Trident 316L Limited Edition will brighten up the dullest of days. It’s a special limited edition – only 316 of them will be made, from 316L marine-grade stainless steel. Divers will be impressed by the classic bright styling and robust engineering while collectors will love it for being so boldly on trend. Do your research.
christopherward.co.uk
Feref
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Unearthed film poster art spanning seven decades has been found in an unknown archive by the most important Soho entertainment agency that nobody's ever heard of, Feref…
It was in 1968, the heyday of the swinging sixties, that five film poster illustrators called Fred, Eddy, Ray, Ed and Frank set up a new kind of graphic agency in Soho, London. Men of pictures not wordsmiths, they named the business Feref, a straightforward acronym of their own names. Fiercely independent, their ‘Made in Soho’ credo was close to their hearts from the start, as they set out to work alongside film and cinema’s greatest international entertainment brands. From their Soho location, the company worked with an international client list, recently Star Wars, Deadpool, La La Land, James Bond, Frozen and Marvel’s Avengers; creating, supporting and promoting films to audiences across the globe. But back in the ‘60s, movie trailers were only ever really viewed in cinemas, therefore it was down to the posters alone to capture passing interest, sell the promise of the whole story in a single image and then convert that to a ticket sale - all at a passing glance.
“In late ‘60s to late ‘80s London, the work was all hand-painted, and then sold on,” says Alistair Audsley, Feref board member, “these iconic drawings of characters we all recognise, like Han Solo or 007.” Artists would take the first-generation transparency – the images from the original camera film – and create an oversized painting of the film’s action: the characters, cars, scenes, girls and explosions. That portrait would then be cut with a scalpel, the positions of its parts scrambled, relaid out and photographed, in analogue’s answer to the visual editing techniques designers now use on screen to create artwork in different size formats. Transparencies would also be retouched – another now screen-based visual editing term – with paint. “They reproduced brilliantly well,” says Alistair. “The biggest difference today is that film studios have a vast choice of ways to communicate and connect a film to an audience. Compare that to the 1970s and it really highlights the skill and imagination that went into it.”
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Original scamp for Yellow Submarine
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Incredibly, the agency’s early work was lost in the flurry of growth that made them the powerhouse they are today. But what happened to all those old pieces of work created by the original 5 co-founders? Tim Reeves, Feref’s Creative Director, takes up the story. “The rumour of a film poster artwork archive, containing work from Feref’s inception in 1968 through to the late '80s, was picked up by Stu, one of our creatives – himself a movie poster fan and collector. Only one person knew where it was located, so some detective work was needed. No one knew what to expect, as the original founders have all now passed away, so there was no knowledge of what was in the archive. “Stu had an inkling of where the archive was stored, based on insights from Sim Branaghan’s definitive book, British Film Posters: An Illustrated History, in which there’s a chapter devoted to Feref. It hints at deeper connections to Star Wars and other classic British film titles from the early Feref years. Stu’s favourite film of all time is ‘Get Carter’ (Michael Caine) – so I think that was pretty high on his wish-list of what might be there (and it turns out there was quite a lot).” When the archive was finally brought in-house, it was astonishing. “We’d always known the archive must exist somewhere,” Alistair explains, “but we pitched up at this storage container in Norfolk with no idea what we’d find inside. It was me, Graham (Hawkey-Smith, Feref CEO)
"We’d like to tour a bigger version of the exhibition so more people can experience the Feref Collection around the world."
and a cameraman – you can watch the film – and when we found this incredible trove of art and related pieces in old job bags and cardboard boxes, it was quite a moment. Of course, we knew it was all originally filed for accounting purposes with no idea of its future; wonderful Empire Strikes Back and Bond relics that then needed to be dug out and catalogued.” Indeed, there were dozens of boxes of concepts and original artwork for thousands of films, photos from the film sets (used for briefing the artists), film synopses, and the transparencies which became the printers’ source material for all the final version posters that were printed – a unique insight into the skill and craft of the agency’s forefathers. Tim again: “To see past the edges of posters you’ve known all your life and actually follow the brushstrokes to their natural end gives you a new appreciation of the craft that went into these images.” And so the Feref Collection formally came catalogued and referenced by Sim Branaghan, with support from the History of Advertising Trust. Tim says, “When we were putting Feref Unseen together, it did feel like we were curating an art exhibition rather showing a film poster collection.
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“I think my favourite thing about the collection is its diversity and how it’s not just a greatest hits of iconic blockbusters,” says Tim. “For instance, as someone who spent far too much time as a kid sat in front of the VHS player, it was a great pleasure to discover alternative artwork and production stills for the Troma classic, Class of Nuke ‘Em High. Also, we’ve got some great textless versions of The Hills Have Eyes Part II and Zoltan: Hound of Dracula. Open any box and you could find a series of scamps for the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, hand-painted posters for a saucy '70s Britcom starring Robin Askwith, multiple designs for long forgotten Jaws rip-off Tintorera or behind the scenes production slides for Aliens – the breadth of work is incredible.”
It’s incredible to see how the original Feref artists like Brian (Bysouth) and Fred would sit at their desks and create an array of designs in pencil, paint, magic markers and crayons for each title to such a degree that even their scamps are like miniature masterpieces.” Feref Unseen was exhibited at the Film Distributors Association in Summer 2018.
