Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Music Editions
Imagine the soundtrack of the Royal Oak‘s debut in 1972 as Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” and Don McLean’s “American Pie” drifted across the radio waves. Fast-forward to 1993 with the launch of the Royal Oak Offshore and folks were rapping along to the urban sounds of Snoop Dogg, et al. Watches, like music, are cultural markers, reflecting trends and often, as in the case of the Royal Oak, becoming trendsetters themselves. Audemars Piguet celebrates its close affiliations with musicians and artists with the release of five Royal Oak Offshore models with colourful dials designed to echo the coloured bars on an equaliser (VU meter) in a recording studio. Available in 37 and 43mm case sizes in different materials (titanium, black ceramic and white gold), the Royal Oak Offshore Music Editions?pump up the volume with their techno-coloured dials.?Music and timekeeping go hand in hand, and AP’s links to music reach back to the mid-19th centu

Only Watch 2019 - Patek Philippe 6300A Unique Steel Grandmaster Chime
Here it is… The multi-million watch, potential record-breaker as the most expensive watch to be auctioned by Only Watch – remember the 5208T from 2017 (sold for CHF 6,200,000) and the 5016A from 2015 (sold for CHF 7,300,000)? What you’re looking at here is a unique example of an extremely rare piece, Patek’s most complicated wristwatch ever, the Ref. 6300, direct descendant of the Grandmaster Chime, but with a stainless steel case and a salmon dial… All the ingredients for a frenzied auction! Meet the Patek Philippe 6300A for Only Watch 2019.?We all know that Patek Philippe ALWAYS donates impressive pieces to Only Watch… Watches with Grande Complication stature like the tourbillon minute repeater perpetual calendar in steel, or the minute repeater chronograph perpetual calendar in titanium. For Only Watch 2019, Patek goes even further in exclusivity, by taking its most complex watch (ref. 6300G) in the collection – only a handful of these watch

First Look: The Titoni Airmaster Pilot Chronometer
Titoni is an independent family-owned watch brand founded in 1919 by Fritz Schluep in Grenchen, Switzerland, now in the hands of great-grandsons Marc and Olivier Schluep. With a variety of contemporary collections and even an in-house automatic powering its Line 1919 dress watch collection, the genuine interest in this brand resides in its remakes of golden oldies. Marking the 80th anniversary of a watch ordered by the US Army in 1945, Titoni releases the retro-inspired Airmaster Pilot Chronometer. With a balanced marriage of heritage features and contemporary specs, the Airmaster Pilot joins Titoni’s growing fleet of vintage-inspired models.Unlike the Heritage 83109 and the Heritage Chronograph, which?form part of the Heritage collection and have caught the eye of retro-styled watch fans, the Airmaster Pilot Chronometer shares a hangar with the more contemporary Airmaster collection. The Airmaster collection was, in fact, named after the brand's all-purpose 1969 Airmaster, coinc

Glashutte Original Senator Excellence Panorama Date Moon Phase Steel - Hands-On (Specs & Price)
As you well know, dear reader, we manage to get our hands on an enviable number of incredible timepieces here at MONOCHROME. Some, like the stunning Armin Strom Mirrored Force Resonance with guilloche dial by Kari Voutilainen, make their presence immediately felt, whilst others, like the Tudor Heritage Black Bay steel, are decidedly more understated, although no less appealing. Today, we are getting hands on with a watch that falls decidedly in this latter category, the Glashutte Original Senator Excellence Panorama Date Moon Phase in full steel.The Senator Excellence seriesIn the spring of 2016, Glashutte Original unveiled the Calibre 36 manufactory movement, which would become the basis of the new Senator Excellence collection. This collection can be seen as something of an evolution of the popular yet slightly dated Senator range, although at this stage the Senator Excellence models complement rather than replace the earlier ones. Ad - Scroll to continue with article

Ulysse Nardin Marine Chronometer Manufacture 2013 - Monochrome Watches
Ulysse Nardin is a visionary company. Such a declaration might seem overstated, especially when dealing with their longstanding, flagship model, the Marine Chronometer; however, remember Ulysse Nardin is the company who gave us the Freak, a genre-defying watch that was ahead of its time.Under the aegis of the late Rolf Schnyder, the company partnered with Ludwig Oechslin of now Ochs & Junior to realize the Freak in 2001. The visionary contribution of the Freak was not only its forward design, but, for our purposes here, it was the first watch to use a silicon escapement, followed by the Freak DIAMonSIL in 2007, which used a proprietary material called DIAMonSIL and silicon balance spring (see updated coverage here). When the winds of Swatch's ETA moratorium began to blow, Mr. Schnyder decided Ulysse Nardin needed its own in-house caliber. At Baselworld 2012, Current CEO Patrick Hoffman oversaw the introduction of the automatic caliber UN-118, the company's first base caliber, to th