Some weeks, like last week, frankly, I look at the crop of new releases hitting my inbox and wonder about the state of things in the watch industry. Everything feels like an iteration, a slight tweak, or an attempt to return to the mean. So we get slightly more luxe Speedmasters (where the pricing immediately becomes the talking point), a cadre of new Defys that have us wondering “Didn’t they already make this one?” and Carreras that hint at the watch community sneaking back to the Big Watch Era.
Is it possible I’m overreacting? Of course. None of the watches mentioned above are bad by any means, in fact all of them are quite good, objectively speaking. It’s just that they don’t represent a ton of creativity or innovation, and when you work in the industry you become attuned to just how rare genuine creativity in watchmaking really is. It makes sense though. This is a business that’s all about selling watches and the biggest brands in the world need to cast a wide net. Big risks when it comes to design can’t reasonably be expected as the norm.
So we turn to the smaller makers, independents and microbrands, hoping they’ll be the ones to wave the proverbial Freak Flag. The new release from Toledano & Chan, the b/1.3r, with a custom made solid gold dial, is the kind of watch you love to come across in the midst of the big guys refreshing product lines and going through the motions.
Their latest introduces a slightly smaller case in blasted titanium, measuring 32mm versus 33.5mm for the previous design. That small change, in a case design that is both squareish and on an integrated bracelet, makes a significant difference in wearability and overall wrist presence, as does the lightness of titanium in the b/1.3r. Anyone who has had a chance to try on a Toledano & Chan watch knows that they don’t wear like a normal watch at all, even a normal integrated bracelet watch. The fit is much more cuff like, by design.
When Toledano & Chan introduced their first piece, the b/1 with a lapis lazuli dial, we were just at the beginning of what we all recognize now as a pretty significant stone dial trend. It could be argued that the brand’s cofounder, Phil Toledano, was himself part of the genesis of that trend, with an Instagram presence that honors what has come to be known as the “Geezer watch,” shorthand, typically, for smaller, dressier watches, often with shaped cases, stone dials, and sometimes gems or diamond accents. Think 70s Piaget as a basic reference point and you begin to get the idea.
To this point, Toledano & Chan has leaned into the stone and stone adjacent hysteria, following up the b/1 with watches featuring dials in mother of pearl and another with a dial and case in meteorite. They also ship their watches in a concrete box. Stone is part of the DNA of the brand. So it’s a little surprising they went in another direction with the b/1.3r.
“When we released the b/1 with a lapis dial, stone dials were pretty uncommon for a small brand, but it’s safe to say that last year there was a tsunami of stone dials,” Phil Toledano explained in an interview. “It became quickly apparent to us that the stone dial has become a commodity. Where’s the creativity in picking something out of a catalog?”
Phil and his business partner, watch designer Alfred Chan, had originally planned for this release to feature a stone dial, and they had reached the prototyping stage. But ultimately they decided to shelve that idea, start from scratch, and invent something new. “Riskier,” said Toledano, “but creatively a lot more satisfying. That’s who we want to be as a brand – rather than showing people what they want, we want to show them what they’ve never seen.”
What they’ve come up with for the b/1.3r is something they describe as a “ripple dial,” made from solid 18 carat gold, with a texture inspired by a ripple of water, emanating from the corner of the case. It’s a simple idea, filtered through the Toledano & Chan design language, which still includes a dramatically faceted, asymmetrical crystal, the whole package becomes more a lot more visually complex than you’d anticipate, with views and impressions of the dial changing significantly if seen from an unusual angle, or through one of the facets on the sapphire.
“It took us about 6 months of experimenting to get to this final version,” Phil told me when I asked him about getting the dial to meet his vision. “It’s always a challenge when you work with a factory to have them do something they’ve never seen, so the initial learning curve is steep. Then it’s a war of inches, until you finally get to exactly the thing you’re after.”
The b/1.3r represents a more ambitious price point for Toledano & Chan, with the watch retailing for $10,200. The brand has produced one-offs for auction that have hammered well into the five figures, but the original lapis lazuli dialed watch was a significantly more modest creation with a lower cost of entry (that watch retailed for $4,000). The brand is in different territory with the b/1.3r, but unlike the price creep that we see from large brands that continue to offer products that are materially the same for a higher and higher cost, the b/1.3r shows real signs that Toledano & Chan are interested in pushing forward as a brand, increasing the degree of difficulty with each release.
More information on the b/1.3r can be found on the Toledano & Chan website here.
