If you are a guy looking to buy your first real watch in 2024 all roads lead to Tudor.
I am not taking about the watch enthusiast who already has 20 watches. I am not talking about the guy who works on Wall Street who needs to flex for fancy CEO’s in the Hamptons. I am talking about the guy who works from home or has a hybrid work schedule, is aged somewhere between 30-45, who has means but also has difficulty with fashion, and is looking to take that first step past an Apple Watch. He doesn’t need or want a dress watch. He could easily spend 10K if he wanted but would feel some shame because even though he doesn’t admit it, he also listens to NPR from time to time and knows the world is turning against the materialism of the COVID years. He hasn’t yet learned about the concept of a 1 watch collection, or grails, and doesn’t know what a GADA watch is, but he knows that whatever he is about to buy needs to go with pretty much everything he owns. A second watch isn’t yet on the horizon. For him, watches are clothes. They are not a hobby. Watches are not an idea but an accessory. This is his first watch. For him, all roads lead to Tudor.
The reason for this has as much to do with the history of watches as it does Tudor. Briefly, the history of watches goes something like this.
- 1510: Pocket watch invented
- 1914: Trench watches replace pocket watches in combat
- ~1920-1950: Art Deco watches
- ~1950-1970: The golden years where dudes were given a watch for 20 years working at the company, divers wore skin divers on the weekends, pilots consulted their pilot watches, and drivers wore chronographs while driving with fingerless leather gloves with those holes cut out by the knuckles.
- 1970’s: Funky 70’s things with experimental case designs and kooky colors.
- 1974-1983: Quartz crisis
- Early 1980’s: Swatch, Tag Heuer, and Swiss Army Watches.
- 1983-2001: The neo-vintage years, including the steroid wristed, 46mm, years.
- 2001-2012:Rise of the microbrands
- 2012-2022: Faux-tina and heritage reissue years
- 2023-present: The Honey Dripping Years.
In 2024, it is too hard to ignore the trend. We are ankle deep in the Honey Dripping Years. Long COVID is apparently rampant in Switzerland and caused the watch industry to lose their collective minds, lose the script, polish every surface so watches look like they are dripping with honey, and decide that most dudes want to spend 10K on watches.
Meanwhile, the watch pundits, bloggers, and Youtubers (although there are notable exceptions) play along, sounding more like a comedy sketch skit, making fun of watch pundits fawning over puddles of honey rather than offering meaningful insight and/or opinion. It is now clear, the luxury watch industry, except Tudor, has little to offer if you are a normal dude looking for his first watch after an Apple Watch.
In my experience, most normal dudes want to have an opinion and stand out, but only a little. We are scarred by the experience when a wife or girlfriend convinced us to buy that powder blue shirt, we wore it once, then jammed it in the back of the closet because we felt stupid wearing it. Most dudes don’t buy pink bikes, zebra stripe-painted bikes, or those bikes with the paint splatter design. They like the idea of those things, but, in the end, they just don’t. Similarly, polis is interesting until you get it home for a first-timer.
There is a reason why the black dive watch is iconic, and the neon green dive watch isn’t. We want to be different and the act of wearing a luxury watch, in and of itself, is different enough for the fist timer. Sometime during the COVID pandemic, however, luxury watch brands started smelling their own farts. They forgot what it was like to be a first-timer, genuinely worried if they would look stupid wearing a ceramic-clad, 42mm watch with mirror-polished lugs.
I am not sure if there is a name for our archetypal dude dipping his toe into the luxury world. Maybe a tool watch guy? An EDC guy? A TGN guy? A Bark and Jack? A Captain Boring? This guy needs a name because he is a growing cohort with only a single company speaking directly to him. All roads lead to Tudor.
Tudor Pelagos image used with permission by @coffeesandcalibers
Shopping for a first luxury watch can be a daunting proposition without adequate preparation. Watch nerds are numb to it, but the first time for our archetypal tool watch guy means going to a jewelry store and recoiling in horror at the hyper-polished steel, sapphire, and ceramic that makes watches look like they are dripping with honey. Even if he can easily afford an $8500 watch, the vomit reflex stops him in his tracks when he sees the prices.
