10. Toledano and Chan even put the B/1’s crown on the left—making it a destro—as “a little nod to the Midas,” Toledano said.
11. “No one’s ever really taken up the design language of the ’70s integrated bracelet watches and iterated and expanded on that idea,” Toledano said. While watches with integrated bracelets like the Nautilus and Audemars Piguet Royal Oak are constantly picked over for inspiration, Toledano points to pieces like the Piaget Polo that have a seamless design from bracelet to watch. While the B/1 is less uniform than the Piaget, it maintains its straight lines and brutalist edges throughout.
12. Seriously—take a closer look. The bracelet links, the right edge of the watch’s head, and even the hour hand on the B/1 continue the ramped-up shape that peaks before dramatically sloping back down.
13. The hour hand looks like a Broken Goron Sword. (From the greatest video game ever made.)
14. The disco-ready lapis dial. Stone dials are all over my Instagram feed, and navy lapis was an especially popular choice on many watches from the ’70s.
15. And the B/1 is like my fiancée’s famous ancestor Donald Dinnie: They can both carry the hell out of a stone. “We actually tried a bunch of other [stones],” Toledano said. “Mother of pearl, meteorite, tiger’s eye. Some of those may appear magically in later iterations of the watch.”
16. Toledano and Chan couldn’t have predicted this, but this watch is landing at the perfect time. The summer of 2021 was the absolute zenith of steel sport watches: prices on the Rolex Daytona, Nautilus, and Royal Oak had all reached their unsustainable and volcanic peaks. It was in this environment that Toledano and Chan designed to launch an artsy watch indebted to the King Midas. “It’s total luck,” Toledano said. “What’s amazing about the last year is the watch world has opened up like a bloody orchid to the whole landscape—we can have different shaped watches, smaller watches, exotic stone dials, and interesting architectural shapes. That makes me happy on a personal level, because I’ve been obsessed with ‘70s watches for a while, but it’s also incredibly fortuitous for our brand.” Toledano admits to feeling: “Holy shit, we were saved by time.”
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