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The fierce ‘Made in Soho‘ spirit of the original five founders of Feref is evidently still strong in today‘s management team – making a tiny square mile in London influence Hollywood. Finally, I asked Tim Reeve where the Feref archive would next be seen. "We’d like to tour a bigger version of the exhibition so more people can experience the Feref Collection around the world. With Feref entering its seventh decade in the entertainment industry, we’re uniquely placed to show how film and TV marketing has evolved. More broadly, film marketing has had a profound impact on cinema itself. In fact, when the Lumière brothers pioneered their moving pictures, they assumed it was an experimental advance in photography, but a curiosity. It was a canny publicist who convinced them that these moving pictures might find a large audience…” A canny publicist indeed – and the craft and graft of men like Fred, Eddy, Ray, Ed and Frank.
C65 GMT Worldtimer
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world
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ome of the most handsome, effortlessly stylish wristwatches ever made are the the steel sports watches of the 1960s, many of them aimed at divers but all of them speaking to a world that was rapidly becoming both smaller and more exciting. This was the jet age, when planes were called things like Stratocruisers and airports Idlewild, and every flight was a luxurious adventure. The C65 Trident range riffs entertainingly on the watches of the period, offering dive-orientated watches and military ones and, coming soon, a striking chronograph variation that can’t help but make you smile. First, though, there’s the C65 GMT Worldtimer, and – wouldn’t you know it? – it might just be the best looking of a universally handsome family. Part of that’s down to the new, wider bezel than other C65s; part of that’s down to the striking blackand-yellow colour scheme; and part of that’s down to the bold GMT hand, with its oversized military-style arrow head. “This is a really cool watch,” says Christopher Ward CEO and co-founder Mike France, “which it was almost inevitably going to be, seeing as it is part of the C65 line and so inevitably heads down the retro route. GMTs and Worldtimers are all about the explosion of global travel in the 1960s, when it became useful for people to know the time in more than one time zone at once. Remember Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can? This watch is in the spirit of that era.” Not that it’s a backward looking piece in any way except aesthetically, of course. Indeed, not only is this the first of the C65 range to go down the GMT Worldtimer route, it actually offers a number of other firsts too. It has a screw-down crown, which is new to the C65. It uses a dramatic black-and-steel with yellow highlights colour scheme – sort of like a bionic bee – which, amazingly, Christopher Ward has never played with before. And it has a bi-directional bezel, long awaited and beautiful to operate. Three important points then, and each worth looking at in more detail. First up, that crown. “We actually want to introduce more screw-down crowns to the C65 family,” says CW head of product design Adrian Buchmann, “bringing that extra bit of security and quality to each watch. You don’t actually need one for a watch to be water resistant – thanks to double gaskets and clever case construction, it can be safe to dive to 150m without it – but people like them anyway. In fact, in recent years I’ve become more aware of just how keen people are to look after their watches, and screw-down elements can be a reassuring part of that. Because you can feel that something’s nice and tight with your hand, you become less worried about it.”
Speaking to a world enjoyed by the first casual world travellers – all those Don Drapers and Jacqueline Kennedys of the late ’50s and 1960s – the C65 GMT Worldtimer is glamour itself, while adding many useful firsts to the hit C65 range too
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"It’s a wonderful combination that we’ve never used before, which seems strange when you see just how vibrant they look together"
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Then, the colour scheme. “One of my favourite dive watches of all time is the IWC Aquatimer, which came in a brilliant black and yellow version,” says Mike. “It’s a wonderful combination that we’ve never used before, which seems strange when you see just how vibrant they look together. Blues and reds also look good with black, of course, but yellow really stands out – and on that striking military-style GMT hand I think it looks particularly good.” And finally the bezel, perhaps the most important element of them all. “This is a feature that, honestly, a good GMT watch really should offer – it makes using the watch so much easier – so we’ve listened to people and introduced one here for the very first time,” says Mike. “It helps that the C65 bezel works in a different way to the one we have on the C60 range, so this is an easier implementation for us than on the C60. On the C60 we couldn’t get the click right with a bi-directional bezel, and until we can, we won't implement it on that range; with the C65, however, we can.” The standard GMT indication here is inside the watch underneath the crystal, not outside on the bezel, which is now home to the Worldtimer tool. How does this work? Well, a GMT watch simply offers a second hour hand on the watch face that’s geared to rotate once every 24 hours (exactly half as fast as the other hour hand) and points to a second time scale that reads to 24 instead of 12, located on the inner edge of the watch dial; this can tell you the time in a second time zone (home, say, as you travel away from it), and as it’s showing all 24 hours, there’s no way
to get confused as to whether it’s day or night there. With a Worldtimer, you can track all 24 time zones across the world at once, each indicated by a city name. “It’s a change in the architecture and construction for us,” says Adrian, “and it has real advantages. As the bezel is a bit bigger than on the other C65s – we have to fit all those city names onto it, after all – it gives you a better grip, so the user experience is excellent. And, as a nod to our English heritage, you’ll see that London is positioned at 12 o’clock.” Naturally, too, the watch has all the key features that makes the entire C65 range so appealing: the ’60s aesthetic that comes from a glass box sapphire, and a visual slimming-down created by a combination of the regular light-catcher case, and the use of black DLC on both the bezel and the backplate, giving a sort of sandwich look when seen from the side. Because of the wider bezel, this is actually a 42mm piece, rather than the 41mm of most C65s. “That said, the look is still that of a watch that will easily slip under a cuff,” Mike says. Then there are the strap options – all quick change, of course – which include a black hybrid, vintage oak leather, a steel bracelet and canvas, something Christopher Ward has offered for some time, but not like this. “It’s the best canvas strap we’ve ever had, with better waxing
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and finer thread,” says Mike. “Since we started our partnership with the Ministry of Defence, we've been working very hard to improve our canvas offering, and now we're ready to introduce the results to our other watches too.” Plus, of course, you could fit any of Christopher Ward’s 22mm straps to this watch, or even a mesh bracelet if you fancied it. Finally, the movement: Sellita SW330’s, which Adrian describes as “just a renowned GMT movement, a very solid, reliable workhorse, that’s notable for being particularly smooth-winding. Though it’s an automatic, of course – so you’ll rarely have to wind it anyway.” On the canvas, hybrid or vintage oak, the C65 GMT Worldtimer comes in at £995; on the bracelet, it’s £1,095. “When you think that it offers so many firsts – our first GMT Worldtimer with a bi-directional bezel, the first screw-down crown on a C65 – and that it’s such an interesting and classy looking watch,” says Mike, “then at below £1,000 it's a real steal.” The C65 GMT Worldtimer is available now, from £995
Colour
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Colour is a powerful symbol. In all living beings it has the ability to evoke emotion and memory, recognition and identity, and for humans like all creatures, this starts early in life – all children know their favourite colour. Colour works both ways, speaking to us of what we like, and equally importantly, of what we dislike.