Rolex lead the charge toward madness and everyone chased. Ever since the maxi case, maxi polish, Rolex Rolex Rolex Rolex Rolex on the rehaut, and oil sheen ceramic bezels, things got more and more difficult for our Bark and Jack. For example, by 2024, nearly all of Omega’s line of Seamaster watches are dripping honey. The Omega Planet Oceans are comically large. I have a sweet spot for Breitling, but no first-timer can rock a modern Navitimer or Chronomat without feeling a little weird and scared of dripping honey all over their Allbirds. The same goes for Tag Heuer (Solargraph excluded), Zenith, Panerai, Grand Seiko, IWC, and on and on. For the first-timer, all roads lead to Tudor. Tudor is the bridge between the Apple Watch and acquired taste luxury where, after acclimation and indoctrination period, polish, honey, and prices may no longer induce vomition. Our guy isn’t there just yet.
Tudor lives in a world of their own. Tudor is the last brand standing for whom polishing is an accent and not the main course. Tudor says look at me but only a little. Tudor watches are expensive but not insane. Tudor watches are discreet but impressive. The quality: price ratio is well above average This is why all roads lead to Tudor. In 2024, there literally aren’t any other roads. All other roads were officially closed at Watches and Wonders 2024.
Some would argue that Tudor watches are boring, but I can almost guarantee the person making the argument already has a long history with watches and/or carries a man purse. Tudor is the Low Spark of High Heel Boys x Bon-Yr-Aur stomp x Psycho Killer of watches. Tudor is dad rock but a deeper cut than Bob Seeger. Meanwhile, the luxury watch world is busy listening to Vangelis as they polish their watches and continue to smell their exhaust, all the while forgetting what it is like to be the archetypal dude taking his first steps into the luxury watch game. Tudor never forgot. All roads lead to Tudor.
Tudor Black Bay Chronograph image used with permission by @coffeesandcalibers.
A more valid criticism of Tudor, at least in my opinion, is that it is time to let the faux-tina, heritage-inspired nonsense, fall by the wayside and build on what they started during the faux-tina years. On the one hand, they acknowledged this with the new monochrome Black Bay at Watches and Wonders 2024. Epic. The Pelagos and Pelagos FXD prove the rule. On the other hand, that gilt-clad GMT released at Watches and Wonders 2024 has me marginally worried we are not yet done with the faux-tina. One can only hope that future GMT colorways will displace the gilt.
I challenge anyone questioning this thesis to come up with another brand where even experienced collectors can develop a 3 watch collection and be satisfied that they have something for daily use and special occasions. Tudor is the only brand right now where it would be easy to go mono-brand and not need anything else. Black Bay Chrono, monochrome Black Bay, and Black Bay GMT. Done. Personally, I would throw in a Pelagos because brushed titanium is all time. Once Tudor twiddles with the colors on that new GMT a bit, I am confident in saying that Tudor is where Rolex was in 1994 when a Submariner, Explorer or Explorer II, and GMT would easily satisfy a mono-brand, 3-watch collection for our archetypal EDC dude.
There are other mainstream brands our archetypal dude with a honey aversion might consider. Longines comes to mind, but it isn’t going to be a Longines. Longines and similar watches are great, but, at least in the USA, Longines has the brand cachet of the shallow end of a public pool in July. The 4th wall in watches is pretending that somehow our choices about brand don’t matter as much as the actual watch. The reality is that they do. The brand says a lot about who we are and is a signal to the world about us. The secret that nobody wants to talk about is that we are just monkeys doing monkey things all the while pretending that we are anything but monkeys. Spoiler alert. Nobody is above the brand game. You can choose to wear all black, cut the logos off your clothes, and maybe grab a G-shock, vintage gold 36mm thing you found at the second-hand store, but those choices are still choices and signals about who you are and what you value. There is no opting out. This is another reason why for many choosing to go beyond an Apple Watch, all roads lead to Tudor.
