THE 100 BEST PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR
18 East
Fender Effects Pedals
Maude
Rudy’s Clay Spray
A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split
Filson C.C.F. Workwear
Maurten Gel 100
Salomon S/Lab Shift MNC Binding
Aer Work Collection
Firestone Lager
Meyer Optik Nocturnus
Sennheiser HD 820
Aesop In Two Minds
Giro Aether MIPS
Milo
Silca Sicuro Titanium Bottle Cage
Anker Soundcore Space NC
Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC
Mirror
Sonos Beam
Anova Precision Cooker Nano
Google Pixel 3
Montblanc Geosphere 1858
Sony WH-1000XM3
Apple HomePod
Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical
Mr P. Footwear
Specialized S-Works Venge
Apple Watch Series 4
Harry’s Body Wash
Neutrogena Hydro Boost Sunscreen
Subaru WRX STI Type RA
Arvin Goods Econyl Boxers
Herman Miller Cosm
Nike Air Max 270
Suunto 9
Audioengine A5+ Wireless Speaker
Hims | Keeps
Nike Pegasus Turbo
Tecnica Forge
Away Aluminum Edition
Huawei MateBook X Pro
Nikka Whisky From the Barrel
Tepui Hybox
Barrell Craft Spirits Infinite Barrel Project
Hyperice Hypervolt
Nikon Z 6 and Z 7
The Bitter Truth Bogart’s Bitters
Baume & Mercier Clifton Baumatic
Ikea Vintage Collection
Norlan Rauk Heavy Tumbler
Toyota Corolla Hatchback
Boenicke Audio W8
Instant Pot Max
Oakley Prizm React
Trade Coffee
Boll & Branch Cotton Percale Sheet Set
iRobot Roomba i7
Oris Big Crown Pointer Date
Traeger Ranger
Cake Kalk
J.Crew Heritage Collection
Osprey Levity
Triumph Tiger 800 XCa
Cambridge Audio Edge A
Jacques Marie Mage Gonzo Collection
Outerknown S.E.A. Jeans
Tudor Black Bay 58
Canon EOS R
Jeep Wrangler
Panerai Luminor Logo Collection
Vacheron Constantin FiftySix Collection
Chris Reeve Knives Impinda
Kia Stinger GT
Patagonia Capilene Air Baselayers
Vitamix Aer Disc Container
Clark’s Botanicals Retinol Rescue Face Serum
Kiehl’s Body Fuel Deodorant
Peloton Tread
Volkswagen Atlas
Cocktail Codex
Lexus LC 500
Pivot Mach 5.5 with Live Valve
Volvo XC40
District Vision x Salomon Mountain Racer
LG C8 4K OLED TV
Pro-Ject Juke Box E
W.L. Weller CYPB
DJI Mavic 2
Lincoln Navigator
Rapha Explore Sleeping Bag and Down Jacket
Wyze Labs WyzeCam
Dyson V10
Lost Explorer Wellness Products
Ressence e-Crown Concept
Yeti Hondo Base Camp Chair
Empirical Spirits
Louis Vuitton Les Parfums Pour Homme
Rolex GMT-Master II 126710BLRO
Yeti Tundra Haul
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Contents
Tech & Gadgets
024
Audio
046
THE STANDARDS
026 Apple Watch Series 4
048 Sony WH-1000XM3
044 Amazon Kindle
030 Canon EOS R
050 Sonos Beam
030 Wyze Labs WyzeCam
050 Audioengine A5+ Wireless Speaker
068 Klipsch Klipschorn Speakers
032 DJI Mavic 2
052 Fender Effects Pedals
034 Meyer Optik Nocturnus
054 Boenicke Audio W8
034 Huawei MateBook X Pro
060 Apple HomePod
036 Nikon Z 6 and Z 7
062 Sennheiser HD 820
040 LG C8 4K OLED TV
064 Anker Soundcore Space NC
040 Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC
064 Cambridge Audio Edge A
042 Google Pixel 3
066 Pro-Ject Juke Box E
088 Coleman Two-Burner Camp Stove 106 WaterRower Classic 128 Mazda MX-5 Miata 148 Cartier Tank 166 Schott Perfecto Jacket 182 Marvis Classic Strong Mint Toothpaste 198 Technivorm Moccamaster
Outdoors
070
Fitness
072 Oakley Prizm React
094 Giro Aether MIPS
078 Rapha Explore Sleeping Bag and Down Jacket
096 Nike Pegasus Turbo
080 Patagonia Capilene Air Baselayers 080 Salomon S/Lab Shift MNC Binding 082 Yeti Hondo Base Camp Chair 082 Tecnica Forge
092
096 Suunto 9 097 Silca Sicuro Titanium Bottle Cage 098 Specialized S-Works Venge 099 Peloton Tread 100
Mirror
104
District Vision x Salomon Mountain Racer
086 Chris Reeve Knives Impinda
104
Hyperice Hypervolt
086 Tepui Hybox
105
Maurten Gel 100
082 Osprey Levity 084 Pivot Mach 5.5 with Live Valve
16
216 Four Roses Bourbon
What Are The Standards? New to the GP100, our end-of-year product awards, The Standards honors the products and brands that set a benchmark in their respective categories. Here, you’ll find the gear our editors constantly reference and recommend, oftentimes decades after it first hit store shelves.
© 2018 GoPro, Inc. All rights reserved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Motoring
108
Watches
130
110
Lincoln Navigator
132
Tudor Black Bay 58
114
Jeep Wrangler
136
A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split
116
Volvo XC40
137
Baume & Mercier Clifton Baumatic
117
Subaru WRX STI Type RA
137
Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical
120 Lexus LC 500
138
Ressence e-Crown Concept
120 Volkswagen Atlas
139
Oris Big Crown Pointer Date
121
139
Montblanc Geosphere 1858
122 Toyota Corolla Hatchback
140
Vacheron Constantin FiftySix Collection
126 Kia Stinger GT
143
Panerai Luminor Logo Collection
127 Triumph Tiger 800 XCa
144
Rolex GMT-Master II 126710BLRO
Cake Kalk
Style
150
Grooming
168
152 Outerknown S.E.A. Jeans
170
Aesop In Two Minds
156 Jacques Marie Mage Gonzo Collection
172
Harry’s Body Wash
156 Aer Work Collection
172
Kiehl’s Body Fuel Deodorant
157
J.Crew Heritage Collection
173
Maude
157
Mr P. Footwear
174
Hims | Keeps
178
Clark’s Botanicals Retinol Rescue Face Serum
178
Rudy’s Clay Spray
179
Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel Lotion Sunscreen
179
Lost Explorer Wellness Products
180
Louis Vuitton Les Parfums Pour Homme
158 18 East 159 Away Aluminum Edition 160 Nike Air Max 270 164 Filson C.C.F. Workwear 164 Arvin Goods Econyl Boxers
Home
184
Drinks
200
186 Herman Miller Cosm
202 Empirical Spirits
188 Dyson V10
206 Barrell Craft Spirits Infinite Barrel Project
188 iRobot Roomba i7 189 Anova Precision Cooker Nano 189 Boll & Branch Cotton Percale Sheet Set 190 Trade Coffee 192
Milo
196
Instant Pot Max
197
Ikea Vintage Collection
197
Traeger Ranger
18
208 Nikka Whisky From the Barrel 209 Norlan Rauk Heavy Tumbler 209 Firestone Walker Brewing Company Firestone Lager 210
Vitamix Aer Disc Container
212
The Bitter Truth Bogart’s Bitters
212
W.L. Weller CYPB
213
Cocktail Codex
214
Yeti Tundra Haul
MOUNTAIN 600 WEATHERIZED Lined with PrimaLoftÂŽ insulation for extra warmth when the days turn cold, the Mountain 600 is waterproof and ruggedly comfortable. Weatherized for life outside.
danner.com/weatherized
Products That Solve, Inspire or Serve The 100 best products of the year. It’s a bold assertion in our line of business and we’ll get to that in just a moment. But first, let’s talk about Sears. On October 14, 2018, Sears declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Though we’ll better know the company’s true fate by the time this letter rolls off the presses, it’s pretty safe to assume that Sears’s future does not bode well. I won’t use this space for a soliloquy about financial greed and mismanagement, but as a product guy, it would have been far more inspiring to see the brand and its leaders put up a proper fight. After all, Americans love a comeback story. Most of you reading this may not remember the last time you stepped foot in a Sears let alone purchased something from one of its stores, but beyond its current reputation as a withering vestige of tired malls, Sears has a mythical backstory. In 1886, a railroad station agent named Richard Warren Sears started a small mail-order business out of Minneapolis reselling watches to train workers. A year later, emboldened with the confidence of earning $5,000, he moved the company to Chicago, where he met Alvah C. Roebuck. The result? Sears, Roebuck and Company. The unforgettable jingle practically wrote itself. The company’s assertion, low prices and free shipping through the U.S. Postal Service were hallmarks long before the idea of Amazon ever existed. It also published what was very likely the first instance of mass product journalism with its now-iconic catalog. At one point, the Sears catalog swelled to a thousand pages and reached more than 30 percent of the American public. Inside, readers found tightly edited copy, enticing
20
illustrations and a grand index of all things procurable. In the words of economic historian Louis Hyman, “flipping through the catalog was like strolling through a department store in Chicago.” Imagine that for a ruralite in the days before tourism and the internet. Most people have forgotten by now, but Sears also bred a true pantheon of brands and products — Craftsman, Allstate, Kenmore, Lands’ End, Coldwell Banker, the Discover card — many of which were spun off and became more valuable companies than Sears itself. We’ll never fully understand the effect Sears had on the way the world shops, but the company’s impact on product culture is incomparable. Which brings us to Issue Eight, our sixth edition of the GP100 and our first ever in print. For those of you just joining us, the GP100 is Gear Patrol’s annual index of the 100 best products of the year. In its own way, it’s our homage to the Sears catalog, but let’s be clear: the GP100 is not a list designed for mass consumption. Our growing team of enthusiasts spends every single day thinking (really hard) about products and where they intersect with life’s pursuits. This process is an ongoing refinement of identifying gear that’s inclusive and intentional but also highly aspirational, which is just a fancy way of saying we like stuff that solves, inspires and serves. The book you have in your hands is crafted specifically for our readership, and it is the culmination of a year’s worth of vetting. For the fine-print readers out there, it’s worth sharing that the GP100 covers our core competencies: tech, audio, outdoors, fitness, motoring, watches, style, grooming, home and drinks. Also requisite is that
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Our growing team of enthusiasts spends every day thinking about products and where they intersect with life’s pursuits. the winners came to market in 2018, even if they were announced previously — though we gave a pass to products newly brought to the United States and introduced into the consumer zeitgeist. Then there are some products that simply exist as benchmarks of their segment, 10 of which we celebrate in a new, loftier echelon of product quality we’re aptly calling The Standards. Enduring products like the Coleman Two-Burner Camp Stove, WaterRower and Four Roses Bourbon. Some inductees date back as far back to the early days of Sears, Roebuck and Company, but amid a sea of new, shiny, innovative gear, they feel fresh as ever. Of course, no list is without its flaws. There will be detractors and valid arguments against our selections (Too cheap! Too expensive! But what about…), and some products need only time to prove their true value. But a year is a year and we want to get back to our families, so with that, it’s time to put our pencils down and humbly submit to you the 100 best products of 2018.
Eric Yang Founder, Editor in Chief @hashtagyang | eyang@gearpatrol.com
For us, innovation must always serve function. For example, raising our bezel by 2mm has improved the grip. Just a little. When you care about watches, just a little matters a lot.
Aquis Date
MASTHEAD
founder , editor in chief
ERIC YANG @hashtagyang cofounder , managing editor
BEN BOWERS @benbowersgp
managing editor , editorial operations
senior associate editors
staff writers
ALI CARR TROXELL @alicarrtroxell
JUSTIN FENNER @justinfenner
TANNER BOWDEN @danger_bowden
JACK SEEMER @jackseemer
TUCKER BOWE @j_tb3
assistant editor , editorial operations
J.D. DIGIOVANNI @JD_DiGiovanni editorial assistant
ANDY FRAKES @andy.frakes
associate editor
NICK CARUSO @thenickcaruso assistant editors
OREN HARTOV @ohartov AJ POWELL @allenjamespowell
BRYAN CAMPBELL @businessbryan MEG LAPPE @meglappe JOHN ZIENTEK @sieben_tagen associate staff writers
WILL PRICE @willcprice
issue contributors
ADAM HURLY @adamhurly
JOE MCKENDRY @joemckendry
ERIC ADAMS @ericadams321
PETER KOCH @iampeterkoch
JAMES STOUT @jestout
ANDREW CONNOR @andrew_m_connor
BRIAN MARK @brian__mark
CHRIS WRIGHT @wrights_writing
head of video
art director
deputy photo editor
LUKE WAHL @lukewahl
JOE TORNATZKY @jtornatzky
HENRY PHILLIPS @henrysp
associate videographer
senior designer
staff photographer
JARRY TRUONG @jarrytruong
SHERRY WANG @sxw
CHASE PELLERIN @chase_pellerin
platform manager
associate designer
associate staff photographer
ALEXANDER STEIN @alexanderstein
HUNTER D. KELLEY @type_hunter
CHANDLER BONDURANT @chandlerbondurant
vice president , advertising and partnerships
client success manager
head of gear patrol studios
ZACH MADER @z_mader
GENEVA AUDUONG @genevaa25
MONICA HARE
sales director , east coast
sales planner
deputy editor , gear patrol studios
JASON DAKOTA DAVIS @KidDakota
DOMINIQUE GAGEANT @dgag3ant
MEGAN BILLINGS @meganblings
account executives
campaign manager
content producer , gear patrol studios
MIKE BAILEY
GREG TATE @thegregtate
RYAN BROWER @owen_brow
platform producer
BRENDEN CLARKE @brenden.jpeg
ALYXANDER EFFRON @alyxeffron TIM MURRAY account manager
KEVIN O’BRIEN @_kevinobrien_
pacific northwest advertising director
SCOT BONDLOW @scotbondlow southern california partnerships manager
JUSTIN PARKHURST @justinparkhurst
content director , gear patrol store
store operations manager
JACOB SOTAK @jacobsotak
CHRIS HEALY @cl_healy
GEAR PATROL STUDIOS Where aspiration meets inspiration. Gear Patrol Studios is the creative partnership arm of Gear Patrol. We are enthusiasts of design, utility and adventure. Through creativity, content marketing, branded events and more, we connect brands with audiences passionate about product discovery. Select advertising in this magazine has been crafted by Gear Patrol Studios on behalf of brands to help tailor their message specifically for Gear Patrol readers. These sections are demarcated with GEAR PATROL STUDIOS.
chief financial officer
head of marketing
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KYLE SNARR @kyality
To learn more visit, studios.gearpatrol.com
marketing coordinator
or reach out to us: advertising@gearpatrol.com
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ISSN 2381-4241 PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
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22
Tech & Gadgets Technology doesn’t slow down for anything, and this year proved that more than most. We’ve seen big camera manufacturers like Nikon, Canon and Panasonic flood the zone with full-frame mirrorless cameras in an attempt to compete with Sony. A $20 smart home security camera proved that it could do the same job as something 10 times more expensive. And the battle between Google, Amazon and Apple for smart home domination only continued to heat up. Now, in the lull between the big fall releases and the feeding frenzy that will be early 2019 tech announcements, it is prime time to look back at the coolest, most impactful electronic gadgets of the year.
24
TECH & GADGETS
Top 10
Credits
027
Apple Watch Series 4
030
Canon EOS R
035
Wyze Labs WyzeCam
030
DJI Mavic 2
034
Meyer Optik Nocturnus
034
Huawei MateBook X Pro
036
Nikon Z 6 and Z 7
040
LG C8 4K OLED TV
040
Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC
042
Google Pixel 3
Words ERIC ADAMS TUCKER BOWE BEN BOWERS ANDREW CONNOR ANDY FRAKES
Photos CHANDLER BONDURANT CHASE PELLERIN
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
The Standard 044
Amazon Kindle
25
EDITOR’S PICK
Apple Watch Series 4 The original Apple Watch wasn’t a finalized product; it was more like a field experiment in need of early-adopter guinea pigs. “We believe this product will redefine what people expect from its category,” Apple CEO Tim Cook proclaimed at the start of his announcement presentation back in September of 2014. “It is the next chapter in Apple’s story.” Cook’s words were both prescient and premature. No one really knew how a great wearable computer would impact our daily lives — not even Apple. But there were plenty of grand possibilities to explore. Apple kicked off the project, Chief Design Officer Jony Ive explained during the announcement, by seeking out horological experts to better understand the cultural and historical significance of timekeeping. The traditional wristwatch was the most successful wearable ever created. But why did it succeed? Ive’s team concluded that personalization and a diversity of styles played a crucial part in that success, so Apple developed six different strap types and three different case materials in two different sizes, all in multiple colors. The bevy of options was then curated into three entire “collections” tailored to suit every taste and budget, including a lavish Edition series in real gold that started at $10,000. Kevin Lynch, who led the development of the Apple Watch software, appeared next to kick off a showcase of the device’s many capabilities. Lynch began by switching and tweaking watch faces, at one point revealing a visualization of the entire solar system with a specific combination of taps. He fired off quick texts; he asked
Siri to call up local movie times and browsed a library of photos. He pulled up maps on the postage-stamp-sized screen, noting how the watch’s haptic feedback engine was “like having this invisible guide with you.” He even discussed how the device enabled “a new form of digital touch communication.” After a full 36-minute presentation, Cook materialized again to finally address the one function every other wearable at the time showcased: fitness tracking. “Apple builds great products that enrich people’s lives, and arguably we can take that to a whole new level with Apple Watch,” he said. “Being active is one of the best things you can do to improve your health. Apple Watch gives us the ability to motivate people to be more active and healthy.” The team’s message was clear: this new device could handle fitness tracking just like the rest of the pack, only Apple was dreaming bigger. Surprisingly though, for the first time in recent memory, the company’s grand vision for the future of technology would partially miss the mark. Millions would eagerly purchase the personal gadget, but not to text, tap and navigate via their wrist. They just wanted a better activity tracker and notification checker that worked seamlessly with their iPhone, and they didn’t need it hewn from gold. Apple, to its credit, caught on quickly. Just two years later, the Apple Watch Series 2 presentation started immediately with a frenzy of diverse, beautiful people engaged in various activities. “We think Apple Watch is the ultimate device for a healthy life,” Apple COO Jeff Williams declared by the end of the talk. The notions of changing how
people communicate, view photos or get directions were nowhere to be found. Health, however, was no longer just a code word for physical fitness. A new “SOS” feature added via a software update was the first sign of Apple’s shift in mentality. It allowed users to simply hold down a button to alert local emergency services, even without knowing the local version of 911. The feature could also automatically ping a preset contact, share a map of where you were and dis-
The company’s grand vision for the future of technology would partially miss the mark. play a quick rundown of pertinent medical information people should know, assuming your paired iPhone was nearby, was working, and had enough battery and a cell signal. By 2017, Cook touted that the Apple Watch had become the top-selling watch on the planet. It was officially a runaway hit that now dominated the wearables market as many had predicted. And how it could change the world was finally coming into focus. The Series 3 eliminated the need for a paired iPhone by adding a dedicated LTE connection. This upgrade allowed equipped versions to handle phone calls and texts, stream music and share notifications all on their own. The watch could also
Editor’s Pick, Explained For years, the Apple Watch has been the best smartwatch on the market. But only the Series 4 could be described as “lifesaving.” It features all the best qualities of the Series 3 — built-in GPS, LTE, a heartrate sensor — and adds some serious wellness features, such as fall detection and an FDA-cleared EKG monitor, to the mix. The Series 4 is also the first Apple Watch to feature a real hardware redesign: it’s significantly thinner than previous generations, with an edge-to-edge display that’s 30 percent larger than what you’ll find on the Series 3.
26
TECH & GADGETS
27
now alert owners when their heart rates unexpectedly spiked, a rare but potentially significant early warning sign of serious health issues. This year, with the new Series 4 launched in September, Apple’s long-term goals for the innovative wrist computer have finally crystallized. Nearly every element of the watch’s hardware was entirely re-engineered to refine the user experience. Both versions of the watches are now slightly bigger with crisper, edge-toedge screens that offer 30 percent more viewing space. Its new S4 processor is two times faster, and the speakers are 50 percent louder for clearer calls and voice interactions. The digital crown gained haptic feedback for more precise control. Even the back is now made with black ceramic and sapphire crystal, which allows radio waves to move more easily through the device for improved connection. And yet the Series 4’s most important longterm improvements are far less sexy, and hopefully rarely needed. The watch now has the capability to address one of the most common causes of serious injury across the globe: falls. Credit the watch’s new accelerometer and gyroscope, which feature twice the dynamic range,
boosting the ability to sample motion data eight times faster. So-called fall detection now means the watch can automatically display an SOS option button for calling in the event of a tumble. Should the wearer remain immobile for more than a minute, the Series 4 will automatically call emergency services and send a location to your denoted emergency contact. Significant upgrades were also made to the watch’s heart-monitoring capabilities to extend far beyond a simple pulse tracker. The watch can now identify abnormally low heart rates and screen for heart arrhythmias. The addition of electrical sensors in the back sapphire crystal and digital crown means the Series 4 can even perform an electrocardiogram: a test used as an essential data point by doctors to identify serious heart-health issues. In fact, the Apple Watch is the first ever device to offer this advanced medical feature directly to consumers. The technology is even cleared by the FDA. Four years in, the right question is being asked: Why should a product settle for just changing people’s lives, when it can help extend them? Apple Watch’s grand ambition is finally clear, at least for now. — BB
Apple’s long-term goals for the innovative wrist computer have finally crystallized.
Specs Sizes: 40mm, 44mm Battery Life: Up to 18 hours Water Resistance: 50 meters $399+
29
Canon EOS R Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera, EOS R, is packed with impressive specs, but its standout feature is an all-new RF system. Canon already released some pretty incredible RF optics, like the 50mm (f/1.2) and the 28-70mm (f/2), but by introducing EF and EF-S adapters, Canon also opened the door to its existing lenses, too. Essentially, the EOS R takes advantage of what Canon has always done best: lenses. — TB Specs Sensor: 30.3 MP full-frame CMOS AF Points: 5,655 dual-pixel AF points ISO Range: 100 - 40,000 $2,299 (body only)
Wyze Labs WyzeCam Wyze Cam security cameras are phenomenal values, with the base model clocking in at $20 (a pan version costs just $10 more). To get a comparable camera from Nest, you’d pay about $300, while one from Honeywell, the home-tech giant, would run you closer to $170. Also worth noting: the Wyze Cam app requires no subscription services or fees, making for one less thing to get between you and an eagle-eye view of your front door or garage. — AF Specs Full Resolution: 1080p Connection: Wi-Fi Storage: Local (SD) and cloud $20 - $30
30
Won’t enslave humanity. Will greet you when you come home.