n art, colour is a medium of expression, a visual language taken to its apex, where, as viewers, our eyes and brains process new feelings communicated through hue. Of course, an artist’s selection of paint and materials has to happen before the creative act and their selection is vital to the success of the piece. Put plainly, the purchase has to come before the painting. Artists don’t choose their colours and materials in a vacuum. “Respect for the materials is central to my process,” says Jamie Gallagher, a figurative painter living and working in Somerset, England. “Since I started painting, I’ve used Belgian linens, tulip-wood stretchers, beautiful materials that connect my work to the history of painting. These haven’t changed in centuries; they go right back. “I started painting almost as a kind of therapy,” he explains. “I was just processing some stuff, and this was an interesting way
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for me to spend time thinking. For me, my portraiture is all about internal turmoil. It’s about what’s happening on the inside more than what’s going on outside. I love the physical materials and the tactility of the process. The core pigments: cadmium, cobalt – are elemental, transcending trends in colour. For me it’s less ‘what’s the Pantone colour of the year?’ and more ‘what would Francis Bacon do?’” Francis Bacon certainly couldn’t have shopped for his materials online, or at the local art shop chain, unlike many of today’s artists. The sourcing of traditional, authentic paint and materials connects Jamie’s approach to past painters. “My studio is in the loft of a rennovated Silk Mill in Somerset, I've built up strong relationships with the local artist materials producers, I love this connection to the suppliers that harks back to the Colourmen of London back in the day. One white from one paint-maker won’t be the same colour, let alone texture or feel on the brush, as any other.”
Take Flake White, a warm white leadbased oil paint which can trace brushstrokes back into antiquity. Used as make up by the Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks and found in the earliest Chinese paintings, it’s a noxious mix of lead carbonate with zinc oxide. Nasty stuff to paint your face with. Still, it was the only widely available white pigment for artists until the late 19th century. Remarkable for its durability, flexibility, and fast drying time, it’s loved by contemporary artists – famously Lucian Freud – and art conservators, as sections of oil paintings containing Flake White withstand time better than those without. But it’s classified as toxic thanks to its high lead content, and since 1998 has been on restricted sale thanks to EU legislation. It’s still possible to buy Flake White, in a modern formulation, and it’s safe to use, with the right precautions and studio technique. For Jamie, “It’s mind-blowing that I can share some of these same pigments from ancient art, the same colours, brought into my paintings in 2020.”
From the 1830s to the 1900s, paint companies like the English Winsor & Newton and the Welsh Cranfield Colour would send a Colourman with a suitcase under his arm to peddle paints, pigments and raw materials to artists; often with no London office address, Colourmen went to where the artists were (in London pubs, of course) and sold them there. They influenced what artists painted with.
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“For me, my portraiture is all about internal turmoil. It’s about what’s happening on the inside more than what’s going on outside.”
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Colour me happy
In the early 2000s, academic researchers, with paint brand Winsor and Newton, shone light on the art and science of these innovative travelling Colourmen. Together, they gathered an 85-book, 17,000-page archive of handwritten recipes for long-dead colours with glorious names like ‘Dragon’s Blood’, ‘Scarlet Lake’ and ‘Mummy’ (which required the grinding of an Egyptian mummy before mixing with asphalt). The National Portrait Gallery still keeps this registered Colourmen’s record, vivid with recipes for pigments and oils, watercolours and varnishes, with colourful notes on recipes for gout and toothache, wages and costs, travel and hotel suggestions. Messrs Charles Roberson (1810) and Cornelissen (1855) were such registered sellers and are still in business today; Cornelissen’s shop in Bloomsbury is a well-organised riot of colours in every medium, and the Google street view tour is well worth your next coffee break. Back to the 21st century, and Jamie’s recent solo exhibition Post Normality Reality Disorder, at The Whittox Gallery, saw the work hung around the whitewashed mezzanine of a converted chapel. Against that quiet, historic backdrop, the visceral
contemporary images jarred and yet somehow felt at home. Jamie uses heavy impasto oils and raw textured linens, using the paint almost as sculpture. The physicality of painting and a deep connection with the materials and tactility of the process feed the work, while back into centuries past march the chemists and Colourmen who supported an industry of artists, and whose brushstrokes can still be seen today. If Jamie Gallagher could still buy his paints from a Welsh bloke with a suitcase in a London pub, you get the feeling he would. Find out more about Jamie Gallagher, visit www.jamiegallagher.co.uk or Instagram, @typ01134.
