There is more than one way to look at that question, and I’m going to start with the easiest one.
Last week, we featured the work of the Mouret brothers, otherwise known as WatchArch on Instagram and YouTube, photographing a mix of timepieces that included new releases from Watches And Wonders 2021. One thing I’ve heard a lot in the chatter surrounding the salon is how Green Is The New Black. I’ve talked about how I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I also know that for a lot of us, visuals are more effective than words. So we’ve teamed up with the exceptional Denis Hayoun, watch photographer extraordinaire, to highlight a slew of green-dialled timepieces, all released in the last 12–18 months before Watches And Wonders 2021. If you want to identify something as a trend based on when something becomes popular with market observers, that’s fair enough. But it has nothing to do with actual watch releases, because green dials have always been a thing. Anyway, look out for the shoot, dropping on Thursday — you’ll love it.
Another way of understanding the word “green” is to look at environment-related issues. Highly topical at the moment, since Earth Day was just last Thursday. The inimitable Yannick Nardin put a sprightly spin on the subject, featuring watches that literally translate the Earth into a precious context, on the dial of an haute horlogerie timepiece. A starkly analytical yet ultimately optimistic opinion piece by Roberta Naas looked at the practices of different companies in responsible sourcing. Asking companies hard questions about their ecologically oriented manufacturing policies is always going to be tricky. Critics will say that the processes involved in recycled metals and synthetic diamonds create as much environmental damage as traditional mining. But is that really a fair criticism? Technology has the potential to refine environmentally damaging manufacturing processes. The societal and environmental costs of traditional mining, one might argue, are far more difficult to eliminate.
So let’s face some basic truths here. There are no perfect solutions. Every new approach, every new technology, comes with its own set of advantages and drawbacks when compared to the status quo. The question need to ask ourselves is not whether the new way is fully and incontrovertibly better than the old way. This sort of reductive thinking has very little pragmatic value. We should ask ourselves which set of advantages we want more: the old way’s or the new way’s? And then balance that against the question of which set of drawbacks we are better able to accommodate or compensate for: the old way’s or the new way’s? Watchmaking is particularly susceptible to challenges of this kind, simply because the ever-increasing chronological and technological gulf between the era it was established and the present day. Trying new things is an existential imperative. The alternative, of course, is that we slowly fossilise.
What about preserving tradition? Let me tell you something: traditions are only worth keeping alive if they enrich our existence in a meaningful way. Otherwise, I’m pretty happy to read about them in history books. As editor in chief of a watch website, I have a well-honed process of justification when it comes to horological traditions, a process drawn from an amalgamation of two unlikely sources — Marie Kondo and Ariana Grande. First of all, does it spark joy? Does it celebrate and reaffirm someone’s work and bring pleasure to our daily existence? Then it’s valuable and we should keep it around. If not, then in the words of one of pop music’s biggest superstars today, “Thank U, Next”.
This month, we’re offering one lucky reader a watch sponsored by our generous friends at Sequent, who make hybrid electro-mechanical smartwatches. Some people love their fresh take on a centuries-old object, others decry their radical departure from tradition. But at least they’re trying something new. Why don’t you, too?