The Good Robot anki.com/vector
DJI Mavic 2 Specs Sensor (Zoom): 1/2.3-inch CMOS, 12 million effective pixels Sensor (Pro): 1-inch CMOS, 20 million effective pixels Video: 4K video at up to 100 Mbps $1,249 (Zoom); $1,499 (Pro)
32
For professional photographers, outdoor adventurers or rising social media stars, there isn’t much to choose from in the drone space — GoPro discontinued its Karma drone earlier in 2018 — but DJI’s newest flagship drones are something special. That’s because the Mavic 2 Pro and the Mavic 2 Zoom are small and foldable, similar to DJI’s entry-level Spark, but they also have photo- and video-shooting capabilities that are more akin to DJI’s higher-end series of Phantom drones. What really makes them unique is that they came out after DJI acquired a good portion of Hasselblad in 2017; both new Mavic 2 drones are equipped with cameras that were designed by the iconic Swedish camera maker. That’s right, Hasselblad cameras in drones. The Mavic 2 Pro and the Mavic 2 Zoom are very similar. They look almost identical and share a lot of the same features. They can fly at up to 44 mph and for upward of 31 minutes. They can shoot 4K video at up to 100 Mbps. They can track subjects and avoid objects on their own. They can capture hyperlapses, too. And they’re DJI’s first drones to shoot HDR videos or photos. But there are also stark differences, and depending on the kinds of photos or videos you’re after, that’s going to determine which drone you should buy. The Mavic 2 Zoom is the more versatile of the two, as it can capture both wide and close-up shots. It’s the first foldable consumer drone with optical zoom, and it’s capable of 24-48mm optical and 2x digital zoom (that’s up to 96mm). DJI also decked it out with a neat feature called
“Dolly Zoom,” which keeps the subject in the center of the frame as the camera zooms in and the drone flies in the opposite direction. The result is a cinematic wind-swept effect that’s worthy of the big screen. That said, the Mavic 2 Pro will be the drone of choice for photographers who put image quality
That’s right, Hasselblad cameras in drones.
above everything else. It has a fixed, 28mm-equivalent lens and a huge one-inch CMOS sensor, enabling it to capture 20-megapixel stills (compared to the Zoom’s 12-megapixel stills) in wonderfully vivid color. It might not have the close-up capabilities of the Zoom, but its superior image quality affords photographers and videographers more flexibility in post-production. The higher-res image sensor also makes the Pro better for lowlight conditions and capturing a moving target. Want DSLR-level image quality in your aerial photos? Get the Pro. Want to shoot your subject up close or get those panning cinematic wide shots that look like they’re straight out of The Lord of the Rings? Get the Zoom. Either way, you’re getting an elite-level consumer drone with stateof-the-art object avoidance and subject-tracking technologies. You’ll be impressed. — TB
Meyer Optik Nocturnus Meyer Optik’s new Nocturnus is, according to the brand, the fastest 75mm lens ever, and it’s a boon to anyone photographing in low light. The delightfully old-school-looking lens is handmade in Germany. It features only manual focusing and can open all the way up to an aperture of f/0.95. What’s more, the lens features 15 stainless steel aperture blades, which lend themselves to an outstandingly smooth bokeh, or depth of field, thus giving portrait photographers a hell of a lot to play with. — AC Specs Mounts: Sony E, Leica M and Fuji X Focal Length: 75mm Aperture Range: f/0.95 - f/16 $2,999
Huawei MateBook X Pro MacBook users, take note: when it comes to performance, the 13.9-inch MateBook X Pro from Chinese powerhouse Huawei runs circles around the competition. It’s innovative, well-designed and equipped with excellent hardware. But most attractive is the price. If you’re looking for a better cost-to-power ratio than most Apple models — and perhaps you want to avoid subjecting yourself to the whims of their ecosystem — this may very well be the next laptop for you. — AF Specs Storage: 512GB SSD Weight: 2.93 pounds CPU: 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-8550U $1,200
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TECH & GADGETS
C r e a t i n g n ew h e i g h t s The new Montblanc 1858 Geosphere. Spirit of Mountain Exploration. montblanc.com/1858
Specs Resolution: 24.5 MP (Z 6); 45.7 MP (Z 7) Autofocus Points: 273 (Z 6); 493 (Z 7) ISO Range: 100 - 51,200 (Z 6); 64 - 25,600 (Z 7) $1,197 (Z 6); $3,397 (Z 7)
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Nikon Z 6 and Z 7 Brand loyalists have it hard sometimes. You invest time, energy and resources into a manufacturer’s lineup, spending years learning its logic and benefitting from that knowledge in practice. But then you feel the pull of a competitor’s innovation. Dedicated Audi, Jaguar and Mercedes enthusiasts who crave the performance and efficiency of electric vehicles, for instance, have had to sit on the sidelines for six years waiting for their brands of choice to finally respond to Tesla’s aggressive visions of progressive mobility. And Microsoft users have had to watch as Apple’s stylish products trumped the popularity of their beloved PCs, smartphones and other products for what feels like ages. So it has been for photographers with the rise of mirrorless full-frame cameras, whose large sensors equal the size of a conventional 35mm frame. Sony initiated the revolution in earnest barely five years ago with the original A7, dispensing with the standard flip-up mirror-and-prism system used to send views to the eyepiece in favor of something undeniably more elegant and modern: an electronic viewfinder that shows precisely what the sensor itself sees. No more persistent and primitive jackhammering of a mechanical mirror that flicks out of the way every single time you take a photo. As proven and reliable as DSLRs are — and
have been for years — it was time to move on. For photographers interested in trying the newest technology, though, it’s complicated. It’s not like switching car or computer brands, where you simply order the new product and move forward, managing the learning curve after a few hiccups. You don’t just buy a camera, after all. You marry it. Photographers typically invest thousands in high-quality lenses, which you can’t simply abandon or trade in for new glass without taking a massive hit. This fall, Nikon finally delivered for its devoted user base its first mirrorless options, potentially averting widespread defections. The Z 6 and Z 7 bring the company — and its imperiled devotees — solidly into the 21st century. The Z 7 — replete with the familiar menus, command functions and critical button placements that will keep brand loyalists happy — hits all the notes that Sony’s mirrorless models do. Its digital OLED viewfinder instantly shows how an image will actually be shot and allows for close inspection of an image under even the brightest desert sun. It also features a 45.7-megapixel sensor, in-camera image stabilization, and its dynamic range allows for considerable editing after the fact. But Nikon also brings its own twists that give photographers upgrading to pro-am gear much to
consider, including fast 493-point autofocus capabilities (the Z 6 features 273 focus points) that cover over 90 percent of the frame, 4K video, nineframes-per-second shooting (the Z 6 can capture at 12 fps) and a helpful top-mounted display that gives photographers better access to exposure, battery-life and camera-settings information. The lens solutions are equally compelling. The Z 7
As proven and reliable as DSLRs are — and have been for years — it was time to move on. arrives with a new array of Z-mount lenses, including a 50mm f/1.8 S, a 24-70mm f/4 S and a 35mm f/1.8 S. In addition, Nikon announced the development of an amazing 58mm f/.95, which is both the fastest Nikon lens ever and a bokeh — i.e., depth of field — master. The lens system doesn’t yet include dedicated high-speed zoom lenses, namely the ubiquitous f/2.8 models all manufacturers carry, but those will arrive soon enough. The bottom line: Nikon is working hard and fast to en-
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sure that discriminating shooters have the glass they need to shoot world-class photos. The new lenses are required to match the more compact geometry of a mirrorless camera, meaning legacy lenses from Nikon’s vast history will require an adapter. But while adapters meant to fit competitor lenses on new systems with full electronic focus and aperture control rarely work particularly fluidly — though many have allowed Nikon users to switch to Sony’s mirrorless cameras more gradually — ones meant for those legacy lenses are usually quite good. This is the case with Nikon’s FTZ adapter, which permits easy transition to the new system, essentially upgrading the conventional glass to image-stabilized lenses via the Z 7’s in-camera 5-axis stabilization. The camera still has the shortcomings unique to mirrorless cameras in general, including a lesser degree of weatherproofing compared to more rugged DSLRs, reduced battery life thanks to
the processing demands of the electronic viewfinder and a tendency for the sensor to accumulate dust faster — particularly when swapping lenses on, say, a desert safari or while scaling a mountain peak. All are challenges every camera manufacturer in the mirrorless space should be working to solve, and presumably, they will within a generation or two. Those are reasonably manageable problems, though, and not a deterrent to most photographers. So whether you’re already bought into the Nikon ecosystem or are diving in fresh, the Z 7 ensures that you — as well as the company and the industry — are truly in the modern era. It sometimes takes a while for a company to create a product in a new category that meets its own standards, just as Audi, Jaguar and Mercedes have shown with their new and forthcoming electric rides. But Nikon has shown up more than ready for the fight. — EA
The bottom line: Nikon is working hard and fast to ensure that discriminating shooters have the glass they need to shoot worldclass photos.
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TECH & GADGETS
Gear and Inspiration
Discover and shop the world’s coolest adventure gear at Huckberry.com
LG C8 4K OLED TV For the last several years, LG has annually released OLED TVs that are markedly better than what came before — and the latest generation is no different. The LG C8 4K OLED TV features one of the most intuitive user interfaces out there, the most HDR compatibility on the market and an amazing new Alpha 9 processor chip that better reduces noise, optimizes color handling and sharpens images. Plus, Dolby’s Atmos system provides truly impressive built-in audio performance. — AF Specs Resolution: 3,840 x 2,160 pixels Dimensions: 48.3 x 27.8 x 1.8 inches (without stand) HDR Audio Technology: Dolby Atmos $2,000
Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC Goal Zero started as a humanitarian effort to help victims of earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes by providing smart, portable power solutions to communities without electricity. The company still helps out where it can by donating products like the Sherpa 100AC. This powerful-yet-portable charger features every kind of port you can imagine, and it holds more than enough juice to replace a collection of pocket-sized backup batteries. — AF Specs Capacity: 25,600 mAh Ports: USB-A, USB-C, AC inverter, wireless Qi, 8mm input Weight: 2 pounds $300
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Google Pixel 3 The Pixel 3 is a step up for Google. For starters, it’s the first Pixel smartphone made entirely of glass, so it feels way nicer. It’s water resistant and supports wireless charging. And it has a bigger display than the Pixel 2 in the same size body, so it doesn’t feel any bigger. These are all pretty standard things for a flagship smartphone in 2018, but the Pixel 3’s real talking point is its camera. Before it was even announced, the then year-old Pixel 2 was still considered by many tech critics to feature the best smartphone camera in the world, one that was even better than those attached to the brand-new iPhone XS and Samsung Galaxy. And now the Pixel 3’s is an unequivocally better smartphone camera than the Pixel 2. In a sea of dual-camera systems, the Pixel 3 still features a single-lens rear camera, but with that one lens, the Pixel still tops what Apple’s, Samsung’s and LG’s smartphones can do. It can capture a burst of photos, determine which are blurry or of poor quality and then automatically select the best-looking one (a function called Top Shot). It can zoom in really close on a subject and, by detecting and compensating for camera shake, still take really sharp photos (Super Res Zoom). While shooting video, it can lock onto your subject and keep it in focus (Motion Auto Focus). And, without using the flash, it can take long exposures, fuse them together and capture fantastic low-light photos (Night Sight). If all that that wasn’t enough, the selfie camera, which for the first time has a dual-camera system, can take wide-angle selfies or shoot portrait photos and edit the bokeh afterward. The last masterstroke of the new Google smartphone is its value. Both the baseline Pixel 3 and iPhone XS come with 64GB of storage, but Pixel 3 — like all Pixel smartphones — comes with unlimited cloud storage of high-res photos and 4K videos on Google Photos. (If you have an iPhone, the Google Photos app still gives you unlimited storage, but not in full-resolution.) That’s a nice play by Google, especially when the Pixel 3 comes in at $200 less than the iPhone XS. — TB Specs Display: 5.5-inch full screen OLED Rear Camera: 12.2 MP dual-pixel (f/1.8) Front Cameras: Dual 8 MP wide-angle (f/2.2) and standard (f/1.8) $799+
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UNFAILING GOODS FILSON.COM
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THE STANDARD
Amazon Kindle When the original Kindle was released in November 2007, it flew off the shelves: Amazon claims that its E-Ink device sold out within five and a half hours. Fast-forward 11 years and the Amazon Kindle has yet to be supplanted as the best way to read digital books. Sure, there are many models of the Kindle now, and they’ve evolved to become faster, thinner, brighter,
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smarter and easier to hold, but that original Kindle remains iconic. And heck, it still works. Amazon continues to roll out updates for Kindles from 2012, so even legacy models can run the latest software. And today, its successors continue to give readers the best of both worlds: an analog experience with the flexibility and portability of a digital device. — TB
First Year of Production:
2007 NE X T ITEM :
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Braun Series 9
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H E ST R A G LO V E S . C O M
Audio Apple showed off its HomePod for the first time back in June 2017 — yes, it feels like forever ago — but it’s included here because most people didn’t get one until early 2018. Audio went way beyond buzzy smart speakers, though. This year brought about a new standard of active noise-canceling headphones (thanks, Sony). Fender finally made a dedicated line of all-original effects pedals. And Sonos introduced its first intelligent soundbar. Overall, it’s been a year chock-full of exciting audiophile launches, updates and more.
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AUDIO
Top 10
Credits
048
Sony WH-1000XM3
050
Sonos Beam
050
Audioengine A5+ Wireless Speaker
052
Fender Effects Pedals
054
Boenicke Audio W8
060
Apple HomePod
062
Sennheiser HD 820
064
Anker Soundcore Space NC
064
Cambridge Audio Edge A
066
Pro-Ject Juke Box E
Words TUCKER BOWE ANDREW CONNOR ANDY FRAKES JOHN ZIENTEK
Photos CHANDLER BONDURANT CHASE PELLERIN
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
The Standard 068
Klipsch Klipschorn Speakers
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Sony WH-1000XM3 EDITOR’S PICK
Over the past year or so, there’s been a real arms race when it comes to noise-canceling, over-ear headphones. The dueling contenders? Bose and Sony. The former’s QuietComfort line has long been the standard — hell, Bose essentially created the category years ago — but Sony’s WH1000XM2 headphones, which came out last fall, finally gave people a bona fide alternative. For the first time, choosing between the two brands wasn’t so easy. With this year’s WH-1000XM3s, however, Sony’s definitively tipped the scale in its favor. The new headphones share the familiar look and feel of their predecessors, but they’ve been gutted and revamped for the better. Let’s start with the sound — it’s warmer, fuller and more accurate, all without skimping on the bass response. However, you can tweak the sound signature to your liking via Sony’s intuitive companion app.
Sony also upgraded the headphones with a new processor called the QN1, which makes them incredibly good at blocking out noise. In fact, Sony says that the QN1 chip makes the WH-1000XM3s four times better at noise canceling than the already impressive WH-1000XM2s. Like their predecessors, the WH-1000XM3s are feature-rich. You can play, pause, skip tracks and initiate your smartphone’s virtual assistant — all through a series of swipe gestures on the right earcup. And there’s an ambient mode so that users (especially commuters) can more safely hear the world around them. If push came to shove, we’d argue that the Bose QC35 Series II are slightly lighter and maybe more comfortable than these Sony headphones. But if sound quality and noise canceling are what you really care about, nothing can tune out the world like these bad boys. — TB
The headphones share the familiar look and feel of their predecessors, but they’ve been gutted and revamped for the better.
Editor’s Pick, Explained If you think noise cancellation and sound quality are the two most important things when it comes to headphones, then the Sony 1000XM3s are the best ones you can buy. It’s that simple. Throw in a companion app that lets you completely customize the sound signature and the ability to charge them with the same USB-C cable that you use with your MacBook Pro, and you’ve got a pair of wireless noise-canceling headphones that handle as well as they sound.
Specs Driver: 1.57-inch dome Frequency Response: 4 Hz - 40,000 Hz Charge: USB-C $348
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Audioengine A5+ Wireless Speaker
In addition to just looking nice beneath your big TV, the Beam works like a typical Sonos unit — as an interconnectable piece of audio gear that’s compatible with any other Sonos speaker in your home. The audiophile-grade smart speaker is the one we’d recommend to most people, and the promise of more cross-compatibility in the future makes the Beam a downright wise investment. — AF
Audioengine’s A5+ Powered Speakers were already some of the best bookshelf speakers on the market, providing audiophile sound in an attractive package and price. This year, the brand added a new model to their lineup that features high-res wireless streaming. One needs little more than a Bluetooth-equipped smartphone or computer to begin playing music, as there’s no need to physically connect to a receiver. This makes the A5+ Wireless an incredibly versatile addition to your home audio setup. — AC
Specs
Specs
Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Siri, AirPlay 2, Google Assistant
Type: 2.0 powered (active) speakers
Sonos Beam
Drivers: 4 full-range woofers, 1 tweeter, 3 passive radiators Channels: 3.0 $399
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Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0; supports aptX, SBC and AAC Output: 150-watt peak power total $499+
AUDIO
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Fender Effects Pedals After seven decades of producing world-class instruments and amplifiers, Fender finally made its first dedicated line of all-original effects pedals. The brand’s VP of Product Development, Stan Cotey, designed the majority of the pedals from the ground up, relying on his 25 years of experience in professional audio to create a strong selection of player-focused pedals. “We want the manufacturing to be really good, we want the price point for the consumer to be really good and we want these to be successful,” said Cotey. The result, released in late February, was a group of six pedals: reverb, delay, overdrive, distortion, compression and buffer. The pedals are housed in anodized-aluminum casings with robust pots that are fitted with bushing and nuts for durability. Of the six pedals, Cotey said he is most proud of the Pugilist Distortion: “It’s really inexpensive for what it is. Two fully independent distortion circuits plus the blend circuit, the bass boost circuit and all this stuff we were able to stack in the series — and it’s ninety-nine dollars,” he said.
“You can get it set where it’s cleaner and brighter on one side and darker and heavier on the other side. Then, you can play really dense chords and hear all the individual notes, and you can play
“We want the manufacturing to be really good, we want the price point for the consumer to be really good and we want these to be successful.” downstrokes and hear the pick and the stringyness but still have the thickness and the sense of power from the distortion.” The only pedal in the line not designed by Cotey is the Santa Ana Overdrive, which features FET technology for tube-like performance. “It was
designed by my friend Alex Aguilar,” Cotey said. “Alex is known in the bass world — he’s done a lot of bass amps, but he’s a really good guitar player and he’s done a bunch of high-gain amp design. So, he approached it kind of like he would design an amp. Dynamically, it feels and behaves a lot like that. It cleans up really nicely and you can hear the texture of the string.” At Summer NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) in Nashville, Fender announced an additional three pedals to round out its lineup: the Engager Boost (featuring a FET input buffer and a 20-decibel boost), the Pelt Fuzz (offering silicon-based fuzz sounds) and the Full Moon Distortion (including both symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping modes). These nine pedals, Fender’s first earnest foray into effects, have features that will appeal to both amateurs and professionals. Offering quality and functions more often associated with boutique effects for under $200 a pedal, this line is a solid value for anyone looking to build out their pedal board. — JZ
Specs Build: Anodized-aluminum casings Features: LED-backlit knobs, magnetically latched battery door Power: 9V battery or power supply $89 - $199
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AUDIO
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Boenicke Audio W8 Boenicke speakers aren’t great only because they’re made out of solid wood. They’re great because Sven Boenicke, the founder and owner of Boenicke Audio, is a craftsman and an artist.
Turns out that when it comes to speakers, bigger isn’t necessarily better. This fact became starkly clear a few months back when our editor in chief, Eric Yang, told me that he needed an hour of my time. “I want you to hear something that’s going to blow your mind,” he said. The two of us walked several blocks east from Gear Patrol’s New York offices to Park Avenue Audio, a rather large high-end speaker showroom on the corner of 30th Street and Park Avenue. There, a luxury sales consultant named Andrew walked us downstairs into a listening room to demo these gorgeous wooden speakers from Boenicke Audio. Chances are you’ve never heard of Boenicke Audio — I sure hadn’t. It doesn’t make many speakers, and the few it does produce are really expensive. And because it’s based in Switzerland, not a lot of its speakers make it overseas to the States. But the audio company is a good one to get to know because it crafts some of the most beautifully designed, best-sounding speakers available. Period. One of the things that make Boenicke Audio speakers special is that they’re made out of solid
wood. Most big-box speaker manufacturers opt, for various reasons, for metal or wood composites instead. But solid wood features innate acoustic properties that make it a particularly good material for loudspeaker construction. It’s dense, stiff and naturally non-resonant, so speakers made from it produce very little distortion, and wooden enclosures naturally amplify and enrich the sound. There’s a reason why most of the best instruments — grand pianos, guitars and even a centuries-old Stradivarius violin — are made of wood. It’s not just dumb luck. But Boenicke speakers aren’t great only because they’re made out of solid wood. They’re great because Sven Boenicke, the founder of Boenicke Audio, is a craftsman and an artist. As an audioengineer-turned-speaker-manufacturer Boenicke spares no expense in making sure these speakers sound perfect. If you were to slice one open vertically, you’d see the meticulous detail of the enclosures, and how uniquely beautiful the internal signal path is. And before releasing them out into the wild, Sven personally tests and listens to each speaker to ensure the proper calibration and performance.
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Specs Type: 3-way, 4-driver solid wood floor-standing Drivers: Dome tweeter, aluminum cone, paper cone mid/bass, long throw bass Frequency Range: 25Hz - 25kHz $7,960
With the proper amplification and the right tracks, a pair of Boenicke speakers will outperform almost anything that you’ve ever heard. And he manages to do that without making massive speakers. Even though the W8s are tiny compared to other floor-standing models, they sound significantly bigger and better than they actually are. The result is that any first-time listener will have the same reaction I did: there’s no way a speaker that small can sound like that. Sitting in that small room in the basement of Park Avenue Audio, listening to the W8 speakers, it was almost an out-of-body experience. Like being in the front row of a concert and then having Glenn Frey pull me on stage with The Eagles in the middle of a show. The midrange and treble on these speakers are absolutely huge, and it feels like you’re not simply listening in the room, but immersed in the action. The speakers and their
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sound simply affect you — they feel more real and more impactful (not necessarily louder). All of this sounds like hyperbole, but it’s actually true. With the proper amplification and the right tracks, a pair of Boenicke speakers will outperform almost anything that you’ve ever heard costing up to six figures. Don’t believe me? That’s fine. Go online and search “Sven Boenicke” and you’ll see nothing but universal praise. And if you’re at all interested and think you’re ready to listen to a pair, just make sure you talk to Andrew at Park Avenue Audio in New York; it’s the only place where you can listen to and buy a pair of Boenicke speakers in the United States right now. Tell them Gear Patrol sent you. — TB
AUDIO
SVEN BOENICKE , FOUNDER AND OWNER BOENICKE AUDIO
Apple HomePod You might be inclined to chalk its success up to hype or marketing, but Apple’s first smart speaker blows away the competition. Its smart assistant, Siri, has a music intellect that others lack — you can ask it to play songs by referencing lyrics, the year an album was released or a band’s guitarist. Yes, you need an iPhone and an Apple Music subscription to get the most from HomePod, but its performance (it automatically equalizes audio to sound best for the room it’s in) and understanding of music set a new bar in the smart-speaker department. — TB
Specs Drivers: 7 individually amplified horn tweeters, 1 high-excursion topfiring woofer Frequency Range: 40Hz - 20kHz Streaming: Apple Music, iTunes $349
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AUDIO
INVEST IN WHAT MOVES YOU.
Ottawa Boot in Dune Chromexcel Shot on Lake Michigan. October 2018.
Sennheiser HD 820 Before getting too deep in the weeds, let’s start with the price: the Sennheiser HD 820s cost $2,400, meaning these aren’t your run-of-themill headphones that plug straight into your laptop or smartphone. No, these are much higher end than that, and they demand a proper headphone amp or DAC (a digital-to-analog converter) to drive them. Ideally, you also have a dedicated room and a comfy lounge chair (but you can make do without). Even among high-end headphones, the HD 820s are unique and ambitious. They’re high-end and closed-backed, two traits that tend to be mutually exclusive. Studio headphones normally have an open-back design that allows them to achieve a wider and more accurate soundstage — simply put, open-back headphones deliver a sound closer to what the artist originally envisioned. The problem is that audio bleeds through them, meaning they’re a no-go in noisy environments. And if that wasn’t enough, they’re loud — like, to others. Do you really want to be that person blasting music through his or her headphones? With the HD 820s, however, Sennheiser was able to beat the problems plaguing open-back headphones thanks to some clever engineering. They have similar drivers to those featured in their predecessor, Sennheiser’s open-backed HD 800S, but they’re also designed with curved Gorilla Glass-covered transducers, resulting in minimal resonance, and, ultimately, an ultra-accurate listening experience. If you’re an audiophile, Sennheiser’s innovation will feel like a game changer. You’ll be able to listen to studio-quality audio even if you don’t have a dedicated room for listening. Heck, you’ll even be able to take the HD 820s mobile without bothering those around you (assuming you have a high-quality portable hi-fi player). And when you consider that the HD 820s are lightweight and use plush microfiber earcups, you’ll never want to take them off. — TB Specs Type: Closed-back, dynamic headphones Frequency range: 12 - 43,800 Hz (-3 dB), 6 - 48,000 Hz (-10 dB) Impedance: 300 ohms $2,400
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THE FUTURE OF BUYING AND SELLING WATCHES ONLINE S TOCK X .CO M/WA T CHE S StockX is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with any watch brand, nor is an authorized dealer. All brand and model names are the trademark of their respective owners.
Anker Soundcore Space NC Bose is an undisputed industry leader, but it isn’t the only company making high-quality noise-canceling headphones — in fact, newcomers are selling them for far less than $350 a pair. Enter the Soundcore Space NC: they’re Anker’s first noise-canceling headphones and they cost just under $100. While they may not sound as crisp as Bose’s or Sony’s higher-end offerings, their combination of quality sound and noise-canceling ability is highly impressive, especially for the price. — TB Specs Drivers: 40mm dynamic Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.1 Battery: 20 hours (wireless NC mode), 50 hours (wired NC mode) $99
Cambridge Audio Edge A If you were to build out the perfect hi-fi system for your dream house, this amplifier would probably be at its heart. It’s Cambridge Audio’s most powerful and detailed integrated amplifier ever and blends beautiful design with distortion-free sound. What’s more, though the Edge A is wonderfully lavish, it’s also simple to use: pair any Bluetooth-enabled device to your Edge A, and as long it’s connected to a loudspeaker, you can stream really high-res audio (24-bit/48kHz). — TB
Specs Continuous Power Output: 100-watt RMS into 8 ohms, 200-watt RMS into 4 ohms Frequency Response: <3Hz - >80kHz +/-1dB Outputs: Speakers, preamplifier, headphones $5,000
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AUDIO
T H E E L L I S B L A C K + S TA I N L E S S
THEJAMESBRAND.COM
Pro-Ject Juke Box E Building a home hi-fi system is an intimidating task, but Pro-Ject’s Juke Box E takes a lot of the headache out of the equation by providing a quality setup in one sleek package. That’s right — you don’t need a receiver or a preamp or anything like that. All you need to do is plug in a set of speakers and put on your favorite record. — AC Specs Power Output: 2 x 50 watts Cartridge: Ortofon OM 5E Input: Bluetooth, 1 line $449
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THE STANDARD
Klipsch Klipschorn Speakers Seeing a Klipsch Heritage speaker for the first time is not unlike seeing a piece of art. Hefty, angular and starkly wooden, each is constructed like a grand piece of furniture. It takes your breath away. Whether you’re into this aesthetic or not, you can’t deny that these speakers are legendary. All five Klipsch Heritage speakers still in production — La Scala, Heresy, Forte, Cornwall and Klipschorn — are virtually unchanged from the way they looked and sounded decades ago. They’re also the only Klipsch speakers that the company still makes completely in the USA, in good ol’ Hope, Arkansas. The Klipschorn is the crown jewel of the Heritage line, and not just because it is the oldest of the bunch. (Paul W. Klipsch patented the speaker back in 1946.) Nor is it because the Klipschorn is making its own history: it continues to be the longest continuously-produced speaker ever (that’s a stretch of 60-plus years and counting). No, the real reason why the Klipschorn is iconic is its folded-horn cabinet structure. The innovative design, which remains unchanged even after all these years, creates chambers that gradually amplify sound waves. The result is a signature sound that’s neutral, natural, dynamic and enduring. — TB
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AUDIO
Gloves for every way you play.
H E ST R A G LO V E S .C O M
Outdoors Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rare that innovations in the outdoor industry correlate to major improvements on the consumer end. Fact is, many brands look at innovation as a way to create better marketing materials and sell more product, rather than equip outdoor enthusiasts with the best products possible. But this year feels different. From a ski binding designed to go downhill as well as it goes uphill to a rooftop tent that doubles as a cargo box, outdoor companies are finally giving buyers what they need â&#x20AC;&#x201D; single products that eliminate the need for two or three others.
