Last week, one watch podcast released an episode dedicated to the question of brand design. What’s better, it asked: consistency or variety? The answer, of course, depends on what brand you’re talking about.
The watch world moves slowly. But even taking that as read, some of its most recognised names have built businesses on barely changing anything, at all. If you buy a Louis Cartier Tank today then you are buying the same watch Louis Cartier designed himself in 1919, 103 years ago. Rolex is one company that’s so stoic it has turned its release calendar into something resembling Warholian performance art. (One of the above-mentioned podcast guests jokingly wonders whether Rolex’s strategy of precision incremental updates is for real, or in fact “some decades-long, straight-faced troll”.) Although it’s technically true to say Rolex releases a line-up of new models each year, they’re usually so indistinguishable from its existing ones that you need to be an absolute diehard Rolex nut to spot the differences, without the brand explaining what they are. (Fortunately, there is no shortage of absolute diehard Rolex nuts.)
In 2020 the Swiss giant added 1mm to the case of its Submariner Date, a move that apparently represented such an audacious ripping up of the rulebook, it led one watch blog to declare it was in “shock”. Rolex had “made one of the biggest changes to the dive watch in its 51 years of existence”, it feinted.
Rolex or Cartier has no business reason to change its designs, in the same way Porsche isn’t going to muck about with it’s 911. It’s already perfect. Other brands – Richard Mille, MB&F, Urwerk – exist at the other end of the spectrum. To make each watch crazier than the last.
But there is a third, and arguably trickier, business model. To reinvent design archetypes that have been around for decades by gently modernising them, without scaring the horses.
That, broadly, is the idea behind Aera, a new Anglo-Swiss brand. Aera’s plan is to take classic tool watches and update them using a design language arguably more befitting the 21st century.
If you were going to invent the dive watch or the pilot watch today, what would it look like?
“It’s in the nature of industrial design that all tools are, by their nature, beautiful if they succeed in solving a problem,” Aera’s co-founder Jas Minhas tells Esquire. “Tool watches in particular are coveted because they do a tough job in real style. We strove to make a watch that nods to the golden age of professional tool watches but without falling into the trap of retro design.”“There have,” Minhas notes, “been a lot of vintage vibes in tool watch design in the past few years”.
He’s got a point. Rolex might effectively make “the same” Submariner every time but then it invented that design, so fair enough. There are dozens of other watch brands who release thousands of inferior versions of the Submariner each year by sticking as closely as they can to its original look, from 1953.
Aera wants to do something different. The company has launched with two watches, the D-1 Diver and the P-1 Pilot.
Its D-1 Diver is, indisputably, a dive watch. But instead of retro typefaces and faux patinas, it’s distinguished by a domed crystal, a single-piece curved dial and a minimalist matt black and ice white colour palette. It doesn’t look like something you’d see in an old photo of Jacques Cousteau. It looks contemporary and cool.
Aera’s P-1 Pilot does something similar for the pilot watch. Like the D-1 its case shape flows seamlessly into the curved crystal. The design is clean and legible. And the monochrome palate is attention-grabbing without being silly. Both watches use strong Swiss-made Super-LumiNova, applied by hand – something more typically done by a machine. You get the sense that every little design decision has been sweated over. As the lollipop-style second hand sweeps towards 12 o’clock it briefly frames an ‘A’ in the logo. Nice.
The watches are most reminiscent of models puts out by Ikepod, the cult watch brand designed by Marc Newson, the industrial designer who is great pals with Jony Ive and who has collaborated with everyone from Apple to Louis Vuitton, as well as being celebrated for his own work. There is a connection. Minhas met Aera co-founder Olof Larsson at an Ikepod event at the Ice Hotel in Sweden in 2002, and is a friend of Newson’s. His father helped Ikepod establish itself in the UK, and started a distribution business for watch brands including Tissot and Citizen.
“Olof and I both come from bloodlines of watchmakers, and ever since we met at the Ice Hotel 20 years ago, it was inevitable we would do something in watchmaking,” Minhas says. “It’s relatively easy to make a cheap watch or an expensive one. We started Aera with the belief that, even in a crowded market, there’s room for a brand that represents great design and reasonable prices.
”Price may be the key here. Minhas says he and Larsson agreed what the watches should cost first, and worked backwards from there. One of Aera’s mantras is to use “only the highest quality components” but to charge what it calls “a rational price”. Both the P-1 and the D-1 are a fraction over £1,000. That’s not bargain-basement territory. But neither is it taking the mick. They’re handsomely designed watches that don’t charge you a tax for standing out from the crowd. Both have a 38-hour power reserve, come with a limited edition grey strap plus an additional strap of the buyer’s choosing, as well as a black leather strap for the P-1 and a black rubber strap for the D-1. The diver is water resistant to 300m, the pilot model to 100m.
“Our goal is to make authentic contemporary watches that appeal to watch and style lovers equally, and punch above their weight in terms of execution, quality and finish,” Minhas says.
It’s early days and the brand is keeping its cards close to its chest when it comes to future models – save to say that the USP of modernising the classic tool watch is one they’re going to build on.
It represents a compelling fusion of modern style and function, and arguably a truly fresh viewpoint in the watch world.So what is better, then – consistency or variety?Aera might be one brand attempting to do both.
The P-1 Pilot costs £1,100 and the D-1 Diver is £1,200. Both watches are available now. aera.co
