US$300,000 for a mechanical Apple Watch ‘parody’, and other new releases from indie brands
Three timepieces from independent watchmakers MB&F, Ressence and H. Moser & Cie
In a recent, pointless argument with my bourgeois, don’t-know-how-good-they’ve-got-it friends, I realised that I don’t fully understand what indie music is. On a basic level, one would assume “indie” is short for “independent”, meaning the music has been released by an independent label. Well, that’s the American interpretation, anyhow.
If you’re from Britain, however, indie music is basically any guitar music and all the biggest indie bands, including horrendous dross such as Kasabian and the Kaiser Chiefs, are on the most corporate labels possible. So which is it? What does it all mean? Does anyone really care?
In the watch world, things are a lot clearer, in that independent means exactly that and the brands claiming indie status don’t belong to monolithic conglomerates such as Richemont, Swatch Group, LVMH and Kering.
The key feature, as the name suggests, is the perpetual calendar, so the watch indicates day, date, month with retrograde indicator for leap years. MB&F and Irish watchmaker Stephen McDonnell want you to see the beauty of their very complicated movement so it’s all there, pulsing away in front of you. The domed glass that sits on the dial also gives the watch a 3D quality and renders things even more dramatic. Limited to 50 pieces, the titanium LMP is priced at 148,000 Swiss francs (US$152,000).