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How to predict what the next ‘big’ colour will be? Forecasters start with macro trends – the big shifts in global culture that affect how we all think and act. Fashion futurists WGSN say that for 2020 this is the primacy of wellness goals in daily life. Key hues relevant to these themes – like the “energetic charge of red, or the cool detachment of blue” are then tuned up against other macro shifts, like the pervasiveness of digital technology, giving the hues in this year’s palette “an artificial edge”, that feels right for the season. The result – colours that look very ‘right now’, that the creative industries can use in their own work. Fashion trend forecasters weigh and mix influences from a breadth of sources just as the Colourmen stirred resins and pigments for the paint pot, which translates to trend specialists in high-street fashion brands, who consult such oracles as WGSN and Pantone to build palettes for their ranges. “It’s small and simple, but when Pantone announce their colour of the year, we sit up and listen,” says Fashion trend specialist Claire Hillard, who writes on colour trends for a number of brands and websites. “WGSN also produces a very technical analysis of colour palettes, which they derive from a huge team of specialists in home, interiors, lifestyle, technology, beauty, fashion, art and culture. “All colour trends have a timespan, whether they stretch over millenia - as in the case of Flake White - or live and die in the moment,” says Claire. “Take 2016’s mustard yellow. It was all over the catwalks a few years ago, showing up in multiple research areas. Zoom forward 3 years and it’s a basic colour in some commercial brands ranges but isn’t considered a fashion colour any longer.” Mustard simply doesn’t have the staying power of the enduring Flake White, then. I think I’m going to need a new jumper.
(Women's) football
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If you’re an England football fan, you get used to semi-final heartbreak. The dates and places of matches are embedded in the national psyche: Turin, 1990 (Chris Waddle literally aiming for the stars with that terrible penalty); Wembley, 1996 (Gareth Southgate on scapegoat duties) and Moscow, 2018 (Croatia handing the Three Lions a football lesson). Added to this litany of glorious failure is Lyons 2019. The match, witnessed by a TV audience of 11.9m people in the UK – the most-watched live event of the year – had it all. An opening goal for England and scenes of wild celebration; a comeback strike from their opponents (in this case, the USA); and a heartbreaking American winner which left squad and fans bereft. So far, so England. Except for one difference. This wasn’t Gareth Southgate’s men, but the women’s team (managed by Phil Neville). And even though the Lionesses lost, their success mirrored the increasing popularity of the women’s game in Britain – with fans, players and blue-chip sponsors all wanting a slice of the action. Josie Le Vay is a journalist who writes about women’s football – as well as being a keen player herself. She travelled to the World Cup last year.
“I ended up going to the tournament because the tickets were so cheap,” she says. “There was an incredible atmosphere – it was friendly and affordable. In contrast to that, I went to my first Premier League game – Liverpool v Wolves – recently, and it felt much more intimidating. At a women’s game, all the fans sit together. There’s no negativity, and you never worry about violence.” Women’s football has been running nearly as long as the men’s game in Britain with clubs like Dick, Kerr Ladies FC (a factory team from Preston) attracting crowds of up to 53,000 for matches from 1917. However, in 1921 the FA banned women from playing soccer on the spurious grounds that it damaged their bodies – though in likelihood it was more to do with the fact that some ladies’ teams were attracting larger crowds than their male counterparts. It was only in 1969 that the Women’s FA was formed, which was incorporated into the FA in 1993. Today, the core of female football in England is the Women’s Super League, which began in 2010. Made up of 12 professional teams, it features women’s subsidiaries of Premier League clubs like Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea. And while the competition had a slow start in its
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early days, it’s started to attract increasing attendances as well as a £10m sponsorship deal from Barclays Bank. “Women’s football is the best it’s ever been in terms of engagement,” says Claire Broomfield, who writes about the game for the Daily Mail. “It’s much more visible – the majority of the national papers are in the press boxes at weekends. The viewer numbers peak at one million for the weekly highlights show. Social media has also been strong, enabling young fans to connect with players.” The strength of women’s football here has been shown by the quality of overseas stars the WSL is attracting. Josie Le Vay again. “In the past, a lot of female players went to the USA to play,” she says. “Now they’re coming here. The Australian Sam Kerr has just signed for Chelsea, and that’s a big deal. At Arsenal, they’ve got the Netherlands international Vivianne Miedema who I think is one of the best players in the world.” It’s not all good news, however. Claire Broomfield recently ran an exposé in the Daily Mail on the paltry wages many teams pay, plus the below-par facilities players are forced to use.
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Photo credits: Neil Bedford
Lucy Bronze takes charge at last year's World Cup
“At Liverpool, the CEO Peter Moore commits to cover the losses of Liverpool FC Women’s – all the clubs are operating at a loss – but the problem is he’s not putting in any more than that. The big PL clubs have to back their women’s teams properly with better training facilities and elite performance environments.” Another step (or kick) in the right direction would be professional referees, says Broomfield, noting that one top ref juggles her WSL duties with a full-time job in the NHS. But these niggles don’t take away from the bigger picture: that football will probably become the number-one participation sport for females in this country, overtaking hockey and netball. And, says Claire Broomfield, the standard is better than ever.
