One aspect that makes the world of luxury watches and watch collecting so beautiful is the variety of models and watch brands – there’s truly something for every style, budget, and preference. But what if you had to choose just one watch brand for the rest of your life? We set our authors to work getting to the bottom of this. The rules were as followed:
- You have to choose one watch brand to wear for the rest of your life
- Money is no object
- Fun twist: You get one “wild card” watch, i.e., you can swap one watch of your chosen brand for a watch from another brand. Which one would it be?
Let’s get this thought experiment started. Next up: Aaron Voyles.
As a watch enthusiast, I often create fictional circumstances and allow my mind to wander into the realms of pure merriment. I come up with fictitious collections for myself within specific budgets, imagine myself selling every watch I have and using the money to buy just one watch to wear forever, or creating perfect three-watch collections with one diver, one chronograph, and one dress watch or some such combination of watch types. However, I have never actually pondered on giving my wrist to one brand for the rest of my life, so when I got the brief for this article, I was quite amused.
I mean, my immediate response was Rolex. They make up the bulk of my collection as things stand, and I dress pretty casually, so generally speaking, Rolex’s sports models suit me down to the ground. However, after some thought, I decided that it wouldn’t be Rolex. I love their watches, but I can’t imagine myself being as amused with their offerings in 40 years as I am today. That is to say, Rolex’s watches aren’t interesting enough to serve as the only brand I can wear for the rest of my life. So what brand did I choose? MB&F.
Why MB&F?
When it comes down to why I would only wear MB&F, I think it boils down to one thing: variety, and as they say, variety is the spice of life. While there are plenty of brands that I love, like Rolex, Patek, Lange, and lots of others, MB&F has a bit of everything. Their offering is so aesthetically, mechanically, and physically diverse that I think even after 50 years of wearing their watches, I would never grow bored of looking at whatever I had on my wrist, and that’s only considering what they have produced thus far. I can only imagine what they’ll come out with in the future.
Besides the sheer variety, I also feel that a high level of craftsmanship would be an important factor in the brand that I choose. The watches have to interest me beyond just their design, but also how well they are made and their attention to detail. After all, if I’m going to wear watches from a specific brand for the rest of my life, I’m going to spend a lot of time studying their most intricate details, so a high level of craftsmanship would be key. Again, this isn’t exactly something Rolex focuses on, given that the (very) vast majority of their watches don’t even have sapphire crystal case backs, and MB&F most certainly ticks that box.
Alongside those two criteria, I feel like I would need to resonate with the brand’s ethos. While there are plenty of other brands that came to mind before MB&F, they are just a bit too serious for my tastes, at least in terms of being something that I can wear for the rest of my life. I suppose this feeds into the variety argument that I made before, but for most brands, their aesthetic is relatively unchanging in that their watches usually use the same case shapes, the same dial layouts, and such. MB&F takes a far more whimsical approach to their design process thanks to the wacky things that inspire Max Büsser, and so the brand doesn’t take itself too seriously. Is this watch inspired by a dog or jellyfish, 1960s architecture, or a spaceship from a 1970s Japanese anime? Yes, and for that, I love it.
My Number One Pick
While I could pretty easily rattle off a list of a few watches from MB&F and tell you what ones I would like to wear and why, I think I should tell you my number one pick instead, but it’s not an easy choice. I’m mainly stuck between three different watches: the LM Perpetual Evo, MB&F’s sports watch; the HM11 Architect, MB&F’s latest house-inspired wristwatch; and the MB&F x Urwerk Experiment ZR012, one of MB&F’s earliest collaborations and perhaps one of their least-known watches. A difficult choice, I think my number one pick would be the ZR012.
Launched in 2012, the ZR012 is technically from a spin-off brand that MB&F and Urwerk both created called C3H5N3O9, which is the chemical formula for nitroglycerine. Inspired by the Wankel rotary engine, the ZR012’s display features two rotor-style discs on top of one another to indicate the minutes and hours along linear paths. The resulting display is somewhat closely related to Urwerk’s satellite system, whereby the hands rotate across a fixed scale to indicate the time. With a ton of mechanical merriment to feast upon, the ZR012 is probably a watch that I could look at forever, so it has to be my number one pick.
Beyond its display, the ZR012 also features an equally unique construction. Limited to 24 units split across two variants of 12 units made from either zirconium or blackened zirconium, the ZR012’s overarching design is MB&F through and through. Boasting a case design closely resembling that of the HM10, which was only launched in 2020, the ZR012 is very much ahead of its time. Boasting articulating lugs like those that originated on the HM4, the ZR012 hugs the wrist as closely as a 44mm x 55mm ever could, and the use of zirconium allows for its large case not to be all that heavy, so you get a unique watch that isn’t a chore to carry around on your wrist all day. I’ll need that as I wear the ZR012 into my old age!
My Joker Watch
As part of this thought experiment, I am allowed to pick one watch from a brand besides MB&F, and while I have just waxed lyrical about why variety and not taking yourself too seriously is why I would pick MB&F, my joker watch is a Rolex, the new Rolex Daytona in platinum, the ref. 126506 to be specific. Besides the fact that the Daytona is one of my all-time favorites, it features an exhibition case back so I can get lost in its automatic cal. 4131 movement. Furthermore, its ice blue dial is arguably one of the nicest dials on the market, or so I think, so I could spend a few years looking lovingly into that too.
Beyond that, its color combination of ice blue, brown, and platinum, and its general wearability and reliability tick every box I would need for it to be the only watch that I can wear besides an MB&F. I could even put it on a leather strap and wear it as a dress watch because we all know that MB&F doesn’t exactly make the most formal or understated of watches. Still, I wouldn’t hold that against them, would you?