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OUTDOORS
Top 10
Credits
072
Oakley Prizm React
078
Rapha Explore Sleeping Bag and Down Jacket
080
Patagonia Capilene Air Baselayers
080
Salomon S/Lab Shift MNC Binding
082
Yeti Hondo Base Camp Chair
082
Tecnica Forge
082
Osprey Levity
084
Pivot Mach 5.5 with Live Valve
086
Chris Reeve Knives Impinda
086
Tepui Hybox
Words TA N N E R B O W D E N MEG LAPPE AJ POWELL JAMES STOUT
Photos CHASE PELLERIN
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
The Standard 088
Coleman Two-Burner Camp Stove
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EDITOR’S PICK
Oakley Prizm React If there was a way to transport a pair of contemporary ski goggles back through the space-time continuum to 50 years ago, the people on the receiving end would be in shock. To them, the goggles would be a marvel — coated with colorful reflectives and equipped with magnets, levers and fans. They’d be compared more closely to what the first astronauts were wearing than to the rudimentary ski goggle models that were the high-end innovations of the time. They’d be right to do so, too; we take snow goggles and the technology that goes into them for granted. The ability to discern details on the surface of snow isn’t only crucial to safety, but also to the enjoyment of the sport, and it’s the various leaps in goggle innovation that have occurred over these last 50 years that’s allowed us to forget what’s on our faces when we’re up on the hill. Those notable modernizations have been few but incremental, and the latest one has arrived in Oakley’s Prizm React technology. It’s important to look into that 50-year time warp to contextualize Prizm React. In 1965, an orthodontist with an affection for powder skiing invented a ski goggle with a sealed double lens and breathable foam. Venting through the foam helped dramatically to reduce the fog buildup to which the earlier models (and sunglasses) were
prone. It became the archetypical structure for goggles as we know them now, and that orthodontist, whose name was Bob Smith, used it to build the eponymous company that remains one of the most influential goggle makers to this day. Smith’s goggles solved the fog issue, but they still weren’t perfect. Nearly all lenses were made of flexible sheets of tinted plastic that were bent into a cylindrical shape. They provided tint, but distorted optics and limited peripheral vision (the cheapest goggles are still made this way). Then Oakley introduced the A Frame in 1998, which used a molded lens in a spherical shape, allowing for optical corrections to be made. The A Frame opened up the realm of premium goggles and spurred companies to innovate with new technologies like interchangeable lenses and enhanced color-contrast perception. Prizm React is the culmination of all of this. The technology reverts back to that original cylindrical shape while maintaining enhanced color contrast for vision acuity, but the breakthrough it provides is the ability to cycle through three different lens tints at the press of a button. There’s a tint for full-on sunny days, one for the cloudiest conditions and another for everything else in between. Unpredictable shifts in weather are one of the only guarantees that mountain environments make,
They’d be compared more closely to what the first astronauts were wearing than to the rudimentary ski goggle models that were the high-end innovations of the time.
Editor’s Pick, Explained Skiers and snowboarders have long dreamed of a single goggle lens that could perform in all light conditions, and this year, Oakley delivered with the Prizm React, which cycles through three different lens tints with the push of a button. It’s not often that a new performance technology comes to market so elegantly, but the goggles are sleek and intuitive to use.
Specs Lens Tint Modes: 30%, 15%, 9% visible light transmission Strap: Silicone-backed non-slip Charging Port: Micro USB $300
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and until now our best method of adaptation has been to use goggles with interchangeable lenses. Prizm React eliminates the need to swap lenses as conditions change, essentially creating three goggles in one. The seamless transitions from light to dark are enabled by electrochromic technology, the same advancement that’s used to create smart glass, which has been applied to fabricate energy-efficient windows in buildings as well as the magically-dimmable panes in Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. “There are elements in the lens stack that, when you create an electrical pulse, change the color of the [lens],” explains Wayne Chumbley, Director of Oakley’s Vision Performance Lab. To create the electric charge that’s needed to move from one tint to another, Oakley had to figure out how to squeeze a battery, and the associated electronics, into a pair of goggles. Electronics in goggles isn’t a new concept — models with built-in fans for anti-fogging have existed for a while — but previous iterations have deployed electronic features using bulky battery packs attached to the strap; Prizm React’s tech is integrated seamlessly into the frame. And form factor is just as important as the technology itself; “They have to be married,” says Chumbley. “To create a goggle this sleek, the electronics ten years ago wouldn’t enable that… it needs to look like a goggle, like a goggle you’d want to put on your face.” That task took special consideration. Prizm React also needed to maintain the venting, anti-fog characteristics, face seal and helmet integration that’s required of premium goggles. In an early iteration, Oakley positioned the onboard electronics and the two buttons that let the wearer shift between tints, on one side of the goggle. The construction proved bulky and the button placement confused testers, so the development team “pumped the brakes,” as Chumbley puts it, and figured out how to balance the technology across the frame. In the final iteration, there’s a button on each side: one to make the lens darker and another to make it lighter. Oakley’s engineers also had the physiology of the human visual system to consider. The rate at which Prizm React changes from one tint to another is particularly important; if the transition is too slow it loses its perceptibility; too fast and it could
produce a shock (think about how your eyes feel when the lights are suddenly thrown on in a dark room). The sweet spot turned out to be three to five seconds. “That speed is very noticeable to the human eye and is not too fast to where you get a pupil-dilation issue,” explains Chumbley. In some ways, the natural functions of the human body aid the electronics. As anyone who heads to the ski resort with a cell phone knows, batteries don’t like the cold. Fleece-lined chest pockets have been the Band-Aid solution for that problem; Prizm React’s is more symbiotic — the ambient temperatures inside the goggle created by the skin are enough to help the battery last for over a week, depending on how often the tints are changed. None of this technology would matter if Prizm React didn’t function like any other goggle, and early and frequent collaboration with Oakley’s team of athletes provided the necessary proof of
concept. “In the backcountry, I am constantly battling changing conditions,” says Sage Kotsenburg, a professional snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist who has been wearing the Prizm React in the mountains since February of this year. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be ready to drop in and the clouds and snow are in and out, so it’s nerve-racking to potentially not be able to see your takeoff or landing when you have the wrong lenses in. With Oakley Prizm React, I feel safer and more confident in tough conditions.” As Chumbley describes it, Prizm React is the product of a 15-year (or longer) evolution, not some serendipitous technological breakthrough. It took Smith’s double-lens technology, Oakley’s A Frame and variations on interchangeable lens construction to arrive at its final manifestation. Where do goggles go from here? It’s hard to say. But even with 50 years lead time, it’s hard to imagine anything much better. — TB
“To create a goggle this sleek, the electronics ten years ago wouldn’t enable that... it needs to look like a goggle you’d want to put on your face.” 74
OUTDOORS
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Rapha Explore Sleeping Bag and Down Jacket Rapha is well known for its classically clean cycling apparel that fits and performs well on two wheels. You’ve likely seen the brand’s iconic bright pink accents on products like socks, jackets and base layers. This past year, Rapha experimented with luggage, with the same minimalist, upscale take. Next up, they’re turning their focus to the growing segment of bikepacking. To cater to this trend, Rapha has developed a unique sleeping-bag-down-jacket combo that is built to be used in tandem, but is sold separately. By slimming down some of the insulation around the midsection of the sleeping bag and expecting people to pair it with the down jacket to make up that warmth, Rapha has created a product that’s more compressible and space-saving than carrying a traditional down jacket and sleeping bag would be, but is just as warm. The Explore’s lightweight durable woven nylon fabrics, which are rated to 59 degrees Fahrenheit,
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are stuffed with premium and traceable 850-fill goose down. The DWR-coated jacket features a relaxed fit — slightly different than the slim cut for which the brand is typically known — but is better
Rapha created a product that’s more compressible and space-saving than carrying a traditional down jacket and sleeping bag.
This isn’t Rapha’s first bikepacking product, but the brand decided it was time to start thinking about the category in a meaningful way. “We’ve spent years developing our new Explore range,” Alex Valdman, creative director at Rapha, says of the collection that includes cargo bib shorts and technical tees. “We are continuing to build it out with functional must-have items for anyone who is planning an adventure.” — ML
Specs Down: 850 fill, 90/10, PFC-free, DWR-coated
suited for sleeping. Remove the hood before you climb into the bag at night, or use it to keep your head warm in colder temperatures. A closable vent at the bottom allows you to dump heat or even walk around camp wearing the bag.
Jacket Colors: Dark navy, dark green, black Weight: 276 grams (sleeping bag size S/M), 238 grams (jacket size medium) $295 (jacket); $330 (bag)
OUTDOORS
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Patagonia Capilene Air Baselayers Patagonia introduced the outdoor community to the concept of layering for thermoregulation in the 1980s, and its most recent introduction to the category, Capilene Air, is its best yet. Credit the collection’s 3D yarn (a polyester and merino wool blend) and its sweater-like, seam-free pattern, both of which optimize warmth and breathability in a wide range of temperatures. They’re some of the most versatile and comfortable base layers we’ve ever tested. — TB Specs Materials: 51% merino wool, 49% polyester Yarn Diameter: 18.5 microns Styles: Hoodie, long-sleeve crewneck, leggings $129+
Salomon S/Lab Shift MNC Binding “Do a few runs, a few days, and you don’t even think about what’s on your feet. This’ll be my go-to binding all the time.”
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Skiers who want to explore terrain beyond resort boundaries have forever faced a quandary: is the experience worth investing in a second pair of skis, boots and bindings? The cost alone is often prohibitive, especially for a novice who might only venture into the backcountry a handful of times. The available compromise, until now, has been a frame binding like Marker’s Duke or Salomon’s Guardian, but these are exceedingly heavy, making them inefficient for both uphill exploration and skiing downhill. Salomon’s S/Lab Shift MNC binding settles the matter. It’d be easy to get tangled up in the binding’s highly-technical details (it has 300 parts), but the principal innovation is the toe piece. Like traditional touring bindings, it’s equipped with pins for uphill travel, but the activation of a lever transforms the apparatus into an alpine binding for downhill skiing, delivering more security and
better performance. While most touring bindings lack an adjustable DIN setting (which helps release the ski during a fall to prevent injury), the Shift is fully certified to all safety norms. “Safety is the key. If it’s not meeting the norms then it’s not worth having a beefier binding like this,” says skier Chris Rubens, who was involved in the Shift’s seven-year development. The inevitable follow-up question is “Yeah, but how does it ski?” Good. Great actually, and while ascent-dedicated skiers might still opt for the lightest binding available, the Shift’s ability to ski like a true alpine binding, with equal power transfer and responsiveness, covers all bases. “The first couple times we started testing, we were like, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’” says Salomon athlete Cody Townsend. “Do a few runs, a few days,” he continues, “and you don’t even think about what’s on your feet. This’ll be my go-to binding all the time.” — TB
OUTDOORS
Specs Weight: 865 grams (with brakes and screws) DIN Range: 6 -13 Climbing Risers: 2 and 10 degrees $550
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Yeti Hondo Base Camp Chair The Yeti Hondo may be overbuilt for some, but for fishing, car camping and tailgating, it does stability and comfort better than any other chair on the market. Its strength comes from a nearly 24-hour age-hardening heat treatment on the steel frame, and from stretching and molding the fabric together to attach it to the steel — a design practice employed on the notable Herman Miller Aeron Chair. In Yeti’s testing, it proved to hold more than 3,000 pounds (the weight of your average Honda Civic). — AP Specs Weight: 16.5 pounds Seat: Tensioned fabric Accessories: Built-in cup holder (stays upright even when chair is folded) $300
Tecnica Forge The best long-distance hiking boots have always been stiff and hard to break in. This year, Tecnica, a company best known for producing ski products, put their focus on warm weather activities. By using technology often associated with custom ski boots, in which footbeds are warmed in an oven and then molded to the owner’s actual foot shape, Tecnica created a hiking boot with a shapeable footbed and upper. The result: a comfortable, form-fitting hiking boot with an unheard of near-perfect fit on day one. — TB Specs Upper: Nubuck or synthetic stretch fabric Sole: Vibram Waterproofing: Gore-Tex $250+
Osprey Levity Most people don’t know that ultralight backpackers — like thru-hikers — often use custom backpacks or ones made by smaller brands you can’t find in gear shops. For mainstream pack makers, the term “ultralight” has mostly been marketing spin. Osprey is dismantling that notion with the Levity, which weighs a mere 1.95 pounds (60-liter capacity, size medium) and doesn’t cut corners on bells and whistles. Ultralight gear just became more readily available. — TB Specs Sizes: 45 and 60 liters Main Fabric: 30D Cordura silnylon ripstop Number of Pockets: 5 $270
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Pivot Mach 5.5 with Live Valve A quick look at the specs of a mountain bike (in particular the suspension travel and tire size) is normally all it takes to know whether the bike was built for pedaling all day or getting your heart rate up on big gaps and drops. In other words, whether it’s a trail bike or an enduro bike. The spec sheet of Pivot’s Mach 5.5 is confusing. It’s a little beefier than your average trail bike, but not quite as aggressive as you’d expect from an enduro build. The stock 2.6-inch tires are just below the “plus” category and slightly wider than those on most trail bikes. The 160mm fork says enduro, but the 140mm of rear travel doesn’t seem quite ready to get gnarly, at least on paper. But bikes are more than a few specifications. In the case of the Mach 5.5, what looks like a hodgepodge of trail and enduro parts and geometries creates a bike that rarely feels out of place going uphill or downhill. It also has a trick up its sleeve — one that changes the way riders approach suspension setups. Suspension setups are complicated, frustrating and expensive. But without them, mountain biking would suck — and it often does when your suspension isn’t just right. Engineers have tried countless designs to make shocks less “wallowy,” and yet tuning your suspension while you’re out on the trail still requires grabbing a lever to lock out your shock, as well as the black magic practiced by specialists who adjust about a dozen metrics to make your bike feel awesome. But on a bike like the Mach 5.5, which might find itself on rocky, technical downhills one minute and rooty climbs
the next, the perfect suspension setting for one part of your ride isn’t what you’d want for another. That’s why shock manufacturer Fox and Pivot worked together to launch what they call Live Valve technology. Using sensors on the fork and frame, Live Valve senses impacts and opens up the shock just long enough to deal with them. This means that the bike has the suspension you need, but only when you need it. “You get more firmness on the climbs and a lot plusher of a setting on the downhills,”
says Pivot founder Chris Cocalis, who spent more than two years developing the system with Fox. “The real beauty of it is that you’re not reaching down and flicking a lever. You don’t notice that it’s ever happening, you don’t even think about it.” Live Valve is complicated technology, but it makes riding simple and has an immediate impact on the ride quality of a bike. In the simplest terms, a controller on the bike senses if the rider is going
uphill, downhill or riding level terrain, and it makes adjustments to the suspension accordingly — without the need for rider input. On climbs, the controller only opens the component (fork or shock) that experiences an impact, and only on bigger hits. This makes sure all of your energy goes into moving the bike uphill. On flat ground, the suspension stays open for longer, to react to impacts in quick succession, but not so long that the bike wallows or corners poorly. When you’re pointed downhill by more than six degrees (this angle is adjustable), an impact on the front triggers both shocks to stay open and remain open until it senses a return to more regular terrain. And if you’re airborne, Live Valve can sense that, too, and open up both shocks. In practice, Live Valve allows a bike like the versatile Mach 5.5 to be even more enjoyable — through simplicity. “[Live Valve] is seamless,” Cocalis says. “You don’t notice it, but it makes the bike ride better all the time.” There’s less time spent tinkering and more time spent smiling as you rip up climbs and send technical singletrack. The Mach 5.5 is the perfect bike for this sort of technology, with Live Valve making the most of its travel and preventing that travel from getting in the way of efficient pedaling. It’s getting close to the sort of quiver killer that marketing materials have promised for decades. It might not win a World Cup Cross Country or Downhill race, but chances are you won’t, either. What this bike will do is make it very unlikely that you’ll ever wish you were riding another bike. — JS
Specs Frame Material: Carbon fiber Shock: Fox Factory Live Valve (140mm of travel) Fork: Fox Factory Live 36 (160mm of travel) $8,399+
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Tepui Hybox Why camp on the ground when you can strap a deployable shelter to the top of your adventure vehicle? Rooftop tents don’t require any finicky set-up process and they’re often more spacious and comfortable, too. But adventurers do have one choice to make when a tent’s up top: where to put the cargo box. The HyBox solves that conundrum. It deploys as a rooftop shelter but its mattress and walls are removable, leaving a highstrength ABS box to function as a catch-all for gear when camping’s not on the itinerary. — TB Specs Carrying Capacity: 23 cubic feet, up to 165 pounds of gear Mattress: 3-inch foam, removable cotton cover Sleeps: 2 people $2,895
Chris Reeve Knives Impinda In order to progress forward, the much-lauded company Chris Reeve Knives had to take a step back. Its first new design in two years, the Impinda, abandons the locking frame that helped make the company so famous. Instead, the design employs a simple slip-joint construction that’s non-locking by design — a first for the brand. The Impinda has everything you need in an everyday knife — high-grade stainless steel and titanium and an understated profile — and nothing you don’t. — TB
Specs Weight: 3.38 ounces Overall length: 7.14 inches Blade length: 3.12 inches $450
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THE STANDARD
AD
Coleman Two-Burner Camp Stove The Coleman Company was founded by William Coffin Coleman in 1900, but it wasn’t until WWII — when the U.S. Military contracted Coleman to make pocket stoves for the soldiers fighting overseas — that the company became a household name. As G.I.s returned stateside after the war, they trusted Coleman to provide them with a camp stove that was durable and capable for their family trips to the country. That stove was the Coleman Two-Burner Stove (today, the Coleman PerfectFlow Two-Burner Stove).
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During the camping boom of the 1960s, as Two-Burner sales skyrocketed, Coleman flourished as the leading outdoors outfitter and began offering sleeping bags and tents in addition to its lanterns and stoves. Today, the Two-Burner stove, with its steel construction and forest-green paint job, continues to be a lodestar for Coleman, thanks to its practicality and nearly unbreakable design. First introduced in 1914, the current, updated Coleman Two-Burner came to market in 1987, and it is still the most enduring product in the outdoor space. — AP
First Year of Production:
1914 NE X T ITEM :
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G E A R PAT R O L S T U D I O S / B E L L & R O S S
G E A R PAT R O L S T U D I O S / B E L L & R O S S
Supersonic Origins T H E B E L L X- 1 A I R C R A F T G AV E R I S E T O H Y P E R S O N I C T E C H N O L O G Y A N D B E L L & R O S S ’ S B O L D B R -X 1 M I L I TA R Y C H R O N O G R A P H .
In 1947, the Bell X-1, manned by legendary pilot Chuck Yeager, became the first American rocket engine-powered aircraft to break the sound barrier. It laid the groundwork for the hypersonic aeronautical technologies found within stealth fighter planes in skies today. Some of the most technically advanced machines humans have ever built, these aircrafts are designed to go nearly undetected by radar at high speeds. This ethos of high-performance, precision and reliability is the foundation for the limited-edition BR-X1 Military timepiece from Bell & Ross. “The BR-X1 is indicative of our desire to always innovate and meet new challenges,” Bell & Ross Creative Director Bruno Belamich says. “[It] was created to push the boundaries in terms of design, watchmaking and technical sophistication.”
The 45mm case of this unique skeleton chronograph was formed from a modification of Titanium Grade 5 alloy. The result is a subtly hued, matte khaki high resistance titanium (HRT), an ultratough and corrosion-resistant material. Both lightweight and highly resilient, this military-inspired timepiece is complete with a perforated black rubber strap and a luminous green display. “Our BR-X1 Military displays an avant-gardism and bold design with high-end finishes,” Belamich notes. “The BR-X1 Military is one of the most sophisticated models in our current collection and is the perfect synthesis of Bell & Ross’s expertise in creating professional, greatly complex watches.” Limited to only 250 pieces, the BR-X1 Military is a watch that certainly will not go undetected on the wrist.
Learn More Gear.GP/BR-X1
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Fitness Fitness is a trend-driven industry and 2018 was no different. VR workouts, sleep tracking to boost performance and marijuana-derived supplements all generated buzz this year. But, there were also some truly head-turning innovations like a radical new approach to in-race nutrition and a GPS watch with a battery that far outlasts the competition. Whether youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in search of serious performance gains or simply an upgrade to your home gym, our picks all stood above the fluff by tackling their respective categories with notable advancements, even if a few of them did follow the trends.
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FITNESS
Top 10
Credits
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Giro Aether MIPS
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Nike Pegasus Turbo
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Suunto 9
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Silca Sicuro Titanium Bottle Cage
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Specialized S-Works Venge
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Peloton Tread
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Mirror
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District Vision x Salomon Mountain Racer
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Hyperice Hypervolt
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Maurten Gel 100
Words ALI CARR TROXELL TA N N E R B O W D E N PETER KOCH MEG LAPPE AJ POWELL
Photos CHANDLER BONDURANT CHASE PELLERIN
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
The Standard 106
WaterRower Classic
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EDITOR’S PICK
Giro Aether MIPS Giro’s Aether MIPS cycling helmet is all about compromise. And that’s not to say it’s lukewarm or wishy-washy. Rather it’s the perfect all-rounder, constituting what may be the ultimate compromise between style, comfort, weight, ventilation and — the driving force behind its game-changing innovation — safety. The impetus for the Aether was that the brand wanted to eliminate the shortcomings of putting MIPS — the yellow plastic slip liner that reduces brain-damaging rotational forces caused by oblique impacts — into its cycling helmets without sacrificing its industry-leading safety. “We really believe in the MIPS technology,” says Giro Creative Director Eric Horton, “but we always felt that there were compromises.” The plastic liner makes a helmet heavier, can obstruct airflow and even feels scratchy to some riders. That was Giro’s jumping-off point for developing MIPS Spherical, a new rotation-reducing technology that isn’t an add-on to the helmet; it is the helmet. Instead of a single EPS foam shell, Giro molded the helmet into two impossibly thin spherical EPS shells, nested them together ball-and-socket-style and attached them via elastomers. The low-friction surface between them, in this case, becomes the slip plane, eliminating the need for a liner. “This was a massive engineering challenge,” Horton says, “almost on a level with reinventing the wheel.” But one that was worth it. Making the switch allowed Giro to enlarge the vents and use two
different foam densities. The result is a helmet that’s 20 grams lighter, two degrees cooler and 2.4 percent more aerodynamically efficient than Giro’s respected Synthe aero helmet. And for all the technological advancements inside the Aether, all you can tell from the outside is that its swooping lines, laser-cut logo and translucent reinforcing arch are damn sexy. That’s no coincidence. The folks at Giro are cyclists, too, so they understand the complex relationship between a style-obsessed, performance-driven cyclist and his helmet. He wants it to save his brain in the unlikely event of a crash, of course, but he also wants it to be so comfy, lightweight, airy and aero that, well, it feels like he’s not wearing it at all. And, oh, it would be nice if it matched his sweet paint job and polka-dot socks, too. “We call it the mirror test,” says Eric Horton, “and it means that when you put it on and look at yourself in the mirror, you should feel ready to go out and tear up the Saturday ride, because you’re confident you’ve got the best-looking, best-performing kit that you can.” Could you buy a lighter helmet? Sure. One with better ventilation? Probably. Or that’s more aerodynamic? Of course. But you can’t find another that excels at all three the way Aether MIPS does, without jeopardizing safety and flunking the mirror test. And that’s the definition of uncompromising. — PK
“When you put it on and look at yourself in the mirror, you should feel ready to go out and tear up the Saturday ride.”
Editor’s Pick, Explained The Aether MIPS constitutes a comprehensive reimagining of how MIPS (the world’s leading slip-plane technology) is integrated into a helmet design. Giro combined both safety and sleek aesthetics in a way that doesn’t feel forced or awkward, and it made upgrading to a safer helmet that much easier.
Specs Safety Technology: MIPS Spherical (CPSC certified) Weight: 250 grams (size medium) Manufacturer’s Warranty: 1 year $325
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Nike Pegasus Turbo Building a training shoe that makes track workouts fast and long runs springy is nearly impossible. But, Nike did. Enter the Pegasus Turbo, which combines the cushioning in two of its most popular shoes to create a midsole that’s reactive yet durable. These made us feel energized and lighter and are go-tos for elite runners, too. Since the first Pegasus was introduced 35 years ago, it’s become the best-selling running shoe for both serious marathoners and beginner runners, and this iteration is possibly the fastest one yet. — ML
Specs Weight: 8.4 ounces (size 10) Heel-to-Toe Drop: 10mm Foam: Nike ZoomX and Nike React $180
Suunto 9 Eliminate the worry over battery life on long hikes or other athletic endeavors with the Suunto 9, a multisport fitness watch that can track data for up to 120 hours while running the GPS. The smart battery-management system is what sets this watch apart — it optimizes depending on the length of your workout and its mode. Distance, pace and heart rate come standard in addition to more hardcore data like EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) and PTE (peak training effect), all on a user-friendly color touchscreen. — ML Specs Weight: 2.54 ounces; 2.86 ounces (with built-in barometer) Battery Life: 25 - 120 hours Water Resistance: 100 meters $499+
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FITNESS
Silca Sicuro Titanium Bottle Cage Titanium water-bottle cages are nothing new. In fact, there was an internal debate on whether a utilitarian bike accessory could even be called award-worthy. But Silcaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sicuro cages convinced us that sometimes small tweaks on simple products can be significant. Elongated mounting holes allow for more adjustment when attaching the cages to your bike, while a laser welding technique adopted from the aerospace industry means each one is durable enough for the brand to offer a 25-year warranty. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; AP Specs Cage Material: Titanium Bolt Material: Titanium Weight: 29 grams (without bolts) $70
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Specialized S-Works Venge When the new Venge came out, we called it “the Ferrari of bikes,” and we’re sticking to that. It’s considerably faster than its predecessor (already the fastest bike on the market) and it won multiple stages at the Tour de France. But it’s the frame’s design story that really grabs us: in addition to wind tunnel testing, Specialized enlisted custom software to analyze thousands of tube shapes for optimal aerodynamics and stiffness. Welcome to the future of bike design. — ACT
Specs Weight: 15.65 pounds (built bike) Years in R&D: 11 Sponsored Riders: Peter Sagan, Fernando Gaviria $12,520
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Peloton Tread Peloton, the brand known for its high-end stationary bike, is out to revolutionize fitness with the introduction of the Tread, one of the most advanced treadmills ever developed. The machine is built on the idea that the best way to make people more active is to eliminate any excuses and provide new content daily, so boredom isn’t a problem. With nearly one million members, Peloton created a community of riders, and now they are targeting runners. “We knew we were more than just a bike company,” Maureen Coiro, Peloton’s senior hardware product manager, says. Instead of the bulky, boxy eyesores we’re used to, the Tread is sleek and lacks the cheap plastic of most at-home treadmills. Upgrades include a carbon steel frame, a 32-inch touchscreen offering both on- and off-treadmill workouts from 10
professional trainers, an intuitive control knob to change speed or incline, and ample storage space under the belt for mats and weights. Peloton swapped a belt made of one long piece of rubber for 59 individual slats that make the ride more cushioned and smooth. What really sets the Tread apart from other at-home workout machines, though, is its ability to stream classes through Peloton Digital. For $39 a month, you get your own private fitness studio. “Peloton is now expanding its socially connected workouts to include running, walking, bootcamp and circuit classes, both on and off the Tread,” Coiro says. Each day, there’s a variety of more than 10 live classes, complete with a leaderboard. Hit the top and the instructor might just cheer you on. — ML
The Tread is one of the most advanced treadmills ever developed.
