FounderFest ran on September 19 and 20, in Time+Tide‘s own watch shops in Melbourne, London and New York: watches, founders and live music.
I went to the New York end of it that Saturday afternoon, to a second-floor studio on Broome Street in Soho. A jazz band was playing. Seven watches nobody had handled yet were laid out on the tables, and the people standing behind those tables had designed them.
Tickets were timed in two-hour blocks so the room never got crowded, and the brands sent their own staff rather than regional reps on a clock. You could pick up a watch and ask the person who chose the dial color why they chose it. All of that for twenty dollars.
One Brief, Seven Very Different Watches
Time+Tide is the Australian watch publication Andrew McUtchen started in 2014, which now also sells watches from its own shops. All three ran in parallel, the Soho studio was the headquarters, and more than 320 people came through over the two New York days.
The premise was one brief for seven independent brands: design a Studio Edition around the music that shaped your founder. On some of them you can see the music straight away. On others it sits further from the surface, and those are the ones where having the founder standing there mattered.
Pink Sapphire, Black Everything
Beaucroft’s The Punk, where the only thing not blacked out is the dial.
Beaucroft has been assembling mechanical watches in Cambridge since 2020, and restraint is the house habit. The Punk isn’t that. A translucent pink sapphire dial, a first for the brand, sits inside a 38mm case blacked out in PVD, with a matching pink caseback that puts the movement behind the same filter.
Punk had a look before most people heard the records. Safety pins, torn pink, exposed mechanics. At $800 this is the cheapest of the seven and the only one misbehaving.
Carnaby Street on a Denim Strap
The Dennison ALD Dual Time “Carnaby Blue,” two movements inside a 6.1mm case, on denim.
Dennison started as a British case manufacturer in the nineteenth century, supplying components to some of the most respected makers in the business. Toby Sutton revived it as a brand in its own right, and its ALD Dual Time “Carnaby Blue” is named after the Soho street at the middle of mod London.
The dial is built from slivers of blue mother-of-pearl. Some sit dark and inky, others catch the light and flare turquoise, silver, even pink. Two Ronda quartz movements run independently in the same case, each driving its own hands, and the whole watch is 6.1mm thick.
Tailoring made the mod and denim was the off-duty version, the look Quadrophenia put on screen. That’s why it comes on a denim strap, for $1,090.
A Guitar Body on a Field Watch
Serica’s Ref. 7505 “Sunburst,” photographed next to the finish it borrowed.
Serica and Time+Tide started from a shared fondness for how guitars look. The Ref. 7505 “Sunburst” puts a tobacco burst on a 35mm field watch, warm brown at the center and near-black at the rim, over a chronometer-certified movement still rated to 200 meters.
Stand a sunburst guitar next to it and the dial stops looking like a gradient. The French brand’s version runs $1,625.
Three Cities on a Carbon Dial
Baltic’s Heures du Monde “Horizon Line”.
Baltic makes vintage-informed watches at accessible prices, and it brought its first worldtimer collaboration, the Heures du Monde “Horizon Line”. The dial is forged carbon, so no two streak the same way, and blue and orange pick out Melbourne, London and New York on the city ring. For $1,795 that’s the quietly clever one.
Twenty-Six Millimeters, No Apology
The Rivanera Piccolo “Rosa d’Epoca” by echo/neutra.
Echo/neutra went small on purpose. The Italian brand brought the Rivanera Piccolo “Rosa d’Epoca”, a rectangular grade 5 titanium case 26mm across and 6.9mm thick. The dial is grained dark gray, and the rose in the name turns up only in the hands, the logo and the strap stitching.
At $1,995 it was the smallest thing on any table that weekend, and it held the wrist better than that suggests.
The Sequel That Earned a Bracelet
Furlan Marri’s “Songlines,” the first time this design has worn a steel bracelet.
Andrea Furlan co-founded Furlan Marri in Geneva in 2021, and he stood on stage with McUtchen to explain “Songlines”, the sequel to their earlier Outback Elegy. The chocolate dial is grained and circular-brushed under a layer of lacquer, and this is the first time the design has come on a steel bracelet.
It’s $2,750, and hearing him tell it is where the music actually came through.
Fifteen Hours Per Dial
Awake’s Sơn Mài Frosted Leaf “Ultraviolet,” roughly 15 hours of hand-laid lacquer per example.
Awake is the one I’d save up for. The French brand, founded by Lilian Thibault in 2019, built its name on Sơn Mài, a centuries-old Vietnamese lacquer craft. Its Frosted Leaf “Ultraviolet” starts with silver leaf, then builds purple and black lacquer over it, sanding back and reapplying until fragments of silver show through the dark.
Each dial takes about 15 hours, no two come out alike, and at $3,650 it’s the most expensive watch here. Time+Tide’s own write-up says it works “without relying on literal storytelling.” The craft is the point, and the music is left to you.
The Part You Can’t Buy Online
The band packed up on Sunday the 20th and the founders flew home. Everyone outside those three cities got 24 hours online on September 22, and after that the seven went back to being shop stock.
Three counters, three cities, nobody standing beside them to do the talking. That’s how everything else gets sold, which is what made the twenty dollars worth it.
Images courtesy of Time+Tide
