Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Diver Forged Carbon - Monochrome Watches
Our guest contributor Angus shares his views on the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Forged Carbon that was released earlier this year. Not only the Royal Oak had something to celebrate this year, but the Royal Oak Offshore, or ROO called by collectors, had something to celebrate; it was first launched 20 years ago.My son is 13 years of age and a precociously developed Adonis. I may appear somewhat biased but most parents will forgive the rose-tinted adoration of my handsome heir. On a recent holiday my son broke the news that he longer wished to pursue his chosen sport of rowing but return to the perilous game of rugby. He explained he missed the camaraderie of being in a large team. Ad - Scroll to continue with article My heart sank, my gorgeous boy was informing me he wished to jeopardise the lovely features of his beautiful face to the perils of stamping b

A Personal Story on the Ventura V-Tec Sigma
If you follow MONOCHROME, even occasionally, you know that we're all about mechanical watches. It takes something really special to get us excited about something battery-powered, but every now and then, that something comes along. The retro Hamilton PSR is a recent example, along with the quartz Citizen Calibre 0100 that's accurate to +/-1 second per year. Also, we sometimes dig into our own collections to highlight a special piece, like Frank's vintage Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Brice's Breguet Type XX. So, in this hands-on review, I'm going to talk about my own Ventura V-Tec Sigma, an unconventional luxury digital watch that once guest-starred in a Nicolas Cage movie.BACKGROUND VenturaVentura was founded by Pierre Nobs in 1987, who left the mainstream watch industry to find something more meaningful. Disheartened by the fake nostalgia coming from well-known brands, he wanted to create unique, avant-garde watches in collaboration with renowned industrial designers. It wasn't long

Gerald Charles Maestro 8.0 Squelette - Hands-On, Price
The mission of Gerald Charles, an independent family-owned watch company based in Lugano, is to perpetuate the legend of the late Gerald (Charles) Genta, the foremost watch designer of the 20th century. With a portfolio of watches built around an extravagant Genta case design known as Maestro, the brand launches the Gerald Charles Maestro 8.0 Squelette, a skeletonised version of the watch designed by Octavio Garcia – ex-artistic director of Audemars Piguet and founder of Gorilla Watches. The choice of Garcia was surely intentional, given that Gerald Genta's meteoric career took off with a watch design he made for Audemars Piguet in 1972 that is now more popular than ever.Frederico Ziviani, CEO of Gerald Charles, and Octavio Garcia, designerThe MaestroGerald Charles Genta (1931-2011) was the brainchild behind the luxury sports watch. Following a renewed and highly successful design for Omega's Constellation watch in 1959, Gerald Genta's design career took off. Icons like the AP Ro

MeisterSinger City Edition 2018 - 58 Different Watches Representing Major World Cities - Monochrome Watches
MeisterSinger is following up on last year's No. 01 City Edition, which represented 45 different cities in an equal number of limited edition watches. The company is known for having single hand dials that actually make up its entire portfolio, which is unique among watch brands. It’s now bringing 58 City Edition pieces for 2018 to represent 58 different cities or countries around the world, from New York to Munich to The Hague.MeisterSinger has collaborated with various worldwide jewellers to decorate the exhibition glass backs of each edition, displaying silhouettes of landmarks or skylines of specific locations. Each city or country name is engraved on the steel caseback, with some cities having an additional aphorism. For example, Stockholm has The Venice of the North engraved as well. Several editions also represent entire countries (unlike last year's city-only editions), with Portugal featuring a stylized guitar, for example (for the Fado genre of music). There are also Ro

Two unique Porsche cars from opposite ends of the world
It's always fun to try and find a suitable topic for The Petrolhead Corner, our weekly episodic slice of car-related content. Every Saturday we publish a story that interests us, and hopefully is fun to read for you as well. This week we have a trio of cars lined up all sharing the same badge, but stemming from very different parts of the world. The two cars in question couldn't be much different though, as we go from a vintage Porsche turned into a Pike's Peak monster, to a full-fledged electric race car that’s destined for the future! World's apart, but kindred spirits.Porsche is one of the most prolific sports car manufacturers in the industry, even though they sell more non-sportscars than actual sports cars. And by non-sportscars, I mean SUV’s and such, no matter how fast they might be. The core of the brand is still very much the 911, but over the past 20 years or so the company has had huge success in taking that 911 spirit into new territories. Cars like the Cayenne