Specs Dimensions: 72.5 x 36.5 x 72 inches Incline: 0% - 15% grade Speed: Up to 12.5 mph $3,995+
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Mirror Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fittest of them all? That is, more or less, the question that gym-goers have been posing for decades, as they’ve pumped iron, busted out reps and checked their form in front of plain, old-fashioned “dumb” mirrors at fitness centers around the globe. But what if that mirror not only had an answer for you, but also played an integral role in shaping your fitness by making high-quality group fitness classes more convenient, more affordable and — via seamless, real-time exercise customization — better optimized so you can achieve your goals as quickly as possible? That’s the premise behind Mirror, a new highend fitness device that brings the essential components of a great studio workout — variety, personalization, interactivity and community — into the convenience of your home. Invented by Brynn Putnam, who owns a chain of New York-based boutique fitness studios called Refine Method, Mirror is a technology-packed workout mirror that’s perfectly positioned to take advantage of this year’s biggest fitness trend: virtual fitness. Like all emerging technologies, virtual fitness is rife with shortcomings. But they haven’t stopped the phenomenon from exploding in popularity worldwide, as fitness clubs, equipment manufacturers and content creators scramble to make high-quality group fitness classes available to their clients anytime, anywhere. Thanks to increasing competition, production values are higher than ever, with cinematic lighting and slick camera work highlighting more professional, prime time-ready trainers. But when Putnam first came up with the idea for Mirror in 2015, the space was a blank slate. At the time, she was newly pregnant, and had just opened Refine Method’s third location. Life was getting hectic, to the point that, ironically, she couldn’t find time for fitness. “I found myself the owner of a gym, struggling to squeeze in a workout,” Putnam recalls. When she began exploring in-home workout options, the space constraints of her New York City apartment immediately ruled out a treadmill or exercise bike. She cycled through several virtual fitness options, “but found the experiences weren’t really immersive or interactive.” Even when the class content wasn’t stale, she was still trying to digest it via a tiny, hard-tosee screen that made following along awkward at best, and many times nearly impossible. And, for
the most part, there was scant personalization of exercises to match her unique prenatal needs. “I always felt like working out in-home meant sacrificing quality for convenience,” she adds. Around the same time, she’d installed full-length mirrors in her fitness studios, and received rave feedback from her clients. “They said it was the best thing we’d done all year, giving them the visual feedback of seeing their form in the mirror,” Putnam says, “and they found it really inspiring to see themselves pushing their bodies through a workout.” The proverbial light bulb lit in Putnam’s head, and she realized that she could take the technology from a streaming app and put it inside a mirror (which is very screen-like, after all)
“They found it really inspiring to see themselves pushing their bodies through a workout.” to create a more realistic, interactive gym that fits into any home. Within months, she’d built a prototype in her kitchen using a two-way mirror, a monitor and a Raspberry Pi computer to program the software. Three years of development and nearly $38 million of venture capital later, the experience she envisioned is being realized, and it’s remarkable. Imagine standing on a yoga mat in front of a sleek, body-length mirror in your living room, suited up in workout clothes and a heart-rate strap, with a sweat towel and water bottle close at hand. At a predetermined time, you switch on Mirror to join a live class and see a trainer standing in front of you on the full-size LCD display, as if she’s in your living room, too. She introduces herself, outlines the HIIT class ahead, then launches into some warm-up exercises as upbeat music pumps from the surround-sound speakers. At the bottom of the display, you can check which of your favorite fitness pals have joined the class. Once the workout is underway, your heart rate is monitored to ensure you’re hitting the right intensity levels. And it goes much further. If you have an injury, say, or you’re pregnant, or just not fit enough to
Specs Subscription Cost: $39 per month New Content Frequency: 50 live classes per week Display: 40-inch HD 1080p, with 178-degree viewing angle $1,495
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“The instructor is really there to provide a sense that you’re not alone.” perform an exercise, Mirror serves you alternatives seamlessly in real time, or provides personalized text-based form tips to ensure that you’re doing each exercise safely and effectively. At the end of class, you simply roll up the yoga mat, and your workout studio transforms instantly back into a living room. All of your data is stored in a smartphone-based app for later analysis, and a post-workout survey helps Mirror further tailor future classes. Mirror keeps its content fresh by streaming more than 50 new live classes per week across a handful of categories, all of which are added to the growing library of on-demand classes that are available 24/7. On top of that, personal training will be added to the platform in early 2019, making full use of the front-facing camera and omnidirectional microphone to facilitate two-way “face-to-face” communication for form guidance and critiques. The “magic” behind Mirror’s real-time form tips and exercise modifications is a proprietary algorithm that blends a combination of trainer expertise, user-profile data (a weight-loss goal or injury, for example), biometric data via the heartrate strap and user feedback surveys. “When our trainers write their class plans, they also write modifications for all of the injuries that we’re culling, as well as advancements and regressions,” Putnam says. “The Mirror, then, is pulling information from your profile and heart rate to determine whether or not you should be served alternate content; sometimes it’s just a text-based note reminding you, say, to keep your knees pointed forward because you have a knee injury and it’s an exercise where you need to be particularly careful.” The end result is, ideally, a seamless workout experience that’s optimized to your ability level and skill set every single time. With all of that whiz-bang computer-generated customization, though, it can be easy to lose
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sight of the real-life trainer, who expertly crafted the class and whose personal touch factored so prominently into the all-knowing algorithm. Apart from that, says Putnam, “The instructor is really there to provide a sense that you’re not alone.” And that gets at the biggest flaw with the Mirror experience to date. The community aspect is still lacking. There’s very little real-time interaction between trainers and students — apart from occasional “shout-outs” to individuals — or between students, even in live classes. You can see the usernames of others who are taking the class, but can’t actually see them or easily interact with them. We suspect it’s only a matter of time before improvements are introduced here, as Putnam hints at new social and workout features that will utilize the front-facing camera and, presumably, offer the option of more direct interactivity. “I think we’ve reached a point where we’re able to deliver — and I’m saying this as someone who’s taught tens of thousands of people in person — a more personalized, tailored experience via technology than I can in real life,” Putnam says. And perhaps she’s right about that, given the limited ability of a single trainer to adequately cater to every single medical condition and fitness level in a given class, while performing exercises and offering expert advice on form. At $1,495, Mirror is an investment, but its $39 monthly subscription fee covers up to five users, making it far cheaper than classes at a boutique fitness studio. “With the logistics and low cost of working out in-home, it’s ultimately more convenient and more affordable,” Putnam concludes. “If the experience is better, easier and cheaper, I think more people will make the calculus to spend more time at home.” She’s almost certainly right about that, and Mirror is far and away the best option available. It may not be magic, but it could well make you the fittest of them all. — PK
FITNESS
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District Vision x Salomon Mountain Racer District Vision’s focus on mindfulness in running applies to its products, too. Its sunglasses, socks, caps and more are made to the highest degree of quality; the brand’s first shoe, a trail runner made in collaboration with Salomon, meets that standard. The shoe combines progressive materials like Kevlar with a slightly retro aesthetic, and implements modern tech onto a pattern pulled from Salomon’s archive. “We’re trying to bridge a truly high-tech material application with a more grounded, earthy, analog vibe,” says Max Vallot, one of the company’s cofounders. — TB Specs Weight: 312 grams Drop: 18mm - 26mm Outsole: Salomon Contagrip rubber $230
Hyperice Hypervolt Recovery is the buzzword of the fitness industry this year. Pro athletes know the benefits of handheld massagers — they reduce pain and improve mobility — but a combination of noise and price has kept them out of the hands of the everyday athlete. Hyperice, a company out of Irvine, California, that’s focused on athlete recovery tools, rewrote that script with the cordless Hypervolt, released in February. There’s now a handheld massager that’s quiet and lightweight and completely different than anything else on the market. — ML Specs Speed Settings: 3 Head Attachments: 4 Battery Life: 3 hours $349
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Maurten Gel 100 Run anything longer than a half marathon (13.1 miles) and refueling mid-race becomes a necessity. The conundrum: how to eat during a race or lengthy endurance workout to ensure you’re getting the nutrition you need without risking digestive problems. Maurten, a Swedish brand centered on fueling both amateur and elite athletes, set out to solve that problem with a water-based gel that’s easy to digest and offers race-flourishing carbohydrates. Until now, race-worthy nutrition options have been limited. Most people find it difficult to run with solids in their stomachs. GU and gummies can make your mouth dry, forcing you to drink lots of water. Enter: Gel 100, a viscous-like hydrogel that goes down like liquid and tastes like vanilla. It’s the least offensive of the ones we’ve tried. “Our hydrogel packs sixty percent carbohydrate content that you actually don’t need to wash down with water, like you would with traditional products in the segment,” Herman Reuterswärd, head of communication at Maurten, says. Gel 100 contains a .08:1 fructose-glucose ratio, instead of the 2:1 ratio found in competitors, which means your body likely doesn’t require as much to refuel. The gel moves water, salt and carbs into the intestines where it’s absorbed faster, and doesn’t get stuck in the digestive system, which is where your typical runner’s GI issues stem from. Plus there are no additional color additives or flavors. Running stores across the country are stocking up. Athletes like Eliud Kipchoge, who most recently ran a new world record time of 2:01:39 at the Berlin Marathon, races using a mixture of the Gel 100 and Maurten’s drink mixes. It’s not often that someone can shake up the world of energy products, yet Maurten has done just that. — ML
Specs Calories: 100 Sodium: 34mg Total Carbs: 25 grams $43 (12 gels)
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THE STANDARD
WaterRower Classic First Year of Production:
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Fitness is an industry governed by trends, and fashionable machines come and go. Bowflex, the Ab Roller, the Shake Weight — you could fill a shipping container with them all. So it’s rare that a machine lasts three years in the marketplace, never mind 30. And for one to be put in a museum? Well, that’s just downright preposterous. Against the odds, the WaterRower Classic rowing machine has become not just a fitness staple but a design icon, too — it’s the only fitness product to be sold by the MoMA Design Store. WaterRower did receive a recent boon in the form of repeated appearances in Netflix’s series House of Cards. The show, which debuted in 2013, featured a WaterRower prominently — the fictional president of the U.S., played by Kevin Spacey, took out his frustrations by rowing furiously on one of the company’s machines. From 2011 to 2016, WaterRower tripled the production capacity of its factory in Warren, Rhode Island. But its popularity and steadfast qualities go beyond a hit TV show. The WaterRower Classic endures because it weights form and function equally. — AP
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Motoring It’s been a while since we’ve seen companies completely revolutionize the automotive or motorcycle industries — even seemingly new, trendy technologies like electric power and all-wheel-drive have been around for well over a century. Interesting shifts, then, are typically introduced not as massive sweeping disruptions but instead challenges to the boundaries of safety, speed and design. The best motorcycles and cars of 2018 were chosen because they showcase a way in which they made an existing vehicle or category better — that is, more beautiful, more accessible, more capable, more fun.
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MOTORING
Top 10
Credits
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Lincoln Navigator
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Jeep Wrangler
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Volvo XC40
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Subaru WRX STI Type RA
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Lexus LC 500
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Volkswagen Atlas
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Cake Kalk
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Toyota Corolla Hatchback
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Kia Stinger GT
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Triumph Tiger 800 XCa
Words B R YA N C A M P B E L L NICK CARUSO
Photos CHASE PELLERIN
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
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Mazda MX-5 Miata
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Lincoln Navigator EDITOR’S PICK
Numbers have always been a huge part of automobile culture. Read any review or brochure, or simply talk to a proud owner, and you’ll be inundated with them. How fast, how quick, how far, how big, how light, how loud, how low, how expensive — stats are everything. The all-new 2018 Lincoln Navigator will please numbers aficionados with a spec sheet thoroughly riddled with impressive stuff. From the number of directions in which its seats can adjust to the horsepower output from its relatively small engine to the size of its wheels, the Navigator contains a wealth of outsized specs excessive enough to send the most avid of numbers junkies into a frenzy. None of the Navigator’s numbers, however, is more impressive than 20: the number of years it took the Navigator to completely reinvent itself. When it debuted in 1998, the original Navigator was somewhat of a revelation, beating Cadillac’s Escalade to the modern, American-made luxury-SUV front by a year. For all its leather and late-Nineties bling, the big SUV also featured premium performance and an adequately premium price tag. For around $43,000, or about $67,000 in today’s money, customers got seven-passenger, V8-powered transportation that could tow like a big truck and impress at the country club.
Few vehicles have truly captured their moment in time like the original Navigator did, and now, 20 years later, this latest generation has done it all over again. The new SUV is aggressively progressive in most every way — apropos for a vehicle debuting at the height of the Information Age. At a time when trends come and go in what can seem like moments, Lincoln has positioned the Navigator to stay ahead of the curve in ways that will still feel revolutionary years down the road. The full-size Navigator is still basically a ladder-frame truck with prodigious features, but, eschewing a traditional, macho V8, Lincoln has fitted the new Navigator with Ford’s 450-horsepower twin-turbo V6, which cranks 510 lb-ft of torque (it’s also found in the Ford F-150 Raptor). A 10-speed transmission keeps that power in check and doles it out seamlessly. Its aluminumalloy body shaves off a couple hundred pounds compared to a steel equivalent and makes, well, navigating an effortless task; despite weighing a massive 6,000 pounds, the Navigator moves with grace that usually only vehicles half its size can claim. In terms of its competition though, Lincoln, in general, still has a long way to go in distancing itself from its bloaty, Town Car image of yore. The
Few vehicles have truly captured their moment in time like the original Navigator did, and now, 20 years later, this latest generation has done it all over again.
Editor’s Pick, Explained Despite our ever-growing need for a more responsible approach to emissions, the American lust for largerthan-life SUVs has soldiered on strong as ever. But if there is a way forward for titanic, leatherbound SUVs, Lincoln assuredly nailed it with the all-new Navigator, which emerged in 2018 as the marque’s first total redesign in its 20-year history. It’s a massively luxurious, 6,000-pound tech and comfort powerhouse, and as such, exemplifies strong progress in the space.
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Navigator truly competes with — and in many cases surpasses — many rivals in the premium space. Most notably, it’s poised as a fresher competitor to the aforementioned Escalade, which though relatively outdated, will always be its main contemporary. But in terms of its modern take on style and luxury, the Navigator also handily competes with far more upscale luxury options like the Bentley Bentayga — a vehicle that starts some $60,000 higher than the most expensive, fully optioned Black Label Navigator. Black Label products sit at the top end of the Lincoln model lineup, and are made available in pre-curated “themes” that convey high-taste combinations of texture and color. Opt for a Black Label long-wheelbase Navigator with four-wheel drive and all the fixin’s and witness another extreme number: this SUV can be optioned to over $100,000. Impressively, Lincoln backs up that price tag with a complete experience that’s difficult to see as anything but worth the cost of admission. The drab, droopy quarters of the original Navigator are completely gone in favor of an airy, pleasing cabin with truly comfortable seating for up to eight. Beyond that, the vehicle is replete
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with charging ports, entertainment systems and technology like head-up displays and customizable digital gauge clusters. The wood veneers that cover the main surfaces in each vehicle are largely sourced from a single tree, meaning the grains match perfectly throughout the cabin. Richly colored, sensual textures abound, resulting in a driving experience that is almost eerily relaxing. On the outside, the new Navigator strikes a well-proportioned balance between outrageously sized components and outright bulk: for every 22inch wheel or 9-inch-tall grille emblem, there is another inch of overall height or length to compensate visually. And yet the final product is a titanic vehicle that doesn’t look ridiculous or comical, but rather stately: a large but smooth figure that avoids being distasteful or aggressively monolithic. And so Lincoln has uncovered a winning formula. The numbers — 20 years, 6,000 pounds, $100,000, et al. — deliver a strong statement, but where the company has struck gold is in the philosophy behind the new Navigator. There is nothing in this SUV that indicates the brand is being precious or careful; instead, the Navigator is the manifestation of progress inside and out. — NC
Specs Engine: 3.5-liter turbocharged V6 Transmission: 10-speed automatic; fourwheel drive Horsepower: 450 $72,555+
MOTORING
Jeep Wrangler Only a few cars in history have earned true icon status. Some disappeared from dealer floors decades ago but are still remembered as legends of their time — the International Scout or Ford Bronco. Others — like the Jeep Wrangler, introduced in the mid-1980s as America’s answer to England’s Defender or Japan’s Land Cruiser — were automotive heroes on their first day of work and continue to dominate their slice of car culture. Having purposefully evolved over the decades, the Wrangler’s newest generation surfaced in late 2017 as one of the most anticipated launches of the year. Because it’s so capable straight from the factory, the Jeep is looked at as a benchmark in the offroad world, and it maintains that mantle for 2018. All the hallmarks of a classic Jeep outfit the new Wrangler — like the classic silhouette and the beloved off-road capabilities — but for 2018, the fold-down windshield is back, as are squaredoff flat-top fenders and removable doors. A 30-
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inch fording depth, 44-degree approach angle, 37-degree departure angle and nearly 11 inches of ground clearance translate into the most capable baseline Wrangler ever. On-road, bigger brakes and new electro-hydraulic-assisted steering making it more forgiving than past iterations. Bonus: in 2019, an available turbo-diesel 3.0-liter V6 will provide 35 lb-ft more torque from a lowly 3,000 rpm, giving Jeep drivers even more of what they love. When we initially tested the 2018 Wrangler, Jeep organized a drive along the haphazard roads that floss the valleys and fjords of New Zealand’s Southern Alps. Our writer’s response? “Few vehicles, after all, are as eager to confront the casually cruel authors of millions of years of geological revisions — and then unceremoniously flip them off — as the Wrangler.” When you factor design, engineered capability and quality for price, the Jeep Wrangler has no equal. — BC
Specs Engine: 3.6-liter V6 (base); 2.0-liter turbocharged inline-four (optional) Horsepower: 285 (base); 270 (optional) Torque: 260 lb-ft (base); 295 lb-ft (optional) $29,240+
MOTORING
Volvo XC40 In a world of compact SUVs rife with relatively “cute” vehicles, looks alone do not a success make. The XC40 is an outlier, then, not only because it totally nails the “premium funk” aesthetic, but because its quality — strongly reminiscent of, yet refreshingly different from, its more upper-class siblings — is among the best in its class. The XC40 is economically innovative, too: with its introduction, it ushered in Care by Volvo, the brand’s all-inclusive (except for gas) subscription-based leasing plan. — NC
Specs Engine: Turbocharged 2.0-liter fourcylinder Transmission: 8-speed automatic; AWD Horsepower: 248 $39,900
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MOTORING
Subaru WRX STI Type RA At first glance, the Subaru WRX STI Type RA seems like a rip-off. It’s hardly any lighter or more powerful than the lesser regular STI, yet it costs $12,900 more. The extra cash is warranted, however — it goes into a chassis finely tuned by the best engineers Subaru has to offer, which translates to otherworldly handling and response. After all, the Type RA’s 310 horsepower is more than enough grunt — what you need is a way to better control it and put it to use. — BC
Specs Engine: Turbocharged 2.5-liter flat-four Transmission: Six-speed manual; allwheel drive Horsepower: 310 $48,995
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Lexus LC 500 The LC 500, introduced in 2017 as a 2018 model, is the perfect marriage of two Lexus legends: the SC, which was designed to compete with luxury coupes from Mercedes-Benz and Acura, and the wildly limited LFA, a two-seat supercar with aggressive proportions and a sonorous V10 engine. In that regard, the LC 500 is a true, high-performance grand tourer halo car, bolstered by gorgeous lines, conservative luxury and sporty inclinations. — NC Specs Engine: 5.0-liter V8 Transmission: 10-speed automatic; rearwheel drive Horsepower: 471 $92,000+
Volkswagen Atlas Starting at just over $30,000, the seven-seat Atlas is the Volkswagen’s modern foray into the big-SUV marketplace. It’s so affordable, so attractive, and it so essentially answers consumers’ needs that it is now a must-shop among its competition: a smooth-driving, pleasing SUV that’s available with a grunty V6, all-wheel-drive and a more economical turbo-four engine. It’s also roomy enough in all three rows to fit adult bodies. Combine that with VW’s quirky, upscale aesthetics and tech, and it’s hard to deny this is a winner. — NC Specs Engine: 3.6-liter V6 Transmission: 7-speed automatic Horsepower: 276 $30,750
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Cake Kalk Despite the resurgence of the café-racer segment and the swelling of interest in off-road-capable bikes, the motorcycle market is stale and manufacturers are clamoring to right the ship. The once-reliable baby-boomer buyers are aging out of riding altogether and potential new riders aren’t surfacing fast enough. Of all places, Sweden is home to the two-wheel culture’s best chance: a company called Cake. Cake comes to the industry with fresh eyes and none of the restraints that tie down established manufacturers. The company’s first bike, the all-electric Kalk, borrows the best characteristics from mountain bikes and small dirt bikes to solve problems bigger brands won’t. Founder and CEO Stefan Ytterborn did stints designing for Ikea and Saab and also founded the helmet company POC. This all to say the Kalk was never going to look bad. But it’s not solely a matter of style. Motorcycles, in general, share the
same conundrum as the increasingly rare manual transmission in the car world. The manual’s decline is at least partially due to it requiring more work on the driver’s part. Similarly, aside from scooters and the odd CVT-equipped Honda, almost all motorcycles force riders to work the gears themselves, which can be a daunting turn off for potential newcomers. The Kalk’s design marries the familiarity of mountain bike controls — both brake levers up on the handlebars, no clutch — to the performance of a dirt bike. “We want to help people get out there and explore in an easy way without really knowing how to ride a motorcycle — not knowing the clutch, not knowing how to change gears,” Ytterborn says. With a range of 50-ish miles — two to three hours of intense riding or just under an hour of full-throttle track time — the Kalk’s battery can be charged in just over an hour. That’s how Cake
aims to go after new riders as well as urban commuters. Ytterborn admits he’s “not a traditional motorcyclist,” but he maintains that’s what gives him an advantage. Indeed, by focusing on moving forward from the limitations of mountain bikes and lowering the bar of entry for motorcycle beginners, Cake stands out in 2018 by innovating in an industry that’s had a hard time accepting change. — BC
Specs Horsepower: 15 Torque: 34 lb-ft Weight: 134 pounds ~$15,000
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Toyota Corolla Hatchback What comes to mind when you picture a Toyota? For the majority of the nation’s population, it’s probably the Camry, a car made virtually invisible to the brain’s pleasure center by silver or black paint paired with an equally pulse-calming interior design. Each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans drive off dealership lots in the Japanese brand’s bread-and-butter sedan. But the masses can’t be blamed for that milquetoast car being the poster child of the brand. Toyota spent years inadvertently earning a reputation as a manufacturer of uninspired appliances — despite having enthusiast cars like the MR2, Supra, 86 coupe and the TRD performance lineup etched as outliers on its résumé. But, the 2018 Corolla Hatchback is the beginning of the undoing of Toyota’s blandness. It is also, consequently, the most important car the brand has built this century. Toyota’s fun off-roaders and low-slung sports cars are known to enthusiasts because they’re marketed as being performance-forward, an aspect nowhere near the top priority for average buyers. But just because a car isn’t labeled as a sporty car doesn’t mean it can’t boast better-than-expected performance. The 2018 Corolla Hatchback carries a big message: you don’t have to be a card-carrying enthusiast to have a fun car. But the company doesn’t shout that message one bit. Though Toyota could have promoted the Corolla Hatchback to the track-rat crowd and budding tuners, that tack would have painted the car into
too small a corner and, ultimately, made it less profitable as a result. It would have ended up treading water in a segment already long dominated by the Honda Civic Si and the Volkswagen Golf GTI. Toyota instead did the right thing and kept its mouth shut about the car’s lively engine, sharp handling and sporty transmission options. In terms of a marketing plan, this car is just the
The 2018 Corolla Hatchback carries a big message: you don’t have to be a card-carrying enthusiast to have a fun car. new Corolla — a strategy that bears no chance of scaring off the swarms of Americans ready and willing to buy the sensible, affordable hatchback. In the long run, it’s probably a better route to shy away from hardcore sports-car marketing for accessible models like the Corolla Hatchback. Many iconic cars now labeled to death as die-hard enthusiast mobiles, like the BMW 2002, Nissan Skyline and Alfa Romeo Giulia, started life as affordable, approachable, well-balanced machines. They gained their legendary reputations because
drivers of all types and tastes could afford them. Today, BMW, Nissan and Alfa Romeo play on that romantic idolized view and build modern counterparts to the past performance cars — the M3, GT-R and Giulia Quadrifoglio — as exclusive, high-performance apex hunters with aspirational price tags. Leaning so heavily on your glory days could be considered cheating. The Toyota Corolla Hatchback is a more fitting candidate to carry the torch as the people’s performance car than vehicles that abuse their nameplates today. With prices starting at around $20,000 for the base model and the $23,000 mark for the XSE trim, Toyota’s little hatchback is in the right price range. Up front, the 2.0-liter inline-four engine gives out 168 horsepower and 151 lb-ft of torque with a 6,800 rpm rev limit: an objectively good performance playground for a roughly 3,000-pound car with its four tires pushed far into each corner of a well-tuned chassis. In the middle is a general-populous-friendly CVT transmission that’s actually fun to use and responds quickly to driver inputs; an available six-speed manual ups the fun factor even more. Toyota may have kept tight-lipped about the hatchback’s genuine performance cred in favor of letting the nameplate speak for itself, but they shouldn’t ignore those aspects completely. An engine with no verve can and will make driving a car torturous. A lethargic transmission can make accelerating feel more like a chore. Chintzy suspension components and a lazy chassis will
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Toyota has demonstrated time and again its proficiency in the realms of affordability, inclusivity and approachable performance — it was just a matter of bringing all three together in one car. transform every turn into a moment of frustration. Toyota instead nailed all three pillars and quietly packaged them in a car over a quarter of a million people were already going to buy. The Corolla Hatchback is sowing the seeds of Toyota’s redemption from years of passionless economy cars. Toyota has demonstrated time and again its proficiency in the realms of affordability, inclusivity and approachable performance — it was just a
matter of bringing all three together in one car. The Pantheon of Automotive People’s Champs is filled with cars like the BMW 2002, Morris Cooper Mini, Datsun 510 and Nissan Skyline; now, thankfully, there’s room for a new generation. The current crop certainly includes the VW Golf GTI and Honda Civic Si, but their respective brands gave in to the temptation to market them as the top-tier performance cars for the segment a long time ago. The 2018 Corolla
Specs Engine: 2.0-liter inline-four Horsepower: 168 Torque: 151 lb-ft $19,990+
Hatchback instead comes onto the scene speaking softly and carrying a big stick. As with tossable sleeper cars of the past, the new Toyota doesn’t brag about how good it is with extra “sporty” badges or laser-focused marketing campaigns. Just like those past cars now recognized as icons, the 2018 Toyota Corolla Hatchback will be one we’ll someday look back on fondly to remember what a real driver’s car feels like. — BC
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Kia Stinger GT Kia sucker-punched the entire industry when it dropped the Stinger GT in our laps. Aggressive-yet-attractive styling wrapped around a genuinely brilliant sedan, all being pushed by a 365-horsepower twin-turbo V6 via the rear wheels. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a car no one saw coming from the traditionally mild-mannered Korean company, and German automakers have been put on notice â&#x20AC;&#x201D; particularly since the GT, a true competitor, slots in under $40K. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BC
Specs Engine: 3.3-liter twin-turbo V6 Transmission: 8-speed automatic Horsepower: 365 $38,350
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MOTORING
Triumph Tiger 800 XCa A wave of new middleweight adventure bikes is rising and the days of the long-reigning 1000cc-plus ADVs are numbered. Case in point: the Triumph Tiger 800 XCa proves you don’t need a big engine and 600 pounds worth of motorcycle to explore far-reaching terra firma. The Tiger comes armed with a lively engine, plus a level of electronic control systems and creature comforts typically reserved for the upper echelon of BMW’s luxury overlanders. — BC
Specs Engine: 800cc inline-three Horsepower: 94 Torque: 58 ft-lbs $15,850
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THE STANDARD
Mazda MX-5 Miata Some combinations are indelible: sneakers, a t-shirt and blue jeans; a rocks glass, bourbon and ice. In the car-enthusiast world, it’s a lightweight chassis, front-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive. And because it has stuck to that very formula for 30 years, the Miata remains the quintessence of all affordable sporting cars. Mazda has wavered little from the Miata’s original principle, which is to provide the best joy-perpound and smile-per-dollar ratio of any vehicle on the road. Today’s Miata weighs around 2,300 pounds and costs little more $25,000, and with it, Mazda continues to set a performance benchmark, proving that objective excellence doesn’t have to be out of reach. — NC
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Watches True innovations in the watch world are few and far between — for much of the history of the wristwatch, it was possible to measure progress in decades. This year, however, we saw some game-changing timepieces. Some, like Ressence’s e-Crown Concept, were technologically ground-breaking while others simply made inroads with respect to design and value — such as the Baume & Mercier Clifton Baumatic and Tudor Black Bay 58. Altogether, these watches are a refreshing testament to the fact that there are brands committed to pushing the envelope.
