Watches are an often-overlooked part of the man of style's wardrobe. A good watch, well-designed and fit for purpose, says much about the owner.
Regulars here will know my love of watches. I tend to go for simple, military-inspired watches because they have been designed minimally for two purposes; to be easily readable and robust. You don't need complex, vulnerable, hard-to-see timepieces when you have more important things to do.
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| Sinn 756 UTC |
Because of this heritage, military-inspired designed watches tend to be used by people of action; pilots, climbers, adventurers, mountaineers are among those attracted to their practical robustness.
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| Sinn 556 |
One brand which I bought early in my career as a watch enthusiast was Sinn. The company was founded originally by Helmut Sinn, a flying instructor who couldn't find what he needed on the watch market, so he designed his own robust and easy to read wristwatches.
The company was later bought by an ex-IWC engineer. IWC is a company with a long and honourable history of robust and high quality timepieces, one of the most famous of which was bought by the RAF in the fifties as a chronometer (meeting very high levels of accuracy) wristwatch for navigation.
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| Sinn 140 chronograph |
As you'd expect from this pedigree, Sinn watches are highly-engineered and quality pieces of kit. The specifications include argon filled cases, hydro oil filled cases, air-dehumidifying technology, a lubrication free DIAPAL mechanical movements, super-hard watches cases, anti-magnetic protection. More recently Sinn initiated TESTAF, the first ever standard to define pilot's watches in professional use.
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| Sinn 660M |
The Sinn range is large, with most models coming in a wide range of options for case and dial colour, strap or bracelet choice, modern or more classic designs and some having features such as a UTC function which allows time to be kept in separate time zones for those who travel. Prices range from about £570 and are reasonable given the quality and technology involved.
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| Sinn 903 chronograph |
You can find Sinn watches at Page and Cooper who also stock other highly-thought of makes, such as Damasko (which I can also highly recommend from personal experience) and Squale, who have a long tradition of making highly-functional divers' watches.
This was post written in association with Page and Cooper and Sinn.