The Inside Story of Toledano & Chan's Iridescent B/1.2 Watch
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It’s hard to think of a watch launch by a brand-new company that’s ever gone as well as that of the B/1 by Toledano & Chan.
That might be because there's never been one.
Inspired by the Rolex King Midas, early 1970s integrated bracelet watches and a window at the Met Breuer museum of modern art in New York, the “part 70s watch, part brutalist architecture, entirely new” timepiece sold out in 45 minutes on its release on 16 May, and was duly hailed as significant, on account of its oddball design and simple two-hand functionality, partly a "revolt against overcomplicated designs", by everyone from The Observer newspaper to designboom.
One of those 175 watches does occasionally pop up on resale sites, with a hefty markup.
On Sunday 5 January, Phillip Toledano, a visual artist and watch collector based in New York, and Alfred Chan, a watch designer based in Hong Kong, who launched the B/1 without ever actually meeting, announced a sequel.
Their advanced media commutation already pre-empted any question concerning “sophomore jitters" you could possibly think of.
“What comes after a successful launch for a new brand?” it asks.
“How do you follow up a hit, and avoid the curse of the second album slump?”
“How do you evolve with audacity, but retain the spirit of the original?”
And so on.
“Yes, that was very crafty of me,” Phil Toledano told me, on Tuesday.
The new edition, the B/1.2, softens the brutalist design of the original by using a dial made of Tahitian mother of pearl – formed by the black-lip pearl oyster – under its sapphire glass.
“It’s architecture,” says the brand. “But with glass and light.”
“We had so many ideas for the follow up, including other stone dials, but ultimately we fell in love with the black mother of pearl,” Toledano told me.
“I think partly because it was the monochromatic opposite to the lapis [dial of the previous edition], and partly because we just haven’t seen a lot of black mother of pearl being done.”
That process was not straightforward.
“Sourcing black mother of pearl that had the right levels of iridescence and beauty took a little time,” Toledano explained.
“The much harder thing was designing the crystal and working with the factory to get a result we liked – that ended up being a lot tricker than we thought.”
There has endless stuff written about the vogue for unusual shaped watches, not least in this newsletter – so it seemed reasonable to ask if T&D might consider producing a (Great Scott!) round watch next.
“I’m not going to say no, but I think the emphasis at Toledano & Chan will always be form and material,” Toledano explained. “So, if there’s a way to make a round watch unexpected and sculptural we would definitely consider it.
“But we still have so much to explore with the current design language.”
There's more information on the new watch at toledano&chan.com
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