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Tudor Black Bay 58
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A. Lange & Sรถhne Triple Split
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Baume & Mercier Clifton Baumatic
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Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical
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Ressence e-Crown Concept
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Oris Big Crown Pointer Date
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Montblanc Geosphere 1858
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Vacheron Constantin FiftySix Collection
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Panerai Luminor Logo Collection
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Rolex GMT-Master II 126710BLRO
Words ANDREW CONNOR OREN HARTOV CHRIS WRIGHT
Photos HENRY PHILLIPS
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
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Cartier Tank
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EDITOR’S PICK
Tudor Black Bay 58 Certain trends are difficult to reverse. Take watch case sizes: for many years their dimensions seemed to be ballooning with no end in sight, to the point where men were walking around with flying-saucer-sized behemoths on their wrists. It wasn’t until the last several years that watch companies as a whole responded to the growing sentiment among the collecting community, a complaint that said, “Make watches wearable again.” Since its return to the U.S. market in 2013, Tudor has largely been hitting it out of the park with vintage-inspired watches that take design cues from the numerous classics in its catalog (and by extension, from its big brother Rolex). The Black Bay line is a prime example. But if there was one problem with the Black Bay dive watches in all their various iterations, it was that the watches were just too bulky — a case with a 41mm diameter and 14.75mm thickness was pushing the limits of what many men were comfortable wearing. This year at Basel World 2018, however, that all changed with the introduction of the Black Bay 58. Finally, here was a vintage-inspired dive watch in the vein of the Submariner that was eminently
wearable. At 39mm by 11.9mm, it offered “vintage Sub” proportions and a timeless, utilitarian case design. Tudor realized that while there’s certainly a market for large vintage-inspired watches, its demographic is varied. “The Black Bay 58 resulted from a desire to offer an alternative option to vintage enthusiasts and smaller wrists,” says a Tudor spokesperson. “It lives next to the 41mm diameter Black Bays and complements the Black Bay line well.” But its smaller stature doesn’t make it any less mighty than other watches in the line. The Black Bay 58 is a tool watch and dive watch. It’s waterresistant up to 200m and made for serious use beneath the waves. Tudor isn’t one to ignore its legacy of building timing instruments for some of the world’s best naval forces. Though the Black Bay 58 is available on several strap options, including a brown leather strap with a folding clasp and a black fabric strap with a gold-colored band, its vintage-inspired rivet-style bracelet really stands out. Comfortable and handsome, it excellently complements the watch and adds another vintage styling cue.
Tudor also managed to incorporate numerous vintage elements into a modern watch without the end result looking like a Frankenstein of disparate influences. Fans of Tudor and Rolex alike will instantly recognize its matte black dial and gilt printing, snowflake hands, lack of crown guards and rotating dive bezel with red triangle as nods to vintage Submariners of the past from both brands’ catalogs. The vintage Tudor Submariner is an iconic watch, and though the original Black Bay models did well to modernize it, some fans felt that perhaps Tudor went too far with respect to case dimensions. The Black Bay 58, however, is the Goldilocks watch. Downsizing the original Black Bay models required building a new movement, so the Black Bay 58 saw the introduction of the caliber MT5402, an entirely in-house creation complete with silicon balance spring, 70-hour power reserve and a Chronometer certification. The lack of a date window echoes vintage, no-date Submariners and keeps the watch’s lines clean and the dial uncluttered. A domed sapphire crystal, meanwhile, adds modern materials without sacrificing too much of
Editor’s Pick, Explained Designing a watch that pleases enthusiasts and seasoned collectors alike is a tough proposition, and more often than not, it’s one that requires compromise. Not so for Tudor, which apparently felt up to the task when it made the Black Bay 58, a dive watch that marries modern technology with a vintage sensibility. Spend any time around it and you’ll likely agree: it’s anything but a concession.
Specs Case Diameter: 39 mm Winding: Automatic Power Reserve: Approximately 70 hours $3,250+
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the vintage aesthetic. All of this is an intentional move by the brand to bring just enough of the vintage aesthetic to a thoroughly modern watch. “Tudor prefers not copying or reissuing its discontinued watches,” says a company spokesperson. “It is always about subtly reinterpreting the heritage of the brand and organically creating watches that are relevant today.” While many modern dive watches are replete with superfluous features — and this despite effectively being “desk divers” that will only be worn in the office — the Black Bay 58 is designed specifically with utility in mind. About those snowflake hands that have become such an iconic Tudor feature? They aren’t shaped that way simply for the sake of brand differentiation. In the 1960s, the French Navy requested a special hand design that would be more visible to their divers underwater, and this feature eventually trickled down into Tudor’s commercially available
models. That oversized winding crown? Well, if you’re a professional diver wearing gloves, a large crown is going to be significantly easier to grip and manipulate (though hopefully, you’re doing this while on dry land). And the MT5402’s COSC certification? If you’re going to be using the Black Bay 58 as a true tool watch and really putting it through its paces, you’re going to want the extra accuracy and precision that only a top-tier movement can provide. Watch collectors are a finicky bunch — they’re detail-oriented, they know what they like and they’re generally hard to please. So when this particular community is in general agreement on something — when die-hard watch fans love a timepiece for its vintage-inspired styling and the casual wearer considers it for his one and only watch — that’s when you know a brand has really hit it out of the park. That’s when you know you have one for the ages. — OH
The vintage Tudor Submariner is an iconic watch, and though the original Black Bay models did well to modernize it, some fans felt that perhaps Tudor went too far with respect to case dimensions. The Black Bay 58 is the Goldilocks watch.
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A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split At the end of World War II, Walter Lange returned from conscription in the German army to a family watch factory that had been blown to smithereens. Gone was everything that had come before: Walter’s great-grandfather, Ferdinand A. Lange, had begun making watches in 1845, and, with the help of his two sons, A. Lange & Söhne had become one of the foremost watchmakers in Germany’s Saxonia region. In 1948, Walter abandoned what was left of his family’s business when he fled the Soviet occupation of East Germany. It was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that Lange was able to return his family business to the forefront of high watchmaking. Since 1990, the brand has become the most respected watchmaker in Germany, beloved of aficionados and considered a benchmark of quality. Losing everything and fighting to regain it might have something to do with what A. Lange & Söhne is today: a company that does what few else in horology can or will do. The brand’s latest is the A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split chronograph, a $147,000 watch that can record split times for up to 12 hours, mechanically. A rattrapante (also called a split-seconds complication) extends the functional range of a chronograph with a pair of seconds hands that can be stopped separately. This allows the simultaneous timing of, say, a sprinting race between two runners, or of a series of events, like the two consecutive laps of a single runner. But generally, the longest a standard rattrapante can time is 60 seconds. In 2004, Lange created the Double Split, the world’s first double split-seconds complication, which could simultaneously record two intervals
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for up to 30 minutes by offering double chronograph minute hands. The Triple Split’s additional rattrapante hands on both the minute and hour counters mean the wearer can time separate events lasting up to 12 hours: a Formula 1 race, perhaps, or a leg of the Tour de France. Of course, such a feat of timing can be accomplished by a mechanical watch that costs $147,000, but it can also be accomplished by a $10 Casio stopwatch, or the smartphone in your pocket. “It’s the eternal discrepancy between reason and passion,” says Anthony de Haas, Lange’s director of product development. “A smartphone offers the same feature, and it can even stop time at an accuracy of a hundredth of a second, but it will never convey the same fascination and emotional satisfaction.” It’s even more than that. The Triple Split exemplifies what Lange does best: create incredible mechanical machines that maintain precise timekeeping like no other watches have before; then make the individual pieces of those machines beautiful to behold; and then marry that mechanical wizardry to a dial and case that are striking in their elegant simplicity. At this point, Lange is beyond showing off for watch lovers — it’s showing off for other watch companies. Because while other top-tier makers work on vertical integration or lengthening a power reserve, Lange accomplishes the horological equivalent of going to the moon. And then it does it again. So who truly needs a Triple Split? Only the devotees of a brand like A. Lange & Söhne, and others like them who choose passion over reason. — CW
Specs Case Diameter: 43.2mm Winding: Manual Power Reserve: 55 hours $147,000+
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Baume & Mercier Clifton Baumatic Until this year, the Richemont Group, one of the world’s most powerful watchmaking conglomerates, did not offer an affordable watch that featured silicon, a material known to increase a watch movement’s accuracy. The Baume & Mercier Clifton Baumatic remedied that situation with flying colors, and also included a five-day power reserve. With a sub-$3,000 MSRP, it represents some serious value for money and hopefully a glimpse of things to come at Richemont. — AC Specs Case Diameter: 40mm Winding: Automatic Power Reserve: 120 hours $2,990
Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical Hamilton drew on its long history crafting tool watches for the U.S. military in designing the Khaki Field Mechanical, a hand-wound piece with a matte stainless steel case that clocks in at a perfect 38mm wide by 9.5mm tall. A simple time-only watch with luminescent hands and indices that ships on a Nato strap, the Khaki Field Mechanical is the essence of the military watch: simple, reliable and tough as nails. — OH Specs Case Diameter: 38mm Winding: Manual Power Reserve: 46 hours $475
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Ressence e-Crown Concept Ressence is a brand built on the idea that you can embrace mechanical watchmaking and simultaneously buck tradition. The company’s method of displaying time on a dial made up of mechanically-driven orbiting discs was already ahead of its time when the brand was founded in 2010, but what Ressence showed off at the 2018 Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) — one of the watch world’s biggest shows — was both unprecedented and unexpected. In short, Ressence’s e-Crown concept introduced the possibility of a cybernetic timepiece of sorts, one that runs and functions on mechanical power but is augmented with electronic components. Like all other Ressence watches, the e-Crown Concept has a standard mechanical movement, but it also utilizes Ressence’s 87-comSpecs Case Diameter: 45mm Winding: Automatic Case Material: Titanium Price N/A (concept only)
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ponent electro-mechanical module. This module allows the timepiece to reset itself to the correct time if it hasn’t been running for a while. This module doesn’t rely on outside time signals, either, like some quartz watches equipped with GPS or atomic timekeeping. You set the watch as you normally would, then the module uses this as a reference and monitors its own performance and activity to self-regulate. If you haven’t been wearing the e-Crown and it’s been sitting unwound, you simply pick it up, tap the crystal and it’ll adjust to the right time. The watch can also connect to your phone via Bluetooth, which means it can feed off your smartphone’s clock to adjust time zones when traveling. What’s more, this system doesn’t rely on a battery that needs to be replaced or plugged in for
charging. It uses so little energy that it can be sufficiently charged by discreet solar panels exposed by shutters that open automatically in the dial. The radical design language notwithstanding, there’s almost no reason to believe this Ressence is anything other than a mechanical watch. And though the project remains a concept for now, Ressence has stated intentions to bring it into production in January of 2019. The genius of the e-Crown concept is not simply that it marries electronic and mechanical elements into a single watch, but that it does so simply to improve the actual mechanical timekeeping and not to add some secondary and superfluous function. In this sense, this is one of the few instances in which one can truly observe the historical art of mechanical watchmaking evolve. — AC
Oris Big Crown Pointer Date Oris’s Big Crown Pointer Date has been a great timepiece for over 70 years, but a few smart 2018 updates offer buyers more choices than ever before. Its pastel-like dials stand out in an industry still riffing on monochromatic palettes, and options in case size (either 40mm or 36mm) make it approachable for men and women turned off by oversized watches. All of this, alongside its relatively low price, makes it a truly great value. — AC Specs Case Diameter: 36mm or 40mm Winding: Automatic Power Reserve: 38 hours $1,600
Montblanc Geosphere 1858 World timers, which show the time in multiple cities, aren’t particularly common — and when they’re used, it’s often for exorbitantly expensive pieces whose designs lean classic. Montblanc’s 1858 Geosphere changed that this year by offering the complication in a unique configuration — shown on two hemisphere displays — for a comparatively reasonable $5,600. The handsome design looks almost like a dive watch, making it significantly more wearable than pricier alternatives. — AC Specs Case Diameter: 42mm Winding: Automatic Power Reserve: 42 Hours $5,600
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Vacheron Constantin FiftySix Collection Access to Swiss luxury brand Vacheron Constantin has traditionally been a very expensive proposition, but the FiftySix Collection aims to change that with a time-only steel model that retails for under $12,000. The Day-Date and the Complete Calendar models, available in steel or pink gold, up the ante with in-house movements. Based on a reference released in 1956, the designs are classic Swiss elegance updated for the 21st century. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; OH Specs Case Diameter: 40mm Winding: Automatic Features: Minutes, seconds, day, date, month, moonphase $11,700+
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Panerai Luminor Logo Collection There are certain hallmarks that make a Panerai, well, a Panerai, and many of them are present on the Luminor Logo Collection models: oversized cushion cases, patented crown-protection devices and large luminous Arabic numerals. With a Luminor Logo, you also get the in-house P.6000 hand-wound movement and your choice of either a sub-seconds or a two-hand model, meaning these entry-level Luminors are just as handsome and durable as their more expensive Panerai siblings. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; OH
Specs Case diameter: 44mm Winding: Manual Power Reserve: 72 Hours $4,750+
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Rolex GMT-Master II Pepsi As far as popular watches go, a Rolex has become the ultimate status symbol. But the debate over which particular Rolex model is the crème-de-lacrème rages on. Generally, it boils down to the “big three”: the iconic Submariner dive watch; the sexy Cosmograph Daytona chronograph; and the ultimate traveler’s companion, the GMT Master. If you’re going to bat for the last of this trio — and many watch lovers do — there’s little doubt as to which version you’re picking: it’s nicknamed the “Pepsi,” and it’s the legend of the Rolex world. If you don’t know watches, you might snicker at the soft drink-inspired association, but there’s something deeper going on here. Which is why, when Rolex announced a new Pepsi-bezel GMT Master II in Oystersteel (their proprietary blend of stainless steel) at this year’s Baselworld, people freaked out. It’s useful to note that Rolex is one of the best companies in the world at what it does, which is, first and foremost, building a luxury brand. Rolex’s representatives declined to provide comment for this story, and in fact, they decline to be interviewed for almost every story written about them, because it is their official policy not to give interviews. And why should they? It’s better for them this way. This is a company that’s batting a thousand on watch designs, and whose dominance of the competitive world of high-end watches is unquestionable. They are steeped in legend and myth, and if they spoke freely, those legends and
myths would dissipate. (There’s even a rumor that they are owned by the Vatican, which is, of course, absolute bunk… we think.) So we begin, as many Rolex stories do, with a story that has since become horological legend. In the early 1950s, Pan American Airlines needed someone to make a watch for their pilots, and they hired Rolex, which produced the first GMT Master, reference 6542, in 1954. The 6542 included a rotating 24-hour bezel which, when used in
This is a company that’s batting a thousand on watch designs, and whose dominance of the competitive world of high-end watches is unquestionable. conjunction with the watch’s fourth hand, the 24hour indicator, allowed the user to read the time in a second time zone. In order to tell the difference between day and night on the 24-hour bezel, Rolex colored its bottom half red and its top half blue. Then, at some point, someone decided to start calling the watch
the Pepsi, because its blue-and-red color scheme resembled the soda’s logo, and this person established a powerful precedent. “Almost every Rolex today has a nickname,” says Steve Kivel, who runs Grand Central Watch, a certified Rolex repair shop in New York’s Grand Central Station. “But one of the first Rolexes with a nickname was the GMT.” The nicknames themselves are notable for vacillating between superheroes, sodas and various badasses. To wit: the “Coke” (GMT Master II in black and red), the “Root Beer” (GMT Master II in brown and gold), the “Batman” (GMT Master II in blue and black), the “Kermit” (Submariner with black dial and green bezel), the “Hulk” (a larger Submariner with green bezel and dial), the “Great White” (Sea Dweller with white text), the “Smurf” (a Submariner in all blue and white), the “President” (gold day-date worn by Churchill, Eisenhower and others), the “James Bond” (Submariner 6538, famously worn on a NATO strap that didn’t fit correctly), and the “Paul Newman” (Daytona worn by… Paul Newman). Another legend with little actual evidence: a white-dial GMT Master supposedly made for Pan Am executives in the late 1950s. That famous Pepsi bezel was quickly upgraded from Bakelite (it cracked) to aluminum in 1956. In 1959, the company added a new movement, the caliber 1565, and dubbed this reference the 1675. And this is the way the GMT Master stayed all the way until 1980, making the 1675
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There were other bezel color schemes along the way, but the Pepsi remained choice. All of this iconic wearing had a simple result: the Pepsi became known for being cool as hell.
the longest-running Rolex reference (though it received several small tweaks during this time). Che Guevara is believed to have been wearing one when he was captured and executed in Bolivia. Pablo Picasso wore one, and so did many very cool American astronauts (most likely because they had been pilots before becoming space cowboys). There were other bezel color schemes along the way, but the Pepsi remained choice. All of this iconic wearing had a simple result: the Pepsi became known for being cool as hell. The modern era of the watch began in the ‘80s with the first discontinuation of the Pepsi bezel; the GMT Master II was produced between 1984 and 1989 in red and black. This color monopoly didn’t last, and the Pepsi scheme reappeared again on the GMT Master II in 1989. Then, in 2007, Rolex once again discontinued the colorway, the official reason being that the new bezel material, ceramic, made the two-tone blue-andred colorway impossible to manufacture. The company did release a version (the Rolex GMT Master II SARU) that used rubies and sapphires in place of the red and blue on the bezel — Sylvester Stallone bought one, but they weren’t for everyone. Then, in 2013, Rolex released the two-tone blue-and-black Batman colorway, but the public was clamoring for a return to Pepsi. “People were yearning for them, badly,” says Paul Aliteri of Bob’s Watches. “And then they did bring it back in 2014 — but in white gold. Everyone kind of said ‘awwwwww. Thirty-eight thousand dollars is a lot of money.’ Ever since then, the Rolex world has been waiting for it to come back.” Hence the audible gasps from the watch world when Rolex released the Rolex GMT Master II 126710 BLRO Pepsi Bezel in Oystersteel at the 2018 Baselworld trade show. “Here it was at long last,” wrote Jack Forster for Hodinkee. “The Pepsi GMT in its purest form, in steel, as God and Hans
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Wilsdorf (the founder of Rolex) intended.” (Cool but less notable were the other two new versions, in Everose gold and Everose gold and steel — they were simply not red and blue enough for most.) The watch had a new movement — the caliber 3285, a few seconds more accurate per day — and a new bracelet — the five-piece link Jubilee — which was met with as much division as ever occurs among Rolex fans. It had the same old Pepsi bezel, and it promptly sold out. Rolex does not release specific data about its watch sales, though it’s said that the overall number of watches manufactured per year is about 800,000. In any case, people clamored to get at the red-and-blue, but very few did. “With Nike, Apple, Tesla, if they misestimate demand, and don’t have enough, it’s no problem,” Aliteri says. “Go and turn the presses on, make more! They’re not gonna turn down customers. Rolex won’t do that. They say, ‘That’s it. That’s all we make.’” The wait list for the new Pepsi bezel in steel stretches several years, and the watch, which retails for $9,250, is now selling on the secondary market for as much as $22,000. The most the Batman — almost exactly the same watch, albeit in a different color scheme — ever went for at Aliteri’s store was half of that, which seems to prove one thing: It’s good to have legends, particularly in red and blue. — CW
Specs Case Diameter: 40 mm Winding: Automatic Power Reserve: 70 hours $9,250
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THE STANDARD
Cartier Tank While “iconic” is a term that gets thrown around quite a bit in the watch world, it isn’t necessarily applicable to all that many models. The Cartier Tank, however, is certainly an icon. First conceived in 1917 by Louis Cartier, grandson to company founder Louis-François Cartier, the Tank was supposedly inspired by the tread of a Renault light tank, a relatively new battlefield invention of the Great War. The watch, with its signature rectangular case, cabochon crown, Roman numerals and leather band, has since been worn by notable men and women alike, from Clark Gable and Fred Astaire to Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana. Andy Warhol even wore one without bothering to wind it, calling it simply, “the watch to wear.” Although it’s evolved over the years with numerous new models and iterations, a Tank is instantly recognizable. Simple, understated and elegant, this watch is timelessness personified. — OH
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First Year of Production:
1917 NE X T ITEM :
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Style Fashion people used to talk about clothes in terms of how trendy they were. But these days, menswear is less about chasing an everchanging aesthetic and more about expressing your identity with a unique sensibility. That respect for individuality is why everything from inexpensive workwear (like the pieces in Filson’s C.C.F. line) to brightly patterned takes on classic menswear pieces (see: the fourpocket jacket from the new brand 18 East) feels equally appealing. And just as important is how it’s all made — which is precisely why sustainable alternatives to wardrobe staples, such as Arvin Goods Econyl Boxers and Outerknown’s S.E.A. Jeans, also made our list this year.