Tudor Black Bay GMT image used with permission by @coffeesandcalibers
There is a subset of these tool watches, EDC, TGN, Bark, and Jack, whatever you want to call them, dudes who are decidedly averse to dripping honey but bend a little further from the mainstream. When asked what they want, they might reply, “I want a Tudor but not a Tudor.” For them, the journey is a bit harder, but the easiest next step is to enter the Windup Watch Fair world, where the not-Tudor Tudor watches live. The Windup Fair is the land of the alternative choice. Windup is the land of the microbrand, and we might as well go ahead and rename these watches “Windup Watches” to elevate them and differentiate them from the insane number of micro-microbrands, of oftentimes of dubious quality or so poorly funded that they will, inevitably, fail to thrive like a chicken on an industrial farm without antibiotics over the next few years.
It has been said that people don’t want choices. They want confidence in their decisions. This is an issue for the microbrand watch world. It is overwhelming. Online shopping is good for something things. Microbrand watches are not one of them. In my experience, helping dudes enter the watch world, unless they can feel a watch IRL and get confirmation that the brand is at least found in boutiques, microbrand watches are a tough sell for a first-timer with means. For example, Sinn (a personal favorite of mine) should be an easy sell, but for our archetypical first timer there is no difference between a Sinn and anything else. Sinn watches are just pictures on a website. All roads also lead to Tudor because it is easy. You can find a Tudor to see, feel, and touch in every major city.
For our not-Tudor Tudor guy, the winding road may eventually lead to the Windup Watch Fair because it is the only place where you can try Windup Watches in any meaningful way. Going to a Windup Fair ideal, but if you can’t make it, start the search for not-Tudor Tudor watches here. That list of brands is a good place for our non-Tudor Tudor dude to start looking for an alternative. Personally, I am going long on Fortis.
Sticking with our dad rock analogy, if Tudor is Led Zeppelin, Fortis is Yes. It’s not that inaccessible Topographic Oceans noise, but it’s catchy. I’ve seen all good people. Yes. Fortis is decidedly not Jethro Tull. That is too far. Fortis flutes are not a thing, but Fortis does do things differently by 1/2 with quality and design to match. For our archetypal not-Tudor Tudor guy, or for the next watch after an Apple Watch and after a Tudor – perhaps Fortis.
Conclusion: For many normal guys, with normal lives, a dog other than a pitbull, an iPhone, a girlfriend, boyfriend, or wife who is saving for a house, wears maybe a little but not too much Vuori, and watches UFC on TV from time to time but would not actually ever attend a UFC event, he has basically three options for a watch in 2024 1) Apple Watch 2) Tudor 3) Windup Watches. Again, I am going long on Fortis.
It seems every major, luxury, brand without the word Tudor in their name lost their mind in 2022-23 and the madness became painfully evident in 2024. They honey dripping years are not built for our TGN dudes.
If you are going to be at Windup, please hit me up. I will likely be putting my money where my mouth is at the Fortis booth and checking out some rockstone. Rockstone, roughly translated, appears to mean “stand out but not that much.” Right up my alley.
Bonus therapy session: Big watches were a trend. Faux-tina was a trend. Honey dripping polish is a trend. Trends come and go. This too will pass. Maybe the watch companies jump on the quiet luxury trend and bring back the brushing. If you are reading this far, it is possible you got wrapped up in the polished honey trend in the late Covid and post-Covid years. For all of us who have huge watches, watches that are too polished, and watches that fail to foresee the quiet luxury trend sweeping the world, I can assure you that you are in good company. Just like a kid who had a mullet when he was 11 and now can’t stand mullets, it is OK to hate the last trend or last thing you were into, but it is not OK to hate yourself for getting wrapped up in it. It is part of the process. The correct response is not to exit the game but to refocus and maybe tone it down a bit. The good news is that there is still a market for polished honey and watches you no longer feel comfortable wearing. Trading up or out at CW Watch Shop is one option. Might I suggest a 79190 or something else with a little less polish? All roads lead to Tudor, don’t they?
