Studio Underd0g x Fears The Gimlet Watch Review

As last year’s British Watchmakers’ Day illustrated, British horology is in its modern-day ascendency. What was, just a decade ago, nothing more than a nice idea has blossomed into one of the most creative lynchpins of watch design in the world. There are countless reasons why that’s become the case, but for me, there are three key ones: fun, accessibility and diversity.

Fun is self-explanatory; British watches don’t take themselves nearly as seriously as their Swiss counterparts. Cool colours, funky designs, a tongue-in-cheek outlook, British watch brands are like your favourite weekend drinking buddy in their straightforward fun. At the same time, he’s a cheap drinker. The return on investment is solid.

But while British brands do tend to share a few roundabout traits, perhaps the definitive reason they’re on the up is diversity. In what other place could you find Mr Jones’ Perfectly Useless Afternoon, something as intensely design-focused as Schofield, and the horological luminaries of Garrick, and beyond, right up to Roger Smith? There’s something for everyone.

So yes, most British brands are incredibly distinct, but through their innately idiosyncratic approach to design, there’s always some common ground, even if that’s between two watch labels that on the surface are polar opposites. Because if there’s one thing we Brits can all bond over, it’s a drink. At least, that’s the case for Messrs Rich Benc and Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, the men behind Studio Underd0g and Fears.

On the one hand you have a brand built on humour, on not taking anything too seriously. Studio Underd0g has turned tongue-in-cheek into an empire of sell-out releases and unexpected collaborations. On the other hand, Fears is a heritage brand reborn that favours old school, 1930s elegance over playfulness and has become one of the most important modern brands in the revival of British watchmaking. On paper, you may assume that never the two shall meet. If that’s the case however, I’d like to introduce you to the Fears x Studio Underd0g Gimlet.

A gimlet, for those less inclined towards alcoholic epicureanism, is a cocktail. Specifically, a very, very strong gin cocktail that’s as strong as a martini and goes down far smoother. It has a slight green tint, nothing like lime, but more a pale greenish-yellow-to-white. It’s also liable to take you home and not call you back if you let it – which is apparently what happened to Rich.

I’ve known Nicholas for worryingly close to a decade now, so believe me when I say, the man likes a drink and can handle it better than nearly anyone I know. So, when he and Rich headed on a night out back in 2022, the writing was already on the wall.

This wasn’t the pair’s first meeting of course. As Rich puts it, “when I launched my brand in 2021, 255 people rallied together allowing me to bring my ideas to reality. One of those early backers was Nicholas. Nicholas has supported Studio Underd0g from the outset and has continued to help me navigate the watch landscape over the years.”

It’s not hard to see why Nicholas had such faith in the nascent watch designer. As the man himself puts it, “the fact he was doing something completely different and original was such a breath of fresh air in the industry and we quickly became good personal friends. I’d originally suggested we might work together on something in the early days of Underd0g and it was a while until the time was right to start work on what was then Project 23.” So, when Rich was showing Nicholas early ideas for the Field Series 02, the form Project 23 would take became obvious. A big eye chrono Brunswick was a no-go, but the dual layered dial? That could work. But what colour to go for? Fears is a brand that valued pared-back elegance, so something like the vape-esque Pink Lem0nade wouldn’t work. Nothing too out-there would.

Which brings us back to the seemingly apocryphal Gimlet Night. After smashing a number of the cocktails at various London establishments, trying to come up with the right solution, the answer hit Rich at the same time as the next day’s hangover: what would be better than that perfect pale green/white of the notorious drink?

Here, that’s been rendered in the two-layered, fully lumed dial from Studio Underd0g Field Series 02, going from pale green to white, the green of the lime in the drink to the froth of foam at the top. You can smell the gin-laced citrus. It’s far subtler than the Pink Lem0nade but still has those two screws that are, along with the upper layer of sapphire, the collection’s signature. It’s not a rehash of the Field Series 02 either; it uses the exact same Sellita SW210-1 calibre automatic movement. The difference is that it’s otherwise pure Fears.

The Brunswick is a modern British icon, the herald of 1930s archival throwbacks before that became a zeitgeisty trope. It was the watch that made Fears – albeit on the shoulders of the original quartz Redcliff – and led to a resurgence in elegant, cushion cased watches sans sandwich dials and diving indexes. The Gimlet not only uses the Brunswick’s 38mm case, but it’s elegant numerals and skeletonised, pipette handset, shadowed on the lower green-tinted dial.

If you were going to ask me beforehand what form I’d expect a Studio Underd0g-Fears collaboration to take, this would be it. I’ve been wanting to see more from the Field series anyway as the dial execution is painfully cool and a bit more serious than the playful colours of the big eye chronos. That slightly more strait-laced approach is the middle-ground that allows the Field Series 02 to work on the Brunswick, a watch that’s proven its versatility over the years with a host of gorgeous dial executions. It just fits.

“When you first look at the watch,” says Nicholas, “you feel like it seems familiar but slightly different. Like a person with a new haircut, its them but also not quite them. It’s then that it clicks and you see that at once it feels like a Fears and a Studio Underd0g at the same time, almost snapping between the two constantly. The Gimlet combines the most distinctive parts of both brands design language in a very harmonious way.”

For Rich, it also symbolises “an unexpected friendship.” But it also, at least to him, embodies a warning: “However many gimlets Nicholas is having is too many! I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way…”

If you want to wear that warning yourself, you’ll need to be in the right place at the right time. The Studio Underd0g x Fears Gimlet will be available exclusively at British Watchmakers’ Day, Saturday 8th March, with 100 for sale in the morning, 100 in the afternoon. Given that the show’s debut saw queues around the block for a slice of Studio Underd0g and Time + Tide’s pizza party, you’ll want to get in line nice and early. And of course, congratulate yourself with a gin cocktail.

More details at Studio Underd0g.

​Oracle Time 

Read More