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STYLE
Top 10
Credits
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Outerknown S.E.A. Jeans
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Jacques Marie Mage Gonzo Collection
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Aer Work Collection
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J.Crew Heritage Collection
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Mr P. Footwear
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18 East
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Away Aluminum Edition
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Nike Air Max 270
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Filson C.C.F. Workwear
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Arvin Goods Econyl Boxers
Words JUSTIN FENNER JOHN ZIENTEK
Photos CHASE PELLERIN
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
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Schott Perfecto Jacket
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EDITOR’S PICK
Outerknown S.E.A. Jeans Kelly Slater and John Moore started their sustainable menswear brand Outerknown in 2015 with an original vision: to offer a complete wardrobe in an eco-conscious way. But at the outset, they’d planned to stay far, far away from one indispensable component of modern style. Denim. “Kelly said in one of our first interviews that Outerknown wouldn’t do denim because it’s such a dirty business,” Moore said. “I looked over, and he was wearing a pair of jeans and I was wearing my favorite Levi’s trucker jacket. Denim is such a key part of our lifestyle, but he was right, jeans are a dirty business.” It’s no secret that the apparel industry is notoriously bad for the environment. According to designer Eileen Fisher, it’s the second worst industrial polluter, topped only by big oil. And while certain materials are more detrimental to the environment than others, denim is one of the worst offenders. The insecticides used to produce conventional cotton — which is spun, dyed and woven to make denim — account for 16 percent of global insecticide use. And according to a study by Levi’s, a single pair of jeans can use over 3,700 liters of fresh water in its lifecycle. So it’s perhaps a little ironic that it took partnering with Levi’s to help change Slater’s and Moore’s minds. In late 2017, Outerknown launched a collaboration with the denim giant’s Wellthread program. The jeans and trucker jackets the collaboration produced were made with Levi’s WaterLess dyeing technology, and the polyester in one of the truckers was designed to be fully recyclable. While the collaboration with Levi’s is ongoing, Moore felt it was important for Outerknown to develop its own line of jeans and thus bring its own innovation and personality to the category.
“Many of those around told us we should think twice,” he said. “Mostly we heard that people buy denim from trusted denim brands and it’s too hard to break in.” So instead of conforming to industry standards, Outerknown decided to manufacture denim under its own guidelines. The brand’s first line of denim — called S.E.A. Jeans (short for Social Environmental Accountability) — hit the market in August 2018. “We are working with our own suppliers and fabric mills, and it is a completely different design approach,” Moore said. “We’re building them right, and it’s working.” The S.E.A. Jeans come in three fits, ranging from classic and comfortable to stylish and slouchy: a slim fit called the Ambassador, a straight-leg style called the Local and a tapered jean called the Drifter. “If I’m going for something with a little more vibe, it’s the Drifters,” Moore said. “But if I am just looking for my daily drivers, it’s the Local Selvedge.” The jeans are available in eight colors — the Ambassador and the Local come in three indigo shades and black, and the Drifter comes in four earth-tone colors — and cost anywhere from $128 to $168. The success of S.E.A. Jeans is due largely to the team’s restraint in its first few seasons. “We talked about doing them early and I’m glad we didn’t,” Moore said. “We weren’t ready. We’ve got a few years under our belt now and we know who we are, and what works for us as a brand.” Outerknown has grown in recent years, and it picked up employees uniquely qualified to tackle the project. “We’ve got denim experts in the building — like Josh [Weiner] and Bethany [Mallett] — and they were obsessed with getting the fit, the fabrics and the details right. We met weekly, if not
Editor’s Pick, Explained Denim is a dirty business. But Outerknown’s excellent S.E.A. Jeans are overwhelmingly clean. They’re made from organic materials in factories that use less water and generate less waste than traditional manufacturers. What’s more, when your jeans wear out, Outerknown will repair them at no cost to you. And if they can’t, they’ll replace them and recycle the old ones into new products.
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STYLE
“We’re working with our own suppliers and fabric mills, and it is a completely different design approach. We’re building them right, and it’s working.”
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Specs Fabric: 13.5-ounce denim, 12-ounce stretch denim Fits: Slim, straight, tapered Colorways: 8 $128 - $168
daily, and the team visited Saitex multiple times during development. We worked with the absolute best denim mills in the world like Candiani and Isko, which was extremely important to us.” The resulting jeans have lasting style. They feel substantial. Made from organic cotton denim, they’re manufactured at the LEED-certified Saitex factory in Vietnam. An industry leader, Saitex recycles 98 percent of water used in production, air dries 85 percent of its jeans to save energy, uses solar power and harvests rainwater. “The planet-positive process we took to build them feels good,” Moore said, “but it was equally important that the denim needed to look just as good.” And then there’s the guarantee. Outerknown stands behind the S.E.A. Jeans for life and will repair or replace them for free. While this type of commitment is unheard of for many larger manufacturers, it was a logical step for Outerknown. “Think about it. If you build great quality products in the first place, a lifetime guarantee shouldn’t make anyone feel nervous,” Moore said. “This was a holistic business decision, not just a responsible commitment. “We’re asking you to send us back your jeans when they need fixing, or honestly, when you are just sick of them,” he said. “We’re either gonna get them repaired by an expert and send them back to you, or we’ll ship you a new pair and send your old jeans to the Renewal Workshop.” Located about 50 miles east of Portland, Oregon, on the Columbia River, the facility repairs garments or upcycles them into house insulation or recycling feedstock. The workshop plays an integral part in closed-loop manufacturing, an increasingly important topic in sustainable apparel. For Moore, continuing to be responsible for a garment through its lifecycle is one of the most sustainable decisions a brand can make. “Globally, there’s so much being manufactured every day. And what happens when you are done with it?” he asked. “This idea of a disposable culture is gross. We need to design to regenerate or figure out how to turn our products into new materials or products when we are done with them.” As a leader in sustainable apparel, Moore has taken on a more proactive role to encourage companies large and small to adopt sustainable practices and to make sustainability more accessible and affordable. This fall, Outerknown put out a publication called the Blue Book, which explains its mission to lower taxes for importing items that contain benefit fibers — those that are organic, recycled and regenerated, for example. Lower materials costs will drive innovation, scale and demand for sustainable and affordable consumer goods. Moore considers this mission paramount.
“Real change will come when responsibly produced clothing is available to everyone,” he said. And perhaps that’s why Outerknown released the Blue Book shortly after the launch of S.E.A. Jeans. Denim transcends fashion cycles, social classes and national borders. Jeans are ubiquitous and much loved — precisely the type of product where sustainability will have a lasting impact. “Clothing shouldn’t be a complicated thing, and sustainability can be cool,” Moore said. “Effortless style meets sustainability — that’s our thing. That’s S.E.A. Jeans.” — JZ
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Jacques Marie Mage Gonzo Collection Jerome Mage, the quietly influential eyewear designer behind the L.A.-based brand Jacques Marie Mage, has no shortage of collaborations under his belt. But perhaps his most impactful project of 2018 was a partnership with The Gonzo Foundation that produced two ‘60s-style aviators inspired by Hunter S. Thompson. The striking frames are available in both black and gold and each style is limited to 250 pieces. — JZ Specs Materials: Lightweight titanium frames, hinges and temples Lenses: CR39 with UV protection Provenance: Made in Japan $850
Aer Work Collection It takes a lot to produce one good work bag, but Aer — the San Francisco maker of minimalist backpacks and duffels — released a full line of them this year. They’re designed to help people with elastic definitions of “the office” stay organized enough to work on the go. That means ample pockets for laptops, tablets, chargers and other necessities — and construction so sturdy that the bags can stand upright on their own. — JF
Specs Hardware: YKK zippers, Duraflex plastic Software: Water-resistant, coated front exterior Storage: dedicated pockets for everything you can think of $45 - $200
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J.Crew Heritage Collection Before J.Crew was the mega-retailer it is today, it was a direct-to-consumer brand called Popular Merchandise, with most of its sales coming through mail-order catalogs. This March, in response to customers calling for a revival of the brand’s early hits, J.Crew re-released a range of wardrobe staples like rugby shirts, roll-neck sweaters and barn coats that feel current as ever. — JZ Specs Materials: Mostly cotton Unisex Pieces: 2 anoraks, 2 barn coats Vibe: Accessible, relaxed ‘80s prep $45 - $178
Mr P. Footwear One result of running a successful e-commerce operation is a lot of hard data about what customers want. Last year, Mr Porter used that knowledge to inform Mr P., its in-house clothing line, and followed up in 2018 by adding footwear to the mix. The well-made sneakers, boots and dress shoes were designed to complement the clothes, but they stand on their own as a complete collection of shoes for the modern man. — JF Specs Styles: 8 permanent styles with seasonal additions Extras: Ships with a shoehorn and spare laces Provenance: Made in Italy $285+
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Specs Techniques: Kalamkari block-printing, khadi weaving, hand embroidery Garments in First Collection: 31 New Releases: Every 2 months $75 - $445
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18 East After years in menswear, Antonio Ciongoli reached the conclusion that the traditional wholesale model for selling clothes just didn’t make sense. The 34-year-old Vermont native worked at Ralph Lauren and Michael Bastian before cofounding Eidos, a little brother to the legendary Neopolitan suiting house Isaia, in 2013. And though he designed some much-lauded menswear there, the churn of making things for department stores altered his outlook. “We had to make so much product,” he said, adding that it was often on store floors well before people would actually need it. To make sure it all sold, he had to infuse pieces with multi-season appeal, often watering down stronger designs. “I thought to myself, ‘if I could start over again, I really want to do something small and something focused.’” So last year, he left Eidos to head creative at a multi-brand platform called RRR Brands. In October 2017, it acquired Roller Rabbit, a company founded by global textile advocate Roberta Freymann that focuses on handmade women’s clothing. To complement Roller Rabbit, Ciongoli developed 18 East, a small-scale menswear brand with bohemian designs, limited production runs and fair prices. “When we set out to start a new brand it was very important how we wanted to make things,” he said. “We wanted to use natural dyes, we wanted to recycle fabrics, we wanted to put a hand touch on things and really kind of highlight the hand behind the garment. For me, it has to be more than just making cool stuff.” Ciongoli recognized a familiar technique in Roller Rabbit’s wares: Indian block printing. He’d spent time in the Indian village of Bagru (where artisans specialize in the craft) while working on a collection for Eidos. “I was just fascinated by the non-mechanized process,” he said. “I didn’t see a machine there for two weeks.” The brand’s debut collection, which launched in September, showcased kalamkari block-print fabrics, khadi weaving, hand embroidery and upcycled cashmere in a small handful of casual garments. Prices ranged from $75 for a kalamkari tee to $445 for an upcycled cashmere sweater and a lot of the styles were snapped up quickly: a sherpa vest sold out in 30 minutes. Every two months, 18 East will release new collections on its website, offering other limited-run pieces intermittently. While upcoming collections draw on traditional garments from other locales like Ireland, the brand’s roots are already firmly planted. “India is going to be the core of what we do because I’ve never in my career worked in a country that has the technique and the expertise to do so many different types of things without having it be so cost prohibitive,” Ciongoli said. And though the debut of 18 East was incredibly successful, Ciongoli doesn’t feel the pressure for growth he experienced at other brands. “We’re given the opportunity to let it breathe and let it grow organically,” he said. “And that means that we can try to do things the right way.” — JZ
Away Aluminum Edition In the race to build the best affordable smart luggage, Away was already leading the pack. Then it introduced an aluminum version of its best-selling roller bags and zoomed even further ahead. Away brought reliable protection (and a powerful removable battery) to a category where major players are known to ask twice the price or more. Which makes it easier to wear the inevitable dings and scratches with pride. — JF Specs Wheels: Whisper-quiet 360-degree spinners from Hinomoto Juice: Battery can fully charge an iPhone 5 times Insurance: Backed by Away’s lifetime guarantee $475
Nike Air Max 270 New York City Februarys can be particularly unforgiving. But the month’s notorious chill didn’t stop Lexi Cross and Huston Conti, the friends and creative collaborators behind the popular Instagram account @ShoesofNYC, from venturing into the streets of SoHo earlier this year. They primarily post images of interesting footwear and commentary from the people wearing it, so they knew the temperature would pose some challenges for the project they were working on. “People are less willing to stop and have a conversation with you when it’s ten degrees,” Conti
“We wanted to create something that had its own identity.” said. “Plus, people wear a lot of boots and a lot of flats [that time of year], which makes sense.” Still, Cross and Conti were on something of a mission to find and interview people wearing Nike’s Air Max sneakers. They were producing a video in advance of Air Max Day, Nike’s relatively young annual celebration commemorating the release of the Air Max 1. The sneakerhead holiday started perhaps a little unceremoniously in 2014, but four years later it has become a very big deal, complete with archival re-releases, limited-edition colorways, worldwide contests for the best amateur designs and, most importantly, the debuts of brand new styles.
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This year, that meant the release of the Air Max 270, named for the degrees of visibility inside its voluptuous, air-filled heel. It’s the first shoe in the Air Max franchise with an Air unit specifically designed for a lifestyle shoe; previous models used supports originally intended for athletic performance. The duo planned to use their video to advertise a giveaway of this new addition to the storied lineup. But they also wanted to examine just how much loyalty the new shoe’s multitude of predecessors had inspired. “People really have strong opinions about certain styles. In our interviews, we hear things like ‘I’m a 98s girl’ or ‘I only rock 1s,’” Cross said. “We like the fact that when you see an Air Max, you know it’s an Air Max, even with such variance in design. They’re different but extremely recognizable at the same time.” Nike has been using Air units since the late 1970s, when a NASA engineer named Frank Rudy approached the young company with a radical idea: a lightweight cushioning system that would use a flexible membrane filled with pressurized air to support the foot. The units absorb impact and spring back to their original shape almost instantaneously, which made them a groundbreaking addition to running and basketball shoes. (The first shoe to use the technology, the Air Tailwind, made its debut at the 1978 Honolulu Marathon. A general release followed the next year.) The Air Max line, designed more for looking good than for shooting hoops or securing an FKT, was born in 1987, when Nike designer Tinker Hatfield decided to expose the Air unit in the Air Max 1.
(Legend has it the glass curtain walls and inside-out architecture of the Centre Pompidou in Paris inspired him to cut a window into the sole of the shoe.) The model’s comfort, light weight and signature bounce gave it a broad appeal, but its fearless and endless color combinations quickly made it beloved among stylish types and musicians. In an analysis of hip-hop songs released since 1987, Genius’s Jacques Morel found that everyone from Jay-Z to Wale has name-dropped Air Max at one point or another. The franchise has released scores of styles in the three decades since its debut. And while the 270 takes cues from two of these (the Air Max 180 and the Air Max 93), it represents a fundamental shift in the way Nike approaches new additions to this lineup. “We wanted to make sure we were creating something that was truly new and had its own identity,” said Dylan Raasch, the senior creative director for Max Air — the Nike division responsible for the Air Max line. “Before we started on the design, we made the decision to innovate around comfort as opposed to performance, which is where we begin with our athletes. This meant not looking at how you get from point A to point B the fastest, but how you maintain comfort when the trip between point A to point B could take all day.” To that end, the shoe’s Air unit is noticeably tall: it stands at 32mm, around 1¼ inches. Raasch and the Max Air design team found that this height provided the perfect amount of impact absorption while still conforming to Nike’s stability standards.
STYLE
“When you see an Air Max, you know it’s an Air Max, even with such variance in design. They’re different but extremely recognizable at the same time.”
Specs Heel: 32mm tall, for maximum comfort Hype: Kevin Durant wore a custom pair in November 2017 Heritage: Based on the Air Max 180 and Air Max 93 $150+
The company bills the launch of the 270 as one of the most successful sneaker introductions in its history, no doubt spurred on by early adopters like Kevin Durant, who was spotted wearing a pair in November 2017 — before the shoe was commercially available. And while they don’t claim to have had any impact on the shoe’s triumph, influencers like Cross and Conti undoubtedly helped spread the word. When they posted the video they made that cold February day, they added instructions asking their followers to come and find them in the wild for their chance to win a pair. “Actually the first pair we gave away at a coffee shop the same day of the giveaway, but before we had announced our location,” Conti said. “A kid came up to us as we were sitting there and said ‘Are you @ShoesofNYC?’ and then showed us right away that he followed us and wanted to cash in on his Air Maxes. It was awesome.” “I think my favorite part was standing near [the store] Kith, where we decided to give them out,” Cross added, referencing the market-moving streetwear emporium, “and watching all the
sneakerheads around us, not realizing that they were missing out on a pair of the 270s.” The shoes are still in high demand. When we filed this story, StockX, (the online marketplace that prices sneakers, streetwear, watches and handbags the way stock exchanges price shares of companies), featured two pairs for around $250 each— $100 over the shoes’ MSRPs. But the value of the 270 may be much greater than that. There’s already mounting excitement about the next Air Max shoe, the 720. It boasts a massive Air unit that wraps around the entire sole, and its development is a direct result of the 270’s success. “The 270 helped inform the evolution of big Air,” Raasch said. “It ultimately led to the 720, which has continued to push the boundaries of what’s possible with Air even further.” The 720 models won’t be available until 2019. In the meantime, 270 wearers everywhere can walk tall, secure in the knowledge that their shoes were a vital stepping stone in the evolution of one of the world’s most beloved and innovative lines of shoes. — JF
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Filson C.C.F. Workwear Over the past century, Filson has made a name for itself by supplying outdoorsmen with rugged, well-made clothing — some of which is available for decidedly elevated sums. But this year, it introduced a line of modestly priced, Canadian-made workwear designed to stand up to daily use on the job. The no-nonsense products are cut from materials like cotton duck canvas, and while they might be economical, they’re still backed by the company’s lifetime guarantee. — JZ Specs Pieces in Collection: 23 Materials: cotton duck canvas, goose down, nylon ribbing Reinforcements: triple-stitched seams, rivets $24 - $295
Arvin Goods Econyl Boxers While the clothing industry’s mega-brands struggle to take meaningful steps toward more sustainable manufacturing practices, a handful of recently founded small brands are setting the examples of how to do it right. And their solutions are often radically simple. In the case of Seattle-based Arvin goods, the mission is clear: make affordable wardrobe basics using 100 percent recycled inputs. “We want everyone to understand the waste that the fashion industry has produced, and how simple it is to use regenerated waste in products,” said Arvin Goods cofounder Harry Fricker, referencing the unsavory fact that, behind big oil, the apparel industry is one of the largest industrial polluters in the world. Since its inception in 2017, Arvin Goods has relied on recycled cotton-poly yarns to produce a range of
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socks and other basics. This practice saves fresh water, reduces landfill waste and lowers CO2 emissions, among other things. The company’s new men’s boxers take that idea into the sea. To make them, Arvin Goods teamed up with Italian materials brand Econyl, which regenerates nylon ocean waste like fishing nets to make its namesake material. In addition to being an eco-conscious product, Econyl has stretch and breathability, plus it’s moisturewicking and incredibly soft. Each pair’s $24 price tag is in line with what you’d pay for other, less sustainable brands. “As much as we’re highlighting the waste produced in the fashion industry, we want to highlight ocean waste,” Fricker said. “It’s such a huge thing right now. And for myself, I spend ninety
percent of my life in the ocean — I surf nearly every other day.” Though finding time to surf in the Pacific Northwest, where Arvin Goods is based, is more challenging for Fricker now than it was when he worked at the UK surf brand Finisterre, it isn’t at odds with his work. It’s in surfers’ best interest to keep the ocean clean and initiate action around sustainable manufacturing processes. So for Fricker, the focus on utilizing recycled materials in products at Arvin Goods is not just a forward-thinking business decision, it’s compatible with his lifestyle. Naturally, many customers will not have the same personal connection to the new Econyl Boxers. But a pair of underwear that feels good and doesn’t break the bank? That’s something most guys can get behind. — JZ
STYLE
Specs Fabric: Econyl regenerated nylon Colors: Black, red Sizes: S - XL $24
THE STANDARD
Schott Perfecto Jacket If we lived in the kind of world where there were pictures next to the definitions in dictionaries, Scott’s Perfecto would always be seen with the term “leather jacket.” The original design, which celebrated its 90th year in production in 2018, is cemented in people’s minds as the prototypical version of this classic outerwear staple. That has as much to do with its striking aesthetic and unbeatable construction as it does
First Year of Production:
1928 NE X T ITEM :
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with its starring roles in films like The Wild One and Rock n’ Roll High School. But real bikers would probably still wear them even if they hadn’t spent time on the big screen. Each jacket is cut from the kind of heavyweight cowhide that can take a beating and features a belt that keeps the wearer warm at high speeds. Its badass looks are just the icing on top of the cake. — JF
Grooming To call the growth in the men’s grooming market “rapid” would be an understatement. The space is positively booming, with scads of new brands popping up every month, all seeking to take advantage of guys’ newfound interest in not-so-basic maintenance. And that’s an overwhelmingly good thing for consumers. It means young companies have to work that much harder to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack. This has led to excellent products like Harry’s new body wash and Rudy’s multipurpose Clay Spray. But we’ve also seen more established brands, like Neutrogena and Aesop, put innovation first and stay ahead of the game with sunscreens that are almost lighter than water and endto-end systems that bring fresh solutions to common skin problems.
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GROOMING
Top 10
Credits
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Aesop In Two Minds
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Harry’s Body Wash
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Kiehl’s Body Fuel Deodorant
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Maude
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Hims | Keeps
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Clark’s Botanicals Retinol Rescue Face Serum
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Rudy’s Clay Spray
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Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel Lotion Sunscreen
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Lost Explorer Wellness Products
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Louis Vuitton Les Parfums Pour Homme
Words JUSTIN FENNER A D A M H U R LY
Photos CHANDLER BONDURANT
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
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Marvis Classic Strong Mint Toothpaste
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EDITOR’S PICK
Aesop In Two Minds Having combination skin — that is, a face that’s oily in some places but dry in others — won’t exactly kill you. It’s not really an affliction so much as it is a state of being. And that might explain why even though the dermatological type is the most common kind of skin out there, there aren’t many good systems to treat it. But in April, Aesop released just such a system when its chemists unveiled In Two Minds. The range is designed to address the complexity of treating both types of skin at once, and to bring the skin to a healthy equilibrium in three simple steps: cleansing, toning and moisturizing. “Each of the products works together to gently cleanse combination skin, normalize sebum production, soothe irritation and provide lightweight hydration without overburdening the skin,” says Dr. Rebecca Watkinson, Aesop’s innovation and research manager. It took Watkinson and her Melbourne-based team three years to perfect the formulas, all of which use witch hazel — an ingredient commonly used in toners. They focused in particular on getting the cleanser, which doubles as a gentle chemical exfoliant, just right.
“Cleansing is an important first step in caring for combination skin. It is crucial to use a mild cleanser that does not strip or aggravate the skin,” Watkinson says. “Our In Two Minds Cleanser is a gel-based cleanser containing salicylic acid and offers gentle yet thorough cleansing, removing excess sebum without aggravation.” Other ingredients that pop up in each product, like chamomile and lavender, hydrate and calm the skin without adding oily buildup. The toner balances the skin’s pH levels and helps clear away any residue the cleanser might leave behind, getting the skin ready for the herbaceous hydrator. Aesop suggests using just two pumps of this lotion as a finishing step to protect the skin against age-accelerating environmental wear. And while the idea of a three-step regimen for combination skin isn’t exactly new, until now it’s more or less required hunting the aisles of a drugstore for three separate products — or paying a dermatologist to recommend them for you. In Two Minds makes it easy to get an effective, end-to-end system all in one place. — AH
While the idea of a three-step regimen for combination skin isn’t exactly new, until now it’s more or less required hunting a drugstore for three separate products. Specs Cleanse: Gel-based formula cleanses without drying Tone: Mild astringent soothes the skin and removes impurities Moisturize: Lightweight lotion absorbs quickly $35 - $60
Editor’s Pick, Explained Aesop’s line for people with combination skin, In Two Minds, does everything you could ask for: it takes an effective, science-based approach to a common problem, smells good and looks pretty on the bathroom sink. And because using it everyday feels more like a luxury than a chore, users are more likely to stick with the program — and see actual results.
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Harry’s Body Wash Harry’s didn’t reinvent the body-wash wheel, it just made said wheel smell a whole lot better. The shaving brand’s new trio of shower gels features nontraditional scents like Shiso (mint, lemon zest and moss), Stone (yuzu, bergamot and charcoal) and Fig (fig, cardamom and blood orange). They also lather vigorously and don’t feature the same harmful sulfates other grooming brands rely on for suds — meaning your skin feels clean and moisturized. — AH Specs Clean: No sulfates, parabens or dyes Availability: Target stores nationwide Thrifty: Any other brand would charge you 3 times as much $7
Kiehl’s Body Fuel Deodorant Leave it to Kiehl’s to produce a deodorant that nourishes while fighting funk. Body Fuel Deodorant stops sweat and blocks odor for 48 hours, but it also uses antioxidant-rich Vitamin Cg (a Vitamin C derivative) to smooth skin, zinc gluconate to calm irritation and caffeine to stimulate circulation. The tingle you get when you apply it underlines just how powerful it is. — AH Specs Smell: Fresh, citrusy, not overbearing Application: Rollerball (shake before application) Longevity: 48 hours $16
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Maude When it comes to sex, loyalty is hard to come by — in product sales as much as in practice. While you might recognize top-shelf names like K-Y Jelly or Durex, chances are that when the time comes to use condoms or lubricant, any handy sexual-wellness product will suffice. What’s the difference, so long as you get off? As they started working on their brand Maude, which launched this year, CEO Eva Goicochea and chief product officer Dina Epstein found through research that 98 percent of consumers didn’t stick to products from any one sexual-wellness brand. Until now, the market had been too noisy to inspire any real allegiance. “If you look at the typical consumer experience around sexual health, either in a drug store or sex shop, it’s very gendered, poorly marketed and designed, over-assorted and either taboo or clinical,” Goicochea said. “Realizing how much a new approach was needed in this space, we basically said, ‘Enough. Let’s make a modern line of products for modern people.’”