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“Top-level girls like Lucy Bronze (currently at Olympique Lyons) would run rings round some Premier League players. People underestimate how fit and strong they are. The players say when they were growing up, there was no one to look up to. Now there is.” Something that can only help turn those semi-final losses into major-tournament victories.
Tigers are simply incredible creatures: beautiful, frightening, horrifically endangered – and brilliant colonisers of the human imagination Sharks are scary, but stay out of the water and you’re pretty safe. Not so with tigers, however, those most gorgeous, charismatic and intimidating of the world’s megafauna, who live where we live and could take us out with but a swipe of those gloriously oversized paws. But though tigers can kill us – and sometimes do so – we’re far better at wiping them out, by accident and
design, culling their population from around 100,000 a hundred years ago to under 4,000 now, an utterly unacceptable state of affairs. Here are some of the most fascinating tigers from history, both real and imagined – though, the likes of Tigger aside, we wouldn’t want to be caught on a lifeboat with any of them…
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Dawon Introduced: Unknown, but perhaps around 400BC There are giant lions in Jewish tradition – when one roared, the walls of Rome collapsed and pregnant women miscarried – and ghost-whales in Japanese myth; the monstrous wolf, Fenrir, was Loki’s child in Norse tales, while be-jewelled man-bulls roamed the Philippines. Naturally, the Indian sub-continent has long been home to stories of a terrifying tiger deity, called Dawon in the earlier Tibetan myths and Gdon in later Hindu ones, who sometimes more resembles a lion, it’s true, but is always hugely powerful – and utterly loyal to the warrior goddess she serves. Offered as a gift to Durga – the demon-fighting form of love goddess Parvati – Dawon would serve as her war mount, much as Battle Cat later would for He-Man. Durga would ride Dawon into war against such enemies as buffalo demon Mahishasur, while brandishing – impressively – ten weapons at once in her ten hands; couple this with Dawon’s claws and teeth, and they must have made the most formidable foe.
Shere Khan Introduced: 1894
William Blake’s The Tyger Published: 1794 From William Blake’s famous poem ‘The Tyger’ comes perhaps the most fascinating, ferocious tiger of them all. This short, deliberately repetitive highlight of Blake’s 1794 poetry collection, Songs of Experience, asks constant questions of the fearsome beast – who made thee? – and then wonders how the creator reacted to having come up with something quite so unknowable and scary. Originally paired with a much less famous poem, ‘The Lamb’, the two suggest that to see one (holy innocence) you must also see its opposite (primal ferocity), and that both can be beautiful; there’s no external war between good and evil, Blake seems to be saying, but rather each person should accept and resolve the contrary nature of life within themselves. The tiger is undeniably beautiful but contains the capacity for horrific violence – much, you could say, as we do. So what kind of God would create us?
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This most famous of villainous tigers is the Big Bad of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book – his name means ‘tiger king’ in Hindi – and his attitude, aggressive and arrogant, seems inspired by his crippled leg; in the original Jungle Book stories even his mother mocks him. The 1967 Disney cartoon version made Shere Khan more formidable, however, afraid of nothing but man’s guns and fire and feared by all in the jungle. Only by using fire can Mowgli, the young boy brought up by wolves, force the tiger to flee. A more rounded and sympathetic version of Shere Khan appears in the 1994 live-action film, no longer killing for sport and keen to protect ‘the laws of the jungle’, but in the most recent movie version, Shere Khan – now voiced by Idris Elba – was back to being a manipulative and terrifying figure.
The Champawat Tiger Active: the late 19th and early 20th century There’s a reason why we’re all a bit scared of tigers: they eat people. Perhaps the most deadly was the Champawat Tiger, who killed an estimated 436 in Nepal and, later, India’s Kumaon District. In doing so she managed to evade the might of the chasing Nepalese Army, who merely succeeded in driving her over the border, where she continued to prey upon young Indians who’d wandered away from their villages. Eventually British hunter and conservationist Jim Corbett followed a trail of blood from one victim, barely avoided the tiger’s ambush, and shot her dead in 1907; examining her corpse, Corbett decided that she’d been shot in the past, damaging some of her teeth and so making it hard for her hunt her usual prey. In fact, it’s believed many so-called ‘man-eaters’ are forced into their behaviour by injuries or disabilities – this was certainly the case with the Thak man-eater (also killed by Corbett) and the Tiger of Segur of the 1950s.
The Esso Tiger Introduced: early 20th century Tigers are such striking beasts it’s little surprise many businesses have used them as mascots over the years, the most famous and enduring (sorry, Tony) being the Esso Tiger – no official name – who really hit the public eye during the post-war years, but actually has a longer history. At the peak of his popularity in the early ’60s, millions of motorists worldwide were tying fake tiger tails to their petrol caps in reference to the company’s ‘put a tiger in your tank’ slogan, created at the ‘tail end’ of the 1950s by a young Chicago copywriter called Emery Smith. Not that Emery could claim responsibility for the tiger itself – that had been around advertising Esso in Norway since the start of the 20th century, only becoming a worldwide mascot after the Second World War. These days, real tigers running tirelessly through sand and snow tend to be used, but the original versions were illustrated, first as cute, amiable cartoon beasts and later as more ferocious and energetic ones.
