I have a hard time finding cool watches that I not only like, but could actually see myself wearing. This is the reason why I have had the same cheap Casio Illuminator strapped to my wrist for the last five years: its features — miraculous feats of digital programming and horological ingenuity, all of them — include beeping and letting me see what time it is in the dark. But jeebus. This Opus 8 Mechanical Digital from Harry Winston Rare Timepieces just has me swooning.
It’s based upon the maverick design of Frédéric Garinaud, a French engineer with no experience in watchmaking who, in 2007, arrived in Basel to showcase a way in which LED-style digits could “raise” out of the surface of a purely mechanical clock. The Opus 8 takes this concept and runs with it: pull a lever on the side and the hour erects itself from the watch face as numerous dials rapidly spin to land on the correct hour and minute.
But what I really love about this watch is how it channels the form of an old mahogany transistor radio. It’s got something of a Dick Tracy Radio Watch vibe to it, without the actual radio. I would buy one of these in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it’s a limited edition of fifty, and they’re already sold out to fat cat millionaires and the loathsome, stinking like.
Opus 8 Mechanical Digital [Watchismo Times]