Specs Rise: Ultra-thin lubricated natural latex condoms Shine: Two lubricants made from silicone or aloe Vibe: Three-speed personal massager that charges via USB $6 - $45
As a result, its small assortment of products was built with three core principles in mind: inclusivity, quality and simplicity. The packaging says less but aims to speak to a much bigger group of people over the age of 25. Its gender-neutral, ever-so-millennial lineup includes things like condoms inside industrially designed wrappers, organic and silicone lube, a mood-setting candle that turns into a massage oil when burned and a personal massager that’s phallic without looking penile. “Even when we developed the condoms, we received feedback from women saying they use condoms on their toys but couldn’t find a brand that markets condoms in a gender-neutral way,” Goicochea says. “It seems really simple, but try to find a sexual-wellness company out there that isn’t gendered or isn’t selling sex to you like you’re in college.” Maude puts a lot of attention into each detail, too. Those condoms, called Rise, come wrapped in “buttercup packaging,” which is a lot more akin
to opening a plastic cup of applesauce than it is to the tear-at-will style that otherwise might rip into your rubber. “You can only open it one way, which is both better for the [consumer] experience and for efficacy,” says Goicochea, adding that it also helps you know which end of the condom is “up” when you put it on. The brand offers two versions of its Shine lube, each for a different range of purposes. “The Shine organic lubricant is a hundred percent natural, pH-balanced, aloe-based formula that works well for vaginal sex and for use with all toys and vibrators as it washes off easily.” The silicone version makes more sense for things “like anal play, or for massages” — basically, anywhere the body doesn’t produce its own lubrication. As for the Vibe personal massager? “Its shape has multiple purposes, and it’s universal, no matter your anatomy,” Goicochea says. “When men order the vibe, we recommend it for exterior foreplay. But what they do when they get home is their business.” — AH
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Hims | Keeps Against the backdrop of a murky healthcare system — where products and services can be exorbitantly expensive and riddled with caveats and hidden costs — you’ll find more and more brands springing up, all with a similar promise: to help consumers cut out the middlemen and save a buck or two hundred. Until now, the most notable have been Warby Parker and Hubble, which tackle the monopolies and steep costs on glasses and contacts, respectively. But in the last year, two other brands have risen from the ashes of the healthcare wasteland, and though they’re unaffiliated, they’re targeting men in comparable ways. Their names are Keeps and Hims, and the founders of each know that men are far less inclined to address their personal healthcare concerns (hair loss, erectile dysfunction, skincare) than women are. Hims is a full-spectrum men’s wellness and grooming company that addresses everything from erectile dysfunction to combating acne and signs of aging. It launched at the end of 2017, when Viagra’s patent expired, and it continues to release new products. Keeps, which focuses specifically on helping men prevent hair loss, hit the market at the beginning of 2018. The brands allow registered customers to present their needs to a certified doctor online. These doctors assess each case by analyzing photos, asking questions and addressing individual con-
cerns. Then they can issue an FDA-approved prescription. Keeps sends prescriptions for finasteride (the generic name for Propecia, which can help regrow hair in some patients) and minoxidil (the generic for Rogaine, which prevents further hair loss) quarterly, through the mail. Hims mails monthly prescriptions for both drugs; it also offers
“There’s no magic cure for baldness. But you can prevent hair loss from happening in the first place. The earlier you take action, the more hair you’ll keep.” everything from multivitamin gummies to hormone-blocking shampoo, sildenafil (the generic form of Viagra, for ED), cold-sore treatments and an everyday skincare regimen. The process saves men time and money alike: the products are all generic and therefore cost up to 80 percent less than their name-brand counterparts. Prior to launch, the founders spoke extensively with consumers to better understand their behaviors — or lack thereof. “I quickly discovered
that most men were eager to learn about treatment options, but were hesitant to ask for help and confused by the information found online,” said Hims founder Andrew Dudum. “Historically, medication for hair loss and ED have been marketed to an older demographic, but in reality, these issues affect younger men, too.” He noted that 66 percent of men experience hair loss by the age of 35, and 40 percent of men under age 40 experience ED. And it’s young consumers that each brand wants to attract. Keeps makes use of the fact that finasteride and minoxidil, when used in tandem, can sometimes only restore 20 percent of hair already lost (since the weakened follicles are eventually rendered inactive). But when the two drugs are used together preventively, men can retain up to 90 percent of hair that would otherwise fall out. So, cofounders Steven Gutentag and Demetri Karagas looked to tech-savvy younger men who would be more concerned with prevention than restoration (and who would respond to the brand’s clean, frank marketing). “There’s no magic cure for baldness,” Gutentag said. “But you can prevent hair loss from happening in the first place. The earlier you take action, the more hair you’ll keep.” The marketing behind Hims and Keeps is in line with other millennial-focused direct-to-consumer
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“Society has made men feel it’s not normal to experience very common pain points, and that it’s weird to want to take care of themselves. The lack of conversation has bred confusion and hesitation; men feel they can’t broach these conversations with doctors, friends or partners.”
brands: clean text, relatable models and just a little bit of cheek. Hims winks at its customers with imagery like a limp, phallic cactus, an upright version with a notable head and a bulbous, fuzzy one that looks like a dome of hair. Both brands speak frankly about male health concerns, not shying away from the conversation around hair loss, ED, acne or aging: “Our marketing and messaging focus on educating men about the science of hair loss and the treatment options available to them so that they can feel like active participants in their own healthcare,” Gutentag said. “Society has made men feel it’s not normal to experience very common pain points, and that it’s weird to want to take care of themselves,” Dudum said. “The lack of conversation around men’s care has bred confusion and hesitation; men feel they can’t broach these conversations with doctors, friends or partners.” Consumer data collected by each brand proves that younger men are responding and taking action. “We’ve learned that over 90 percent of Hims’s customers are receiving treatment for concerns they’ve never approached a doctor about before,” Dudum said. “It illustrates the need for this type of platform—one that is convenient and provides a comfortable setting for men to address their health.” Gutentag said that 79 percent of Keeps customers have never previously seen a doctor to address
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hair loss. “We continuously hear that these guys want a better and easier solution for taking care of their medical needs. Remember, hair loss is a medical issue! We wanted to build a solution that would meet them where they wanted to be met. Our brand is easy and approachable, very much for the modern guy.” One other thing the Keeps and Hims won’t shy away from is the potential side effects of one drug in particular: finasteride is sometimes associated with a compromised sex drive or even erectile dysfunction (in clinical trials, 3.8 percent of men experienced some kind of sexual side effects, though the placebo resulted in 2.1 percent with side effects, proving that some symptoms are manifested). “What we want to do is give our customers a safe place to do the research, understand the risks and make the right decision for them,” Gutentag said of Keeps. “It’s important to be transparent. The health of our customers is the most important thing to us, and we take that responsibility seriously. We speak with customers every single day about their experiences and concerns, and our doctors are always available to address side-effects-related questions.” Dudum echoes the sentiment for Hims: “We’re committed to providing access to the best course of treatment, and do not hesitate in rejecting patients that we’ve determined aren’t the best fit for the medication we prescribe.” — AH
Keeps Face: Get everything from cleanser to wrinkle cream Hair: Offers monthly prescriptions of finasteride and minoxidil to manage hair loss Body: Generic versions of Viagra and Valtrex available without going to a doctor’s office $11 - $44
Hims Thinning: One-two punch of finasteride and minoxidil treats overall hair loss Receding: 1mg daily finasteride tablet treats hair loss on the crown, hairline and vertex Crowning: Topical solution helps hair on the crown and vertex get thicker and longer $30 - $105
GROOMING
D E M E T R I K A R A G A S ( L E F T ) A N D S T E V E G U T E N TA G COFOUNDERS, KEEPS
Clark’s Botanicals Retinol Rescue Face Serum Retinol’s efficacy at treating wrinkles, dark spots and other signs of aging has long been established. But those who use it also know how harsh it can be on your skin. So when formulating its new retinol serum, Clark’s Botanicals took pains to ensure it wouldn’t give users that irritating feeling. Retinol Rescue Face Serum blends a double dose of the title ingredient with colloidal oatmeal, Vitamin E and other calming ingredients like red algae. — AH Specs Easy Application: Non-greasy, goes on dry Clean: No parabens, phthalates or sulfates Pair with: SPF (retinol can increase sensitivity to sunlight) $105
Rudy’s Clay Spray Sea salt sprays are revered for their ability to give your hair a fresh-from-the-surf feeling, but on their own, they’re not proper styling products: they give you texture but not much hold. The Clay Spray from Rudy’s Barbershop, however, combines salt (which helps define and lift the hair) with kaolin clay (for medium hold and a matte finish). The result is perfectly tousled surfer hair that won’t wipe out. — AH Specs Hold: Medium Finish: Matte Ingredients: Kaolin clay, silica, tapioca starch $24
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Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel Lotion Sunscreen Wearing SPF every day is a must, but some sunscreens can feel like a wool blanket spread over your face. Neutrogena’s Hydro Boost is a water-light, oil-free blend that hydrates skin like a moisturizer for eight hours after application (though you should still re-apply it regularly). It’s also a broad-spectrum sunscreen, so it blocks even the strongest of UV rays — meaning it’s equally welcome at the beach and on the slopes. — AH Specs SPF: 30 - 50 Oil-Free: Noncomedogenic, so it won’t block your pores Chalk Factor: No white residue after application $12
Lost Explorer Wellness Products Most clothing brands step into grooming by launching a fragrance — and bath products that smell like that fragrance. But Lost Explorer, the eco-friendly label designed by David de Rothschild, won lots of points this year with its equally organic line of grooming products. Of the many products offered, reach first for the Head to Toe Nourishment Oil. It absorbs quickly to soften and shield your mug, beard, body and hair. — AH Specs From the Earth: 100% natural ingredients Clean: No harmful parabens, sulfates or phthalates Smell Like: Nature, no synthetic fragrances $18–$150
Louis Vuitton Les Parfums Pour Homme It’s so common for a fashion brand to release spates of fragrances that it’s hard to believe a 164-year-old French luxury house just released its first line of men’s scents this year. Hard, that is, until you hear master perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud explain simply, “At Louis Vuitton, we have the luxury to take time.” Cavallier Belletrud, who’s created over 80 fragrances for just about every brand you can think of, only joined Vuitton himself six years ago. That’s when he started traveling the world perfecting its
“Nowadays, men’s clothes and accessories are more creative. It is time for men’s perfume to be in the same mood. Perfumery for men is evolving, just as fashion.” initial roster of scents, Les Parfums, a line of seven sprays targeted at women released in 2016. Two more women’s fragrances were released earlier this year. But Cavallier Belletrud wasn’t leaving guys in the dark. All the while, he was working on Les Parfums Pour Hommes, a group of five scents which together, evoke “the adventurer on a journey of self-discovery,” Cavallier Belletrud says. There’s no rhyme or reason to releasing five fragrances at once, other than it happens to be the perfumer’s lucky number. He doesn’t need superstition on his side, however, because each scent is wonderful in its own way. Cavallier Belletrud is known for creating high-contrast scents, and his creative vision for
Les Parfums Pour Hommes was driven by the evolution of men’s fashion. “Nowadays, men dare to wear colorful clothes,” he says. “They are more disruptive, less classical, but still chic. Clothes and accessories are more and more creative. It is time for men’s perfume to be in the same mood. Perfumery for men is evolving, just as fashion.” Leading the pack is an ode to patchouli, Orage, which means “thunderstorm.” The perfumer says his goal was “to make [it] very airy, as if the scent were traveling across the skies, floating through air like the ebb and flow of a tranquil sea.” He layers it with fresh iris — a sharp contrast to broody patchouli. L’Immensité (“The Immensity”) is right on its tail. The ginger and amber scent is crisp, yet deep, and somehow still fresh. “I was dreaming of a fragrance with intense freshness, without any limits,” Cavallier Belletrud says. “A perfume that you spray in the morning and that lasts on skin until late at night with the same freshness.” Rounding out the collection are three stellar contrasts: the citron-balsam blend Sur la Route (“On the Road”), the sandalwood-cardamom-fueled Au Hasard (“Randomly”) as well as Nouveau Monde (“New World”), a blend of oud and cocoa. And while you should never judge a book by its cover, the way these fragrances are packaged is just as noteworthy as the scents themselves. Aside from featuring silver caps instead of brass, the men’s bottles are identical to those in the women’s line, which makes sense. Cavallier Belletrud says he wanted to make fragrances that women would want to smell on a man, so they had to appeal to both parties. And besides that, he says, “The perfume market is full of all the stereotypes of masculinity. I wanted to break this because I believe men are ready to use their perfumes as women do: with more sophistication.” — AH
Specs Lucky Number: Five fragrances released all at once Bottle: Designed by Marc Newson Inspiration: An adventurer’s trip around the world $240+
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Marvis Classic Strong Mint Toothpaste Roundly speaking, Italians do it better. It being taking the kinds of things other cultures regard as quotidian and turning both their production and the finished products into art forms. This goes for coffee, shoes, cars — and since 1958, when Earl Franco Cella Di Rivara introduced the original Marvis toothpaste, oral hygiene, too. The classic minty flavor of Marvis is seriously strong, and the toothpaste’s noticeable tingle makes a necessary grooming task feel like a
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luxury. It leaves your mouth feeling clean and fresh for hours, and while Marvis isn’t marketed as a whitening toothpaste, longtime users have observed that it can brighten your smile. That’s what helped it become popular among smokers in the 1970s — and how its current owners, Ludivico Martelli, helped bring the brand to a bigger audience when they bought it in 1997. There’s nothing else with its flavor, personality or pedigree on the market. — JF
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Home Eating, sleeping, sitting and cleaning might seem monotonous in the doldrums of day-today life. But driving these quotidian functions are breakthroughs no less remarkable than a powerful smartphone or shiny, new car. Enter the first truly affordable sous-vide cooker, direct-to-consumer bedding catering to the general public (instead of just people born between 1981 and 1996), the most responsive office chair ever built and a powerful Dyson vac engineered to kill the category of corded uprights. Our picks for the best home goods of 2018 didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t prompt keynotes or unboxing videos, they just made life that much better.
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HOME
Top 10
Credits
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Herman Miller Cosm
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Dyson V10
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iRobot Roomba i7
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Anova Precision Cooker Nano
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Boll & Branch Cotton Percale Sheet Set
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Trade Coffee
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Milo
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Instant Pot Max
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Ikea Vintage Collection
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Traeger Ranger
Words WILL PRICE JACK SEEMER
Photos CHANDLER BONDURANT CHASE PELLERIN
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
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Technivorm Moccamaster
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EDITOR’S PICK
Herman Miller Cosm Specs Designer: Studio 7.5 Color Options: White, red, dark gray, dark blue, light gray Size Options: Low-back, mid-back, full-back $895+
Upon its release in 1994, Herman Miller’s Aeron office chair was a design revelation. Some dubbed it the “Dot-Com Throne,” given its popularity with early Silicon Valley executives, and it ultimately found a home the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. Almost 25 years later, the company introduced Cosm, the Aeron’s diametric and philosophical opposite. Where Aeron adjusts to the user by manual adjustment, Cosm, designed by Studio 7.5 for Herman Miller, reflexively adjusts to each new sitter. This is called passive ergonomics, and most of the tastemakers in the office-design space — Steelcase, Knoll and Humanscale — have released something similar. But none solved a single, glaring design issue: how to adjust recline tension for every user, without lifting the legs ever-so-slightly in the air. It may sound pedantic, but this very slight displacement creates a nerve pinch in the legs that,
in turn, tenses the lower back and core, spawning a host of other problems. The long-term ripple effect can be immense — lower back pain, neck pain, headaches, numbness in the lower body and on and on. Cosm’s patented recline system fixed this. Called Auto-Harmonic Tilt, the innovation takes your vertical force into account by locking the recline fulcrum to a specific spot on its springs when you lean back. By being able to dynamically alter this fulcrum to every person, the chair positions itself to do what all passive ergonomic chairs strive for: offer a level of comfort and body-positive seating for every potential user. According to Herman Miller, solving the leg-raising problem was the primary reason it hadn’t already released an auto-adjusting office chair. It’s also why it thinks Cosm’s design, a decade in the making, is more than just another office chair. — WP
Editor’s Pick, Explained There has never been a chair quite like the Herman Miller Cosm, which shuns hyperbole as the most ergonomically advanced office chair ever built. That is to say it requires almost no manual input from the user. Cosm is the first passive ergonomic office chair that doesn’t lift the user’s legs when they lean back — a subtle feature, but it’s one that took the team at Herman Miller nearly a decade to figure out. And the result is stunning.
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Dyson V10 After 35 years and 27 models, Dyson is so sure of the technology within the V10 that, upon its release, the company decided to halt the production of all corded uprights. The V10 isn’t Dyson’s first cordless vacuum, but it is easily the most well-rounded. Users are treated to an efficient, super-charged motor that rivals some of the brand’s traditional corded vacuums; long battery life; a clean way to empty the dustbin and a light, more maneuverable build. — WP Specs Weight: 5.9 pounds Warranty: 5-year limited warranty Runtime: Up to 50 minutes $500
iRobot Roomba i7+ What Dyson is to handheld vacuums, iRobot (the brand behind the Roomba series) is to robo-vacuums. Its latest is superior to the competition for many reasons but distinguished by one major industry first: the capacity for useful memory. The i7+ will remember your floor plan and develop an optimal cleaning pattern over time, reducing how long it takes to clean your floors and thus saving significant battery life. It can also be dispatched to clean individual rooms. — WP Specs Controls: Manual or app-based Height: 3.63 inches Memory Space: Up to 10 floor plans $945
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Boll & Branch Cotton Percale Sheet Set Boll & Branch is one of the standard bearers for direct-to-consumer done right, a position it reached — and held on to — without becoming a millennial-branded cliché. Its new percale sheets are emblematic of why: they’re made from the brand’s signature organic long-staple cotton and use a simple one-over-one-under weave. The sheets’ two very fine plys, or layers, balance overall structure with breeziness; they also flex extra-deep corner pockets to fit high mattresses. — WP Specs Thread Count: 360 Colors: White, ivory Cotton Source: Orissa, India $200+
Anova Precision Cooker Nano Sous vide is inherently simple: heat water, drop in a bag of food and wait for it to reach the perfect temperature. But the popular devices, called circulators, that make the cooking technique foolproof are stupid expensive. Anova, whose flagship model will set you back $160, released an excellent $99 version called the Nano earlier this year. It brings the great sous-vide fantasy — a circulator in every home — one step closer to fruition. — WP Specs Controls: Manual or app-based Temperature Gauge: Adjustable to 0.1-degree increments Dimensions: 12.8 x 2.2 inches $99
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Trade is a specialty coffee retailer that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t discriminate against its customers for not understanding specialty coffee.
Trade Coffee As far as the coffee cognoscenti are concerned, all signs point to a single truth: we live in a golden age of coffee drinking. In practically every major city in the U.S., people can track down beans from around the world, produced on farms of all sizes, processed by any possible method and roasted to every degree. What’s more, they rarely cost more than $15 a bag. Like craft beer breweries, specialty coffee roasters tend to remove themselves from the mass-produced methods of mega-corporations in favor of diversity, specificity and quality. But unlike the beer industry, specialty coffee’s availability is not bound by shipping laws between states. This is the virtue of Trade Coffee Co., an online retailer that launched in the spring. Trade works with more than 50 roasters, big and small, across the States. Its website brings them all to one place, allowing users to browse hundreds of bags of coffee based on flavor profile, country of origin, ideal brew styles, roast level and more. When you buy a bag, the order is filled by the roaster and shipped to your address after the beans are freshly roasted. Functionally, it’s the largest collection of fresh specialty coffee on the internet, but that’s only the beginning of its usefulness. Trade is a specialty coffee retailer that doesn’t discriminate against its customers for not understanding specialty coffee. It even created a coffee-taste quiz for those who don’t know what they like. Trade’s site hosts how-tos covering every major brew method, and a small but smartly curated shop hosts the best coffee gear money can buy. Broadly, Trade acts as a tool consumers can use to discover roasters they may never have tried otherwise, and it effectively acts as a bridge between the coffee curious and the coffee obsessive, doing so in a way that doesn’t insult the former or the latter. Just before its April launch, we asked Trade’s CEO, Mike Lackman, to distill the company’s mission into a single sentence. He said simply, “We think roasters and farms should be more accessible to more people.” — WP Specs Number of roasters: 50+ States represented: 20+ Bags of coffee: 400+ $15 - $20
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“Is it a Gucci handbag or a pot, you know?”
Milo The first time I spoke with Zach Schau he told me his yet-to-be-released cookware wasn’t the best design on the market. He told me that again when we met in person, and once more during a phone call some months later. He doesn’t believe Milo is the most luxurious Dutch oven you can buy, and it’s certainly not the cheapest. But he does believe he made the best one for most people, and he did it because no one else would. Schau is the first to admit that he and his fianceé are “home-cooking freaks.” As the owners of a goldmine of vintage cast-iron cookware, their California home is outfitted with pots and pans from the very brands they’re aiming to undercut. But if they hadn’t inherited them, they wouldn’t have bought them with their own money. And if you ask Schau why, he’ll tell you frankly: “It’s the price, man. Is it a Gucci handbag or a pot, you know?” Le Creuset and Staub are the undisputed titans of Dutch ovens. And they both make “incredible products” — another thing Schau willingly admits. But they both also charge more than $300 for a
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standard-sized pot. Meanwhile, Lodge offers a similarly-sized Dutch oven for $60, one-fifth the price. But that one didn’t meet Schau’s quality standards; its enamel just chips and cracks in no time at all. Schau had prior manufacturing experience (he helped start a bike brand called Pure Cycles, and a company called The Graces that makes towels out of organic cotton sourced from Turkey), so he started digging for more information about the category. Once he came up for air, he arrived at a solitary conclusion: the primary reason that great enameled cast-iron cookware is so expensive and cheap cast-iron cookware is so shoddy isn’t the result of some sage means of production, the use of superlative materials or selling in every cookware store in the world. Rather, in Schau’s words, “the incumbents hadn’t really been challenged.” Schau thought it should be possible to make an excellent product that lasts forever, looks great and doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars. So that’s exactly what he set out to do. This spring, after
Specs Colors: Black, white Capacity: 5.5 quarts Warranty: Lifetime $95
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two years of R&D, he released Milo — a glossy, 5.5-quart enameled Dutch oven. Smartly, Schau’s pot works in the best features from the great French brands instead of shunning them outright. It borrows the sheen and light interior of Le Creuset, a feature that makes it easier to check the browning of the food while cooking. And like a Le Creuset, Milo’s lid allows some moisture to escape, thus concentrating the flavor in braises and stews. But Milo’s weight and bulk are Staub-like — it’s heavyset in the base and thin in the walls, which alleviates the issue of hot spots on the cooking surface but doesn’t make the pot unwieldy. The Milo Dutch oven is also backed by a lifetime warranty program, and you can buy one for under $100 — which previously only Lodge and a few others could claim. And so one of the best new products of 2018 is not a new idea. Instead, it’s a direct-to-consumer cookware company’s first attempt at confronting a lethargic market. The result isn’t the prettiest Dutch oven out there (an honor that probably goes to Le Creuset), and it’s not the cheapest (Lodge). It’s simply the best. “As home chefs, we struggle with the fact that there are a couple conglomerate businesses that basically own fifty different cookware brands and drive prices up,” Schau said. “So this isn’t the beall and end-all of what we want to be. We’re just getting started here.” — WP
Z ACH SCHAU, FOUNDER , MILO
Schau thought it should be possible to make an excellent product that lasts forever, looks great and doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars. So that’s exactly what he set out to do.
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Instant Pot Max Instant Pot is to cooking now what the bow and arrow must have been to war when they were introduced — a new, efficient and significantly less messy way of getting things done. For the better part of a decade, the company’s signature multicooker sat on the market, dormant, before Amazon listed it as the Deal of the Day in July 2016. It didn’t take long for the all-in-one appliance to become an internet sensation and face a legion of look-alikes, so it’s no surprise the company would seek to differentiate its offerings with riffs on the original design. Its latest: the much-anticipated Instant Pot Max. But by most accounts, the Instant Pot Max is a disappointment. WIRED wrote, “Truthfully, you don’t need to replace your existing multicooker just to get this newest one.” CNET’s bottom line reads, “Stick with older Instant Pot models that are cheaper and cook food faster.” Even our own
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review bemoaned the Max’s usefulness. But overall, these reviews are comparing its cooking bona fides to other multicookers using a strictly price-performance matrix, and in doing so, they have, perhaps unfairly, discounted a few rather brilliant morsels of industrial design. Beyond the addition of a useful and effective sous-vide function, something no other multicooker can yet claim, the Max is the first machine of its kind to have what should have already been a standard in the space: a pressure-release valve that doesn’t require users putting their hands in harm’s way. The push of a button on the front of the Max initiates steam release (and can be set to slow release, pulses of release or total release). It’s a smart design change that won’t make the headlines, but one that leaves you asking, “What took so long?” — WP
Specs Volume: 6 quarts Cooking Functions: Sauté, slow cook, pressure cook, canning, steaming, sous vide Max Pressure: 15 psi $200
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Ikea Vintage Collection It’s possible the best furniture release in years isn’t new at all. Ikea celebrated its 75th birthday in 2018 with a multipronged retrospective that revisits its most popular pieces from decades past. And if you think Ikea has always been a clean-lined, color-mute, Scandinavian design nirvana, think again. Dubbed Gratulera (that’s Swedish for “congratulations”), the collection includes velvet-backed wing chairs, fire-red loveseats and curvy rattan armchairs. — WP Specs Number of Products: 44 Timeline: 1950s - 2000s Availability: Limited $2 - $279
Traeger Ranger With the Ranger, the brand that invented pellet grilling effectively created a trunk-sized version of the most pain-free path to smoked food. It combines an accurate real-time temperature display, a drip tray that actually works and remarkably short preheat times — and the result is a final product that is non-hyperbolically stellar. This portable grill isn’t the “first” or “only” in any category, it’s simply the best. — WP Specs Weight: 60 pounds Cooking Capacity: 184 square inches Cook Time: Up to 24 hours per hopper $399
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Technivorm Moccamaster Drip coffee is a dance between time and temperature, and frankly, most machines (even really expensive ones) stumble. The Technivorm Moccamaster is not one of them. It tackles grounds with facility and finesse, and it spits out wonderfully brewed coffee that’s more soulful than a jazz quartet. For years, the Technivorm Moccamaster was famous for being the only machine on the Specialty Coffee Association’s prestigious list of certified home brewers. More than a dozen automatic drip coffee makers now meet the organization’s ultra-rigorous standards — which include steeping grounds with water that’s between 195 and 205 degrees, then being able to keep the brewed coffee between 176 and 185 degrees
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for at least 30 minutes — but the Moccamaster still reigns in specialty circles where consistency is king. Every machine is hand-assembled and individually tested in the Netherlands, as they have been since Technivorm introduced the Moccamaster 50 years ago. And while their very Sixties aesthetic is half the reason to get one, the real star is hidden under that durable metal housing — a powerful heating element made from highly conductive copper. What this means in layman’s terms is that the coffee maker isn’t just adept at heating water to the right temperature, it’s quick, too. We’re talking seconds, not minutes, here. And when time and temperature are everything, sometimes seconds make all the difference. — JS
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Drinks For all the fun attributed to alcohol, covering the category of booze is woefully boring, a fact tempered only slightly by silly trends and insignificant product releases. So curating any best-of list around the stuff that gets you buzzed is fraught with identifying if something is simply novel or actually moving. From a bottle series industrializing one of the whiskey world’s biggest DIY trends to a Danish distillery turning the entire distillation process on its head, our picks for the best drink releases of the year are all but stale — they’re curious, refreshing and wholly unexpected.