Tiger Tim Where? Everywhere When? Often Long before a certain tennis player earned the nickname, there was the original Tiger Tim, a naughty schoolboy in children’s comic strips – who just happened to be an anthropomorphic tiger. Tim attended Mrs. Bruin’s Boarding School alongside similarly well-dressed elephants, monkeys, giraffes and such, a gang who eventually became known as the Bruin Boys. Tiger Tim and chums first appeared in the Daily Mirror in 1904, but soon started cropping up in The Monthly Playbox – a colour supplement in The World and His Wife magazine – too, and then The Rainbow, a new comic aimed at young children. By the 1920s, there was even a Tiger Tim’s Weekly. (In The Rainbow, he shared space with another intriguing but doubtless innocent strip: ‘The Tiny Toy Boys’.) You can’t keep a good tiger down, though, and when Tiger Tim’s Weekly ended in 1940, and The Rainbow did the same in 1956, he survived; indeed, regular Tiger Tim adventures were still being created as late as the mid-1980s.
Tigger Introduced: 1928
Tawky Tawny Introduced: 1947
Has there ever been a jollier, less threatening tiger than this cheerfully bounding chap, first seen in The House at Pooh Corner – AA Milne’s 1928 sequel to Winnie-the-Pooh – and, like all the Pooh characters, based on one of the author’s son’s stuffed toys? Though somewhat loud and annoying, Tigger swiftly moves in with Kanga and Roo – partly because he’s best pals with the diminutive kangaroo, and partly because he loves eating extract of malt, which Kanga keeps in her larder as Roo’s ‘strengthening medicine’ – and becomes key to many adventures. Essentially cheerful, outgoing and self-confident in a way many of the other toy animals aren’t (Rabbit and Piglet are especially wary), Tigger never actually describes himself as a tiger but instead as a ‘Tigger’, and though he always uses the term in the plural (“Tiggers don’t like honey”) he also believes that “he’s the only one”. A troublesome friend, then, not because he’s excessively bitey, but because his exuberance often does as much harm as good.
The early superhero comics had a different relationship with reality than we’ve become used to in Marvel films, and the most outthere was Captain Marvel, a 1940s Superman-rival – he still exists, though is now better known as Shazam! – who counted amongst his best friends an urbane, well-dressed chap called Tawky Tawny. This well-mannered talking tiger just wanted to be part of human society, and Mr Tawny’s earliest 1940s adventures generally revolved around his difficulties persuading a petrified public that he’s actually a friendly and reasonable fellow. Though a proposed Tawky Tawny newspaper comic strip flopped in the early ’50s, and he was written out of mainstream DC Comics continuity in the ’80s as just too silly, various refreshed versions of the character have appeared more recently. (At one point he was even seen reading a self-help book called ‘How Not To Eat Your Friends’.) Sadly, last year’s Shazam! film wasn’t quite brave enough to include him, but Tawky references were dropped anyway in the form of stuffed toy tigers.
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The Tiger Who Came to Tea Introduced: 1968 Some kids’ picture books have their moment then fade away, but not Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea, still popular over 50 years since its 1968 debut and one of the best-selling children’s books of all time. The plot is simplicity itself: it’s raining, a little girl called Sophie and her mum are making the most of it by making tea, when a huge but kindly anthropomorphised tiger turns up to share their food (read: snaffle the lot, including all the water from the taps), and then departs as mysteriously as he came. What does it all mean? Kerr’s background was German, with her father on a Nazi death list, so should the tiger actually be read as some Christoph Waltz-esque Gestapo officer, polite but dangerous, waiting with the womenfolk for little Sophie’s father to come home? It’s a tempting thought, but Kerr herself repeatedly said no, her tiger was simply inspired by a trip to the zoo with her three-year-old.
Hobbes Introduced: 1985 Like Tigger, Hobbes is a young boy’s toy come to life, seen by almost everyone as an inanimate stuffed tiger, but by Calvin – risk-taking, trouble-prone, six years old – as his very-muchalive best friend, smart, sardonic and philosophical; Calvin’s conscience, in other words. Proud to be a tiger, and believing himself to be a real one – humans are simply “tiger food”, he says – he combines traits from his namesake, the gloomy philosopher Thomas Hobbes, with those of creator Bill Watterson’s own pounce-happy pet cat. The pair starred in a daily American newspaper comic strip running 1985-95 – “the last great American comic strip,” many say – but which remains popular to this day, though few have ever been sure whether to consider Hobbes simply an ‘imaginary friend’ or something more. According to his creator, “Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than dolls coming to life. Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way.” Which is cool, but still doesn’t quite make it clear.
Machli, the Queen Mother of Tigers Active: early 2000s Some tigers live to have their pictures taken. Sita, considered the ‘Matriarch of Bandhavgarh’ – a tiger reserve in central India – lived 17 years (long for a tiger), raised a highly unusual six litters, and was called ‘the most photographed tigress in the world’; when she went missing in 1996, thousands mourned her loss. But yet more famous was Machli, in this instance as much for her exploits as the way she looked. She once killed a 14 foot mugger crocodile (losing two teeth in the process), eventually lost the use of an eye, and was celebrated with many names: ‘Queen Mother of Tigers’, ‘Tigress Queen of Ranthambore‘, ‘Lady of the Lakes’, and ‘Crocodile Killer’. Dying age 20, she was considered the oldest living tigress in the wild and – like Sita – played a key role in the regeneration of the tiger population in her area, in this instance a National Park in the north of the country. Thanks to her, the population here rose from 15 tigers to around 50 in the early 2000s.
