Six months ago the name Dennison suddenly burst into relevance once again after the heritage case manufacture was revived as a new brand with their debut A.L.D collection. Building on their heritage designing cases for brands including Rolex, Omega and JLC, the A.L.D immediately stood out for its distinctive cushion case created by renowned designer Emmanual Gueit. Now they’re teaming up with Patek Phillipe collectors’ platform Collectability for their debut collaboration, fittingly called the Dennison + Collectability.
If you’re not familiar with Collectability, it’s a platform dedicated to all things related to collecting vintage and pre-owned Pateks. And they really know what they’re talking about as the platform was founded by John Reardon, the former Head of Watches at Christie’s and well known private collector. They position themselves as educators aiming to give collectors the knowledge they need to buy and sell Patek Philippe watches with confidence. It makes a lot of sense for this to be both brands’ first collaborations, sharing an interest in heritage case design with a particular focus on the 1960s and 70s.
The Dennison + Collectability measures 37mm x 33.65mm in stainless steel with that same A.L.D cushion shape from Gueit. There are two versions of the watch available, one in exposed steel and the other with a gold PVD coating. Normally I’m all on board the steel train for its more down to Earth sensibility but here I actually like the luxurious edge of the gold because it works nicely with the rich sunray brushed blue dial.
That dial is actually one of the standout elements of the collaboration. For the first time they’ve added a sector divide with a metallic ring around the central hand stack. The peripheral section being a lighter shade of blue than the centre. It’s not so dramatic as adding indexes or actual timekeeping scales – no, no, that would be far too gauche. On a more serious note, I do like the addition of a bit more structure to the display, it gives you something to bite onto visually instead of wide, flat expanse.
On the whole it’s a very smart dress watch. Another tick in its favour is the fact that all logos are presented on the solid caseback – while Collectability is a cool platform, it’s not exactly a cool word to have on the dial of your watch.
One of the surprising elements of Dennison’s remarkable relaunch is that their watches, so far, have been entirely quartz. The Dennison + Collectability houses the Swiss Ronda Quartz 1062. Yet its still spoken of with the same prestige as an affordable mechanical watch. It just goes to show the power of a good design and the involvement of names like Gueit. Hopefully they will follow the route laid down by Furlan Marri and use their initial quartz success to springboard to mechanical in future – probably a manual movement to maintain the dressy proportions. The Dennison + Collectability is priced at $690 (approx. £520), with a five day pre-order period open from May 6th.
Price and Specs:
Model:
Dennison
x Collectability Sunray Dial
Case:
37mm
width x 33.65mm height x 6.05mm thickness, stainless steel or gold PVD, ultra-slim cushion case
Dial:
Two-tone
sunray finish
Water resistance:
30m
(3 bar)
Movement:
Swiss
Ronda calibre 1062 quartz
Functions:
Hours,
minutes
Strap:
Leather
strap with pin buckle
Price:
$690
(approx. £550), limited to 5 days of pre-orders
More details at Dennison.
Oracle Time