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Top 10
Credits
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Empirical Spirits
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Barrell Craft Spirits Infinite Barrel Project
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Nikka Whisky From the Barrel
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Norlan Rauk Heavy Tumbler
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Firestone Walker Brewing Company Firestone Lager
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Vitamix Aer Disc Container
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The Bitter Truth Bogartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bitters
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W.L. Weller CYPB
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Cocktail Codex
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Yeti Tundra Haul
Words ANDY FRAKES WILL PRICE JACK SEEMER CHRIS WRIGHT JOHN ZIENTEK
Photos CHANDLER BONDURANT
Illustration JOE MCKENDRY
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Four Roses Bourbon
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Empirical Spirits Specs Instagram: @empiricalcph Where to Buy: Henry’s (Brooklyn) and domaineLA (L.A.) Where to Drink: The NoMad and Contra (NYC) ~$70 (per bottle)
Here’s how a modern, industrial-level distillery — whether its focus is Scotch, gin, vodka or something else — makes liquor: First, mix water with affordable grain and stock yeast and let it ferment into mash, essentially a high-alcohol beer. Then, boil the hell out of that beer to separate out the ethanol. Boil it again (in some cases, many more times). Pour out the heads and tails — that is, the bad stuff that could make you blind. Blend, infuse an ingredient, maybe age in a barrel. Bottle. Sell. That’s not the way they’re doing it at Empirical Spirits, a flavor-obsessed distillery working out of a warehouse in Copenhagen, Denmark. To make one of its spirits, cofounder Mark Emil Hermansen and his team considered more than 20 grains before settling on a mash that included pearled barley fermented and turned into koji, a mold that’s used as the base of soy sauce, miso and sake. Their yeasts are equally considered: “The R&D department for the yeast company White Labs is on site, with about four thousand strains of yeast in a vault, so we cherry-pick one based on what we want,” Hermansen says. “Champagne or ale yeast, or wild stuff we’ve isolated from the parking lot outside.” Hermansen is an Oxford-trained anthropologist, so he’s laying on the bare concrete of the distillery’s new, unfurnished office space, sketching a timeline of his booze’s creation story in a notebook. He points his pencil at what truly separates Empirical Spirits from the rest: they skip the boiling entirely, using a vacuum still to separate out the ethanol at 5 to 15 degrees Celsius, twice, to get a liquid that’s closer to 50 percent alcohol rather than the traditional 96 percent. The mash “is where all the funk is,” Hermansen says. “Boiling it would just destroy our product.” Hermansen and his partner, Lars Williams, founded Empirical Spirits in January 2017 after leaving Noma, the Copenhagen-based restaurant widely considered to be among the best in the
world. The two met working out of the houseboat that served as part of the restaurant’s R&D-focused Nordic Food Lab. After its founder, René Redzepi, announced he’d be closing the restaurant for refurbishment, Williams and Hermansen decided it was time to branch out. “We figured it was now or never,” Hermansen says. “I knew nothing about booze, neither did Lars. We had never tried making it,” Hermansen says. The two had settled on distilling not because they loved drinking liquor, or because the spirits industry felt disrupt-able. The idea was to take the methodology they loved for creating flavors at Noma and “flip the paradigm of expression,” Hermansen says. “The work done by chefs is extraordinary, but it’s only expressed through a restaurant.” Booze had it all: flavor, quality ingredients, fermentation, microbiology, the possibility to experiment empirically and to explore the world of
“The work done by chefs is extraordinary, but it’s only expressed through a restaurant.” flavor through experience and data, as opposed to pure theory. “Fermentation provides us with alcohol, and it’s the perfect medium for transforming flavors you create in fermentation,” Hermansen says. And it can be bottled and shipped, unlike, say, a blue mussel with celery purée. Empirical Spirits’s small batches of bottled offerings have consistently been seasonal and category-defying. They often buck the industry norm of 40 to 50 percent ABV in their final bottlings and make use of the vacuum still to retain flavors
Editor’s Pick, Explained Distillation, the process that makes liquor, dates back more than 3,000 years, and it’s produced some of the most delicious stuff known to humans. Why ruin a good thing, right? Well, the masterminds behind Empirical Spirits, a Danish outfit with ties to the world-renown restaurant Noma, think differently. And their genre-bending spirits, made with a proprietary technique that preserves the flavor of ingredients, just landed in the U.S. They’re like nothing you’ve ever tasted.
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LARS WILLIAMS COFOUNDER, EMPIRICAL SPIRITS
that would otherwise be boiled away; Hermansen says they think of building the flavors of each expression “from the ground up.” The Fallen Pony blend uses quince tea and quince tea kombucha as botanicals. They distilled Fuck Trump and His Stupid Fucking Wall down to 27 percent because it was “the perfect point at which to create a balanced spirit,” then used distilled habanero vinegar. Helena, their “purest” spirit, uses koji, pilsner malt and saison yeast, and it aims to capture the pure flavor of fermentation as an “abstract, intangible” experience, Hermansen says. Their very first spirit, Easy Tiger Blend, was finished using freshly foraged Douglas fir boughs. “Lars sent it to his sister in the States with the message, ‘Sister, this is my experience taking a walk in the woods outside of Copenhagen.’ It was an immediate sense memory,” Hermansen says. The koji, specialized yeast and vacuum still are novel, but both distillers insist they’re simply means to create interesting flavors, which provoke in drinkers what the food at Noma stirs in its diners: a response. This is the moment their product escapes the empirical and approaches the philosophical. “One important thing was making the product travel; another thing was making your mind travel,” Hermansen says. Their liquor, he says, “is more a Burgundy than a Bordeaux” — not comforting and relaxing, but
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uplifting, a challenge to drinkers. “There is a sense of wondering, what the fuck is going on here?,” Hermansen says. “And you never really find the answer. That’s the experience itself. Why is a piece of music good? Why is a piece of art inspiring? You can’t really boil it down to the science. Or maybe you don’t want to.” The spirits have resonated with mixologists at top New York City restaurants like The NoMad and Contra and also among curious at-home drinkers, who, as of this year, can buy them in the States at two stores: Henry’s in Brooklyn, New York, and domaineLA in L.A. Via Instagram, Empirical Spirits updates followers on the availability of their bottles — which are devoid of labeling except for a small, austere sticker that looks like something a scientist would paste to their latest creation. The contents, distillation method and location are the only things listed, and the feeling successfully conveyed is of tearing down walls between the distiller and customers. “By being transparent about our products, you allow that curiosity to travel with them,” Hermansen says. Until now, Williams and Hermansen have worked in a way common to craft brewers and distillers swept up in a wave of hype: toiling madly alongside a tiny team in a garage, with equipment far from capable of filling out demand. That’s changing. The team is currently moving into a new 8,600-square-foot space with a custom-made
brewhouse for fermentation, a small shop that will offer tastings, a new White Labs R&D production department for yeast, and the capability of much higher production output. Their team has grown to sixteen, and Hermansen seems intent on continuing to teach new employees. One gets the sense Hermansen and Williams are building an environment as creatively fertile as Redzepi’s at Noma. Their mentees could go on to express new, fantastical flavors in just about any medium: food, drink
The feeling successfully conveyed is of tearing down walls between the distiller and customers. or otherwise. Perhaps they’re incubating the next maestro of soups, or a genius of molecular gastronomy or maybe even someone who will return to the rich traditional methods of whiskey-making to shift the paradigms of distilling from within. “What I love about it most,” Hermansen says, “is giving yourself and your team that kind of moonshot, and saying, ‘fuck — let’s do this our way. I don’t know the answers. Let’s be guided by what we think tastes great and let’s hope it sticks.’” — CW
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Barrell Craft Spirits Infinite Barrel Project For all the rules that define whiskey-making around the world, the infinity bottle is something of an enigma. These DIY creations are built by amateur enthusiasts who pour a base whiskey into a decanter, then add the dregs of other bottles as they come along. The result is a Franken-whiskey of sorts — free of the strict bottled-in-bond regulations, mash bills and ABVs that govern the production methods of mainstream American distilleries — and also radically different from whiskey produced using the the solera technique, which maintains a small amount of older whiskey in a barrel for the purpose of consistency across time. If traditional blending is conducting a symphony, building an infinity bottle is recording old-school hip-hop — all samples, style and soul. This meta-blending of different whiskey families is out of reach for just about every brand out there. Every one has their own flavor profile and reputation to worry about. But it was the ideal project for Barrell Craft Spirits, an independent bottler whose very MO has been blending together different liquids to make the tastiest version of a spirit. Up until this year, that mostly meant blending bourbon with bourbon; with the Infinite Barrel Project, each bottle is an example of what happens when you let a professional take a whack at blending disparate whiskeys, like a peaty Scotch
with vanilla-rich bourbon and funky Polish rye, to build a whole new type of spirit, time and time again. “We wanted to make something that’s made of different parts, but consistent, almost like a cassoulet,” says Joe Beatrice, founder of Barrell. Together with Barrell’s Master Distiller, Tripp Simpson, Beatrice has been touted for his unique, maverick approach to bourbon, rye, even rum, piling up awards from around the world. Barrell’s Infinite Barrel Project started with three main ingredients: whiskey from Tennessee and Indiana, plus a Polish rye. (They are unable to provide specific distillery and barrel information due to confidentiality agreements with distillers.) The first bottling also included Tennessee rye, single-malt and single-grain Scotch, as well as Irish whiskey. For the five iterations since, released every few months, Beatrice and Simpson have replenished their depleted stock with a range of whiskeys, including a Western Highlands Scotch. Many tasters have described bottles of Infinite Barrel as an explosion of flavor. The interplay between different whiskeys is chaotic, but it’s also a technical exploration of the way certain flavors mingle, neutralize and amplify each other. By breaking a cardinal rule, Barrell’s giving all types of whiskey a chance to become something greater than the sum of their parts. — CW
“We wanted to make something that’s made of different parts, but consistent, almost like a cassoulet.”
Specs Distribution: Available in 43 states Age of Whiskeys: NAS (no age statement) Volume: 750 mL $65
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Nikka Whisky From the Barrel Nikka’s From the Barrel, originally released in 1986, claimed the title of most popular Japanese whisky outside of Japan before it was finally made available stateside this year. And though a blend without age statements can reduce enthusiasts to snobby eye rolling, From the Barrel is anything but a money grab — more than 100 grain and malt whiskies, aged in re-charred hogsheads, sherry butts and bourbon barrels, meddle in each bottle. — WP Specs Proof: 102.8 Notes: Caramelized apples, woody, floral Age: NAS (no age statement) $80
DRINKS
Norlan Rauk Heavy Tumbler Since its successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015, Norlan has sold more than a quarter million whiskey snifters. But the brand’s more spacious, thin-lipped second effort, the Rauk Heavy Tumbler, is decidedly different. Made of machine-punched molten crystal, the glass’s heavy, four-pointed base keeps it stable while tiny grooves extruding from the inside create friction points for improved cocktail muddling. It’s as good as drinking on the rocks gets. — WP Specs Material: Leaded crystal Capacity: 8.5 fluid ounces Weight: 1.25 pounds $50
Firestone Walker Brewing Company Firestone Lager A great lager should be sophisticated but drinkable, and few people know it better than Matt Brynildson, brewmaster at California’s renowned Firestone Walker Brewing Company. Brynildson and his team first launched this helles-style lager in the 2000s, but it was pulled amid craft’s growing thirst for big, bad IPAs and stouts worth 1,000 words. Over a decade later, it’s back on the shelves, signaling craft’s growing taste for beer designed for drinking, not musing. — AF Specs ABV: 4.5% Malts: German Pilsner and North American pale Hops: Hallertau Tradition, Spalter Select, Saphir Price Varies
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Vitamix Aer Disc Container Why would Vitamix — a company that’s built its name making high-performance blenders that measure power not in wattage but in horsepower — design a blender that doesn’t blend? According to representatives for the brand, it all started when a very large (though undisclosed) coffee company approached Vitamix with a request to design something capable of yielding large volumes of foamed out of milk in a few seconds. The solution was a benign blender top called the Aer Disc Container. It features a flat, holepunched disc that spins exceptionally fast and works atop all full-sized Vitamix blenders, including the flagship 5200 and newer E310. And while the Aer Disc Container does indeed produce silky
whipped cream and bubbly foam in the blink of an eye, its uses reach far wider. The specifically placed holes in the blade create what amounts to a lightning-quick aerator that doesn’t pulverize the contents inside the container. This means that anything that benefits from mixing or muddling is within its purview — blender-sized batches of Old Fashioneds, margaritas, mojitos and any other cocktails you deem worthy of going along with instantaneous Hollandaise sauce, simple syrup and homemade mayo. The Aer Disc Container is, despite its relatively banal appearance, supremely useful and a worthy addition to any well-equipped home bar — coffee, cocktail or otherwise. — WP
Specs Height: 10.25 inches Blade Material: Stainless steel Compatibility: Works with any full-sized Vitamix $145
“The Aer Disc Container is, despite its relatively banal appearance, supremely useful and a worthy addition to any well-equipped home bar.”
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DRINKS
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The Bitter Truth Bogart’s Bitters Bogart’s Bitters is the stuff of legend — at least in circles that tell tales about mixed drinks. The brand was a favorite of Jerry Thomas, as evidenced by its key role in his 1862 manual The Bar-Tender’s Guide. The recipe, lost since Prohibition, was reverseengineered by bartenders Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck of The Bitter Truth. It even comes in a period-appropriate bottle. — JZ Specs ABV: 42.1% Notes: Dark spice, chocolatey coffee, herbs Volume: 375 mL $35
W.L. Weller CYPB CYPB, or Create Your Perfect Bourbon, is a good name for this special release from Buffalo Trace’s wheated whiskey brand, W.L. Weller. After polling more than 100,000 enthusiasts on their ideal bourbon, the distillers used the data to fine-tune everything from the age to the proof, creating a Weller bottle that goes down easily — if you can get your hands on one of the few bottles they released into the wild. — AF Specs Proof: 95 Distribution: National but limited Age: 8 years $40
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DRINKS
Cocktail Codex Alex Day and David Kaplan, cofounders of the legendary New York City bar Death and Co., teamed up with writer Nick Fauchald for this detailed primer on mixed drinks that aims to be more than a mere collection of cocktails. The book outlines six root recipes that serve as templates for virtually every cocktail you can drum up, and the result is one of the easiestto-understand reference guides for modern mixology, well, ever. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; JZ Specs Pages: 320 Publisher: Ten Speed Press Dimensions: 9.6 x 1.1 x 10.2 inches $40
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Yeti Tundra Haul It’s been more than a decade since Yeti started seducing fisherman, hunters and college students with its genre-defining hard coolers, but this year, the Austin-based company finally unveiled what its rabid fan base — otherwise known as Yeti Nation — was waiting for: a cooler with wheels. What took so long? “Over the last ten years, we’d talked about a [cooler] with wheels,” said Category Manager Alex Baires, who oversees both hard and soft coolers at Yeti. “It’s certainly something that’s come up in conversation, we just didn’t have the tools or resources to make the product. We knew we needed to make it right.” The irony of this story is that when it actually came time to design a rolling cooler, it didn’t take Yeti very long at all. In fact, Baires and his team brought Haul to market in record time — at least by Yeti standards. Most of its products, like Yeti’s Hondo Base Camp Chair (see page 82), take upward of three years to develop, refine and launch. Haul, meanwhile, took half that time.
But the job wasn’t nearly as simple as putting a set of wheels on one of Yeti’s flagship Tundra coolers. Though Haul shares much of the company’s hard-cooler DNA (extra-thick walls, heavy-duty rubber latches, a freezer-grade gasket), Baires and his team designed it from the ground up — starting, naturally, with the wheels. “They’re very low maintenance,” Baires said. “We call them NeverFlat because they are [made from] polyurethane foam and there’s no need to inflate them.” But polyurethane alone doesn’t make the wheels unique. According to Baires, the real difference is in their specific density. “We spent a lot of time making sure they had the right feel,” he said. “Even late in the game, we went back and looked at the [density] of the foam we were using. They’re dense, so as you’re wheeling them around, they’re going to feel like wheels, not a piece of plastic.” Geometry, too, separates Haul from Yeti’s traditional Tundras. It comes in one size that speaks to the intended use. “We played around a lot with
the height of it,” Baires said. “We wanted to make sure that it was tall enough to stand up two-liter bottles or even wine bottles. We arrived at a nice size, which is roughly the size of a Tundra 65 in terms of volume, but taller and deeper [from front to back].” Other notable features on Haul include a welded aluminum handle with minimal moving parts and independent axles connecting the wheels to the body. This second feature not only maximizes the cooler’s internal volume but also help it retain ice — a proper through-axle made of steel would conduct heat, making it susceptible to summer rays. Perhaps Haul’s most important quality, though, is that it still feels like a Yeti hard cooler. “The challenge, quite honestly, is that the Tundra line is darn near perfect,” Baires said. “We’ll definitely continue to see how else we can expand and grow the brand, but hard coolers will always be at the core. We don’t want to mess that up.” As far as Yeti Nation is concerned, it’s a good thing they didn’t. — JS
“We’ll definitely continue to see how else we can expand and grow the brand, but hard coolers will always be at the core. We don’t want to mess that up.” Specs Colors: White, tan, light blue, charcoal Dimensions: 28.25 x 19.5 x 18.63 inches Fits: 45 cans of beer $40
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THE STANDARD
Four Roses Bourbon Earlier this year, Four Roses, one of the most recognized names in whiskey, dropped the iconic yellow label from its popular entry-level bourbon. The spirits world held its breath, but the stuff inside the bottle is as good as ever: a blend of ten bourbons that collectively use two mash bills and five yeast strains. Batches range from 200 to 400 barrels, and they average five and half years old, though Four Roses claims some of the bourbon used is aged up to 12 years. Not bad for 20 bucks. With that, Four Roses Bourbon is one of the best budget buys in the liquor store. And though its proof might be lower than that of many premium bourbons on the market today, the 40 percent ABV is far from a demerit. Four Roses Bourbon is mellow, inviting and excellent in cocktails. Though you wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be remiss in taking it straight up like countless before you. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; JS
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First Year of Production:
1884
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Photo Index 27-28 Apple Watch Series 4 - Photo: Chase Pellerin
132-135 Tudor Black Bay 58 - Photo: Henry Phillips
29 Apple Watch Series 4 - Photo: Apple
136 A. Lange & Söhne Triple Split - Photo: A. Lange & Söhne
30 Canon EOS R - Photo: Canon
137 Baume & Mercier Clifton Baumatic - Photo: Baume & Mercier
30 Wyze Labs WyzeCam - Photo: Wyze Labs
137 Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical - Photo: Hamilton Watch Company
32 DJI Mavic 2 - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
138 Ressence e-Crown Concept - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
34 Meyer Optik Nocturnus - Photo: Meyer Optik Goerlitz
139 Oris Big Crown Pointer Date - Photo: Oris
34 Huawei MateBook X Pro - Photo: Huawei
139 Montblanc Geosphere 1858 - Photo: Montblanc
36 Nikon Z 7 - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
140-142 Vacheron Constantin FiftySix Collection - Photo: Vacheron Constantin
38 Nikon Z 7 - Photo: Nikon
143 Panerai Luminor Logo Collection - Photo: Officine Panerai
40 LG C8 4K OLED TV - Photo: LG
144 Rolex GMT-Master II 126710BLRO - Photo: Henry Phillips
40 Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC - Photo: Goal Zero
147 Rolex GMT-Master II 126710BLRO - Photo: Rolex
42 Google Pixel 3 - Photo: Chase Pellerin
153 Outerknown S.E.A. Jeans - Photo: Chase Pellerin
48 Sony WH-1000XM3 - Photo: Chase Pellerin
154-155 Outerknown S.E.A. Jeans - Photo: Outerknown
50 Sonos Beam - Photo: Sonos
156 Jacques Marie Mage Gonzo Collection - Photo: Jacques Marie Mage
51 Audioengine A5+ Wireless Speaker - Photo: Audioengine
156 Aer Work Collection - Photo: Aer
52 Fender Effects Pedals - Photo: Fender
157 J.Crew Heritage Collection - Photo: J.Crew
54 Boenicke Audio W8 - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
157 Mr P. Footwear - Photo: Mr Porter
57-59 Boenicke Audio W8 - Photo: Boenicke Audio
158 18 East - Photo: 18 East
60 Apple HomePod - Photo: Apple
159 Away Aluminum Edition - Photo: Away
62 Sennheiser HD 820 - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
161-162 Nike Air Max 270 - Photo: Chase Pellerin
64 Anker Soundcore Space NC - Photo: Anker
164 Filson C.C.F. Workwear - Photo: Filson
64 Cambridge Audio Edge A - Photo: Cambridge Audio
165 Arvin Goods Econyl Boxers - Photo: Arvin Goods
66 Pro-Ject Juke Box E - Photo: Chase Pellerin
170 Aesop In Two Minds - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
72 Oakley Prizm React - Photo: Chase Pellerin
172 Harry’s Body Wash - Photo: Harry’s
74-77 Oakley Prizm React - Photo: Oakley
172 Kiehl’s Body Fuel Deodorant - Photo: Kiehl’s
78 Rapha Explore Sleeping Bag and Down Jacket - Photo: Chase Pellerin
173 Maude - Photo: Maude
80 Patagonia Capilene Air Baselayers - Photo: Patagonia
174 Hims/Keeps - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
81 Salomon S/Lab Shift MNC Binding - Photo: Chase Pellerin
177 Hims/Keeps - Photo: Hims/Keeps
82 Yeti Hondo Base Camp Chair - Photo: Yeti
178 Clark’s Botanicals Retinol Rescue Face Serum - Photo: Clark’s Botanicals
82 Tecnica Forge - Photo: Tecnica Sports
178 Rudy’s Clay Spray - Photo: Rudy’s
82 Osprey Levity - Photo: Osprey Packs
179 Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel Lotion Sunscreen - Photo: Neutrogena
84-85 Pivot Mach 5.5 with Live Valve - Photo: Pivot Cycles
179 Lost Explorer Wellness Products - Photo: The Lost Explorer
86 Chris Reeve Knives Impinda - Photo: Chris Reeve Knives
180 Louis Vuitton Les Parfums Pour Homme - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
87 Tepui Hybox - Photo: Tepui Tents
187 Herman Miller Cosm - Photo: Chase Pellerin
94 Giro Aether MIPS - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
188 Dyson V10 - Photo: Dyson
96 Nike Pegasus Turbo - Photo: Nike
188 iRobot Roomba i7+ - Photo: iRobot
96 Suunto 9 - Photo: Suunto
189 Boll & Branch Cotton Percale Sheet Set - Photo: Boll & Branch
97 Silca Sicuro Titanium Bottle Cage - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
189 Anova Precision Cooker Nano - Photo: Anova
98 Specialized S-Works Venge - Photo: Specialized Bicycles
191 Trade Coffee - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
99 Peloton Tread - Photo: Peloton
193 Milo - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
100 Mirror - Photo: Chase Pellerin
194-195 Milo - Photo: Milo
102-103 Mirror - Photo: Mirror
196 Instant Pot Max - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
104 District Vision x Salomon Mountain Racer - Photo: District Vision
197 Ikea Vintage Collection - Photo: Ikea
104 Hyperice Hypervolt - Photo: Hyperice
197 Traeger Ranger - Photo: Traeger Grills
105 Maurten Gel 100 - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
202 Empirical Spirits - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
110-113 Lincoln Navigator - Photo: Chase Pellerin
204-205 Empirical Spirits - Photo: Empirical Spirits
115 Jeep Wrangler - Photo: Chase Pellerin
206 Barrell Craft Spirits Infinite Barrel Project - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
116 Volvo XC40 - Photo: Volvo Cars
208 Nikka Whisky From the Barrel - Photo: Nikka Whisky
117-119 Subaru WRX STI Type RA - Photo: Subaru
209 Norlan Rauk Heavy Tumbler - Photo: Norlan
120 Lexus LC 500 - Photo: Lexus
209 Firestone Walker Brewing Company Firestone Lager - Photo: Firestone Walker Brewing Company
120 Volkswagen Atlas - Photo: Volkswagen
211 Vitamix Aer Disc Container - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
121 Cake Kalk - Photo: Cake
212 The Bitter Truth Bogart’s Bitters - Photo: The Bitter Truth
122-125 Toyota Carolla Hatchback - Photo: Chase Pellerin
212 W.L. Weller CYPB - Photo: Chandler Bondurant
126 Kia Stinger GT - Photo: Kia Motors
213 Cocktail Codex - Photo: Chase Pellerin
127 Triumph Tiger 800 XCa - Photo: Triumph Motorcycles
214 Yeti Tundra Haul - Photo Chandler Bondurant
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