This is an edition of the newsletter Box + Papers, Cam Wolf’s weekly deep dive into the world of watches. Sign up here.
Update 9/6/24
From show-stopping indie models to big-name icons, these are GQ’s favorite new timepiece releases.
There has been an overwhelming amount of excellent new watches over the past few weeks. So many in fact that I’ve been inspired to drop a (much anticipated, surely) update to my list of the favorite watches of 2024 (so far). While the household names of the Swiss watch industry—Cartier, Omega, Tudor, Piaget, Zenith—dominated the first half of the year, the remaining months belong mostly to the upstarts. In fact, this whole exercise might just be an excuse for me to gush about the first piece on the list.
Best in Show: Berneron Mirage
The new watch from Berneron will be hard to top as my absolute favorite watch of the year. Founder Sylvian Berneron’s brand is just a year old. It debuted a version of the Mirage last year that immediately floored me—it tricks the eye and appears like a watch in motion. If the Cartier Crash is meant to look like a watch that survived an accident, the Mirage looks like a watch that suggests you should see the other guy. The centrifuge of a minute track looks like it’s rebelling against smooth edges. Woo!
So onto the new versions. Last weekend, Berneron, the person, was at the Geneva Watch Days tradeshow showing off a version of the watch that’s even better than the original. The new Mirage is slimmed down to 34 millimeters, which required Berneron to build and implement a new movement. The most show-stopping new feature, however, is the stone dials. There are two variations of the updated Mirage: white gold with lapis lazuli and yellow gold with tiger eye. Somehow Berneron combines a hypefecta—the Crash’s shapeshifting design, Piaget’s stone dials, and shrunken-down vintage proportions—into a watch that transcends the flavor of the moment. Even Kevin O’Dell, one of the most anti-hype dealers in the business (I should know—I’ve taken the brunt of his famous Instagram Rants™ before!), couldn’t contain his admiration for Berneron’s new releases. “I think his watch is amazing,” O’Dell told me last week. “The guy has a clear vision, and he’s not letting anything get in his way no matter what.”
The Mark Cho Fan Club Selection: Unimatic x The Armoury Modello Cinque U5S-TA ‘Blu Notte’
