DMT Beauty Transformation: Watch Snob Takes on Bezel Fading
featured Khareem Sudlow

Watch Snob Takes on Bezel Fading

January 03, 2020DMT Beauty

#DMTBeautySpot #beauty

Watch Snob on Steel Fatigue, Bezel Fading and Watch Etiquette

Is Aikon Akin to an Icon?

What's your feeling on Maurice Lacroix Aikon 39mm Automatic? It seemed to me as a good quality watch, and decent enough for someone trying to get into the whole fad of sports steel watches. What do you feel?

I think that the fad for stainless steel watches on steel bracelets has gone quite far enough without us having to consider yet another one. I admire Maurice Lacroix for somehow continuing to soldier on making watches in a difficult market but the Aikon is not only derivative, it is listlessly so. 

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I appreciate the fact that it is very difficult nowadays to design a stainless steel sports watch on an integrated bracelet that is not derivative to some degree, but the fact that the Aikon uses a cheap imitation of the Royal Oak dial does it no favors, and the bezel treatment is simply too tentative for its own good. It makes no clear design statement and seems to have no reason to exist other than to be vaguely evocative of other, more interesting bezel. One may or may not like the Royal Oak but at least there can be no denying that it's design takes a position and commits to it. One does not make a watch that is an Icon merely by misspelling the word.

Handle with Care

Quite a few years ago, I was at [a] party ... and I happened to ask this other guy about his new watch (some sort of Breitling thingy). Now the very first thing that he did was to take it off his wrist, and offer it up to me for a proper inspection! A pretty decent chat followed, and I eventually reluctantly handed it back after some intense horological social intercourse. I can’t say that this happens to me a lot, and I was just wondering, is there some sort of unspoken etiquette in regards to handing ones watch over for a good old fashioned sticky-beak?  

I don’t think that there are any particular rules other than those which common sense would dictate. If you happen to be holding a drink, put it down and handle the watch with both hands. Don’t attempt to operate any of the complications, if it has any, without asking the owner. Don’t manipulate the crown. Don’t, in a misguided attempt to be helpful, wipe off the watch with a paper napkin (or indeed, anything else) before handing it back, lest you scratch it. In short, handle with care and do everything in your power to ensure that you hand the watch back in the condition in  which you received it (it is probably polite to ask before trying it on as well).

As far as handing your watch to someone for inspection, common sense also applies. It is amazing to me that watch enthusiasts so often handle watches so carelessly, by the way, the habit of piling watches on each other is sure to leave at least some of the timepieces in question, in worse shape than when they were added to the pile. Putting watches down on surfaces that will scratch then is equally incomprehensible (brick, marble or what have you). I do not say that watches necessarily should be babied; they’re supposed to be a source of enjoyment, not anxiety after all. But doing the horological equivalent of leaving a case of La Tache sitting out in the sun is unnecessary and avoidable.

Perfect Pepsi Patina

I bought a Rolex GMT II Pepsi-Cola in 1998 and it's been my main watch ever since (I'm tempted to say buying it was one of the few decisions I made in my 20s that I'm still proud of). I've added a couple of others to my collection along the way, but most days it's the GMT I wear. I keep the watch well maintained and clean so it's always in good order, but one thing I have resisted doing to this point is renewing the finish on the bezel, where the red half has faded quite markedly.

I've been asked by the manager of the shop which manages my servicing whether I'd like to get the finish renewed, but for me it's part of the patina of the watch. My godfather has an early '70s GMT Pepsi (I bought mine because I admired his so much) which doesn't seem to have faded at all, so I'm wondering if the fading on mine some sort of defect? Interestingly (to me) I was chatting to a chap at a Christmas party last week who was wearing a similarly aged GMT II with the same fading. I guess my first question is; do they all fade?

On a second, but related, topic; while my main reason for keeping the watch as-is is my attachment to the patination (tied to the sense that I've acquired a fair degree of patination myself over the decades I've been wearing it), I'm also worried that if I did agree to have the work done, it would look worse than it did when new. I'd rather keep my watch original but showing its age than shiny but inauthentic. When Rolex do renew these bezels, what's your view on the quality of the finish?

Love the column by the way!

If you’re attached to the patina on the bezel in terms of what it does for you as a reminder of adventures you’ve had with the watch over the years, of course there is no reason to have it changed if you don’t want to. It’s your watch. The paint on metal bezel watches will certainly fade over time; how much, depends on things like exposure to sunlight, humidity and temperature — the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight being the primary cause.

The reason Rolex and so many other makers have switched over to industrial ceramics of one form and another for watch bezels, is that they are for all intents and purposes fade-proof (they also are basically scratch-proof and although theoretically speaking, they are more brittle than metal I think at this point in history if this were a fatal flaw we would know it; the internet is not clogged with images of cracked Rolex or Omega bezels). 

Bezel finish is not “renewed” by the way, the bezel insert is simply replaced. Though the idea seems to horrify some people, the fact is that for most of the history of wristwatches, replacing worn parts was the rule and it is only recently that a fetish has developed for so-called original condition. The degree to which this shows a superficial understanding of watches and watchmaking, can be clearly seen in the fact that no one worries about replacing a mainspring, which cannot be seen and therefore, can not be boastfully displayed to one’s equally mechanically naive compatriots. 

It is also worth pointing out that a replacement bezel will devalue the watch in today’s market for collectible timepieces, but I don’t have the impression that you would find that to be much of a consideration, so unless you want to preserve the watch for a descendant to monetize (which would mean never polishing the case, never replacing the hands, and never replacing the dial) you needn’t be concerned with hypothetical auction value fifty years from now (or whenever).

Send the Watch Snob your questions at editorial@askmen.com or ask him a question on the @AskMen Instagram with the #AskMenWatchSnob hashtag.

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Watch Snob, Khareem Sudlow

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