Mantecore Active: early 21st century In the wild, rare white Bengal tigers grow even bigger than their orange cousins; they’re a simple recessive mutation, lacking the pigment which gives the beasts their normal bright fur. How many exist? Hard to say, but there are certainly more in captivity than the wild, most of them bred for circuses and zoos. The German-American stage magicians Siegfried & Roy owned several, and for many years tried to breed entirely white ones; a fixture of Las Vegas’s Mirage Resort and Casino from 1990 on, their careers came to an abrupt end in 2003, when a seven year old white tiger named Mantecore attacked Roy Horn on stage, severing his spine. The show was immediately cancelled, and although in time the magician went on to make an impressive – though by no means complete – recovery, their original act was finished. While being taken to hospital, Horn said, “Mantecore is a great cat; make sure no harm comes to Mantecore,” and none did; in fact, he lived until 2014, age 17.
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Richard Parker Introduced: 2001 Rajah from Aladdin Introduced: 1992 “I’ve never had any real friends – except you, Rajah.” Poor lonely old Princess Jasmine, chatting aimlessly to her pet cat – oversized, sure, and fiercely loyal – like any teenage girl might, frustrated at the unfairness of life under her overly controlling father. And poor Rajah, so distraught at her distress and so put out when Jasmine thoughtlessly mentions her lack of buddies, momentarily forgetting him. So loyal is Rajah, in fact, that he immediately takes against anyone who has (or even might) annoy or hurt Jasmine: not least, of course, her string of narcissistic suitors, including – initially – Aladdin, who he openly growls at. The more recent live-action version sees a less cuddly, more intimidating Rajah share the spotlight as Jasmine’s confidant with a human handmaiden, Dalia; more alien, more obviously of another species, he’s perhaps less obviously in love with Jasmine too – making him less touching than the original, but also a little less weird.
Meet a fictional tiger who’s very much not a cartoon, but rather a star of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi by Canadian author Yann Martel. The scenario is deliberately unlikely: teenager Piscine Patel, an Indian Tamil boy, survives a shipwreck for 227 days aboard a small lifeboat – with only a Bengal tiger, named Richard Parker thanks to a clerical error at his father’s zoo, for company. Initially there had been ‘Pi’, a hyena, a zebra and an orang-utan aboard – his dad had decided to emigrate both family and zoo to Canada – but Richard Parker had been hiding under a tarp all along, and when the hyena kills the zebra and ape, he emerges to kill it in turn. Now Pi and tiger have to survive the ocean and each other, a tale that – when the lifeboat eventually washes up on a Mexican shore – even other characters find hard to swallow. In a story that’s all about believability, religious faith, and mutual interdependency, was Richard Parker ever really there at all?
Timefulness*
be in the moment here, there, anywhere
*
The C60 Trident GMT 600 is the perfect timepiece for wandering minds that struggle to find peace in a frantic world. The strikingly coloured GMT hand and full Super-LumiNova® Grade 1 precision ceramic 24-hour unidirectional bezel enable the wearer to track up to three time zones. So when you’re landing in Shanghai at 21.52, totally knackered, you’ll see it’s 14.52 in Shoreditch and 06.52 in Palo Alto. How calming is that?! Do your research.
christopherward.co.uk
Great watch collectors
Bethenny Frankel and Cartier, really shines. Like the emerald-cut diamond indexes on her rare rose-gold Daytona Cosmograph with its unusual cream-coloured dial, or the distinctive asymmetric spattering of diamonds across the face and bracelet of one rarely-seen AP Royal Oak. The mostworn piece in the collection could be her diamondset rose-gold Daytona Ref. 116505, which is heavily featured on her busy Instagram account. It’s not all modern bling, though; there’s some vintage frosting too; a 1980s AP Royal Oak is fully covered in diamonds with emerald indexes. Deadpan, in Housewives mode, Frankel describes wearing this “with jeans and a t-shirt…it’s so bling it’s gone full circle back to casual.” Her playfulness veers from the watch collecting mainstream. Frankel doesn’t collect by reviewing the market and picking off hot watches; instead, she spots details others may miss. She waits. And she hunts. “Buy what strikes you” she advises Cara Barrett. This is the collection of someone who knows what she likes, appreciates fine quality, wants value for money (she’s open about having sourced watches on eBay), and buys on her own terms – an approach many of us, celebrity collector or not, can relate to.
Bethenny Frankel’s been rather busy in the last decade. Entrepreneur, philanthropist and Real Housewife, she’s built a mammoth personal brand – as well as a business empire – on her trademark wit, brazen honesty and sheer hustle. Her appearances in a decade’s worth of Real Housewives of New York underpin the material success of her lifestyle business Skinny Girl and the high-profile good works of her reliefwork charity, B’Strong. Frankel’s collection started with gifts, notably Bell & Ross and Tiffany watches from her father, an impossible-to-get green Rolex Submariner ‘Hulk’ from a former boyfriend, and a festive ‘Christmas dial’ Daytona Ref. 116508 from her watch-collector partner. Having the launch pad of a collection right there, Frankel began her collection proper, hunting down individual prizes she’d spotted online, or on others, with her typical lazer-like focus and drive. “The angel, not the devil, is in the details,” she tells Cara Barrett on Hodinkee’s Talking Watches, where in January 2020 she was the first female guest to share her collection, “and I’m the person that likes the things no-one else needs to know.” It’s in the extraordinary details that Frankel’s collection, of mainly modern Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe 45
Head-to-head
Smart(er)
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watches
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Spencer Hart, Product Editor at T3
Checking out the latest wearable tech is all in a day’s work for T3 magazine’s product editor Spencer, who’s here to shout for the smart watch. I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing hundreds of smartwatches at T3 – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and while I love mechanical watches, there’s no denying how useful smartwatches have become in recent years. Whether they’re fixing your smartphone addiction, helping you lose weight, or simply skipping a track while exercising, I think the humble smartwatch has earned its place on our wrists. Let’s start with one of the main reasons people opt for a smartwatch – it means you’ll spend less time on your phone. The ease of having notifications sent to your wrist and being able to identify their importance without removing your phone from a pocket or bag is incredibly useful. It simplifies your life and it saves time - and time is important. It means you can spend more time paying attention to your family or friends, and, in a world where people are increasingly addicted to their smartphones, that is a major positive.
