IWC

As always, a pleasant article and beautiful, very bright pictures from F.X. Thank you!

IWC is one of my dearest brand, mostly because I closely follow it from the very beginning of my passion for watches; to be more precise, those were the years of the mithical Da Vinci automatic chronograph with perpetual calendar. In recent years, being a PuristSPro fellow, I