Health is another reason people buy smartwatches. Whether you’re trying to get more active by walking instead of driving or training for an ultra-marathon, a smartwatch is an invaluable tool which can help you reach your goals. Yes, while a chronograph can time how long your run took, a smartwatch will tell you how long it took, your heart rate throughout, your pace, and compare it against your previous times. Even if you’re not into fitness and exercise, smartwatches have recently shifted focus to wellness. By using advanced sensors and algorithms, today’s advanced smartwatches can measure stress and sleep, and offer suggestions on how to improve your general wellbeing. Going one step further, smartwatches can also be used to detect potentially life-threatening health conditions. For example, the Apple Watch allows you to take an electrocardiogram, which could
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help detect illnesses such as arrhythmia, coronary heart disease, or early signs of a heart attack. It will also occasionally check your heart rhythm in the background and send you a notification if you show signs of atrial fibrillation. This data can then be shown to a GP. So, smartwatches are potentially lifesaving, will solve your smartphone addiction, and can save you money on a personal trainer, but if you still can’t face ditching your mechanical watch – can I suggest double-wristing?
Mike France, CEO at Christopher Ward
As you’d expect from the head of a watch company, a constantly-connected life doesn’t have Mike convinced. I spend my life – 8 days a week – working with the CW team to create, make and sell mechanical watches. People often ask us whether we’ll be taking a step into wearable tech or connected watches anytime soon. ‘Never say never,’ we say, but I’m unpersuaded by the always-on, ultra-connected lifestyle and think it’s time we were weaned from the digital nipple. So Spencer’s right – smartwatches take us away from phone dependency, that’s a good thing – but rather than removing the temptation, aren’t we just transferring our addiction to the wrist? Countless notifications, messages, bleeps and buzzes through the day aren’t good for getting things done. I for one need ‘slow time’ not being ‘on’ all the time - in order to be productive. Constant interruptions from the region of my left cuff are not going to help with that. Like cars, the carbon footprint a watch accrues by being manufactured is in the
making, not the running, and so reduces the longer the watch is kept. Some mechanical watches are kept for generations, passed down in families from father to son, or mother to daughter, making proper mechanical watches some of the most environmentally-friendly gadgets the world has ever known. A smart watch may spend just 2 or 3 years on the wrist before being outstripped by a new one, also needing to be plugged in to charge every night of course. My mechanical watch is powered by the most ecological fuel you can get – me. The way I choose my watches is an intensely personal, cerebral, taste-driven pursuit. I can (and often do) lose hours poring over minute differences in case shape or hand colour. There’s a bit of myself which goes into every purchase decision. Choosing a smart watch is a far more generic experience. They all look the same – variations of case colour, strap or
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screensaver aside – are they marching us into a sci-fi future of homogenised timechecking? I’d rather keep my capacity for self-expression intact, thanks! Perhaps, in ways more insidious, the encroachment of big data is also being fed by the smart watch revolution. Like in George Orwell’s 1984, big brother is always watching you when you wear one – watching your attitude to exercise, your quality of sleep, in some cases, your each and every heartbeat, 24/7. You won’t find me double-wristing either I’m afraid. As one of our ads for the C1 Moonglow said last year, “bit creepy, isn’t it?”
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Timespan
Photo finish – Senna vs Mansell, 1986 Spanish Grand Prix, Jerez Given the variables concerned – the car, the driver, the track conditions – it’s still amazing how close some motorsport finishes can be. With timing metrics able to split down to less than hundredths of a second, in F1 the entire competitive field can be split over just a couple of seconds – even after sometimes hours of racing. But to be less than second behind your closest rival after so many laps is as hair-raising a finish as there is, both for the nail-biting crowd and, of course, for the drivers. So it was for Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna de Silva at the 1986 Spanish Grand Prix in Jerez. Then driving for Williams, Senna was making his mark at Lotus while Alain Prost was at MacLaren. Although it was only the second Grand
Prix of the 1986 season, each driver on the track was driving like it was the last. The driving was spectacular, a three-way battle for the lead for the entire race. Prost fell back in the later laps, finally finishing 21 seconds behind the leading time. But Mansell, having pulled into the pits with just 10 laps to go, proceeded to eat into Senna’s lead at the rate of two seconds per lap. At the final hairpin, Mansell made his gain. Grabbing yards from Senna under braking, Mansell emerged from the corner tucked on the inside of the Lotus. He flew up the final strait in Senna’s slipstream, ducking out at the final moment to try to grab the lead. He didn’t quite make it. Senna held on, finally finishing just over a hundredth of a second ahead.
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"The driving was spectacular, a three-way battle for the lead for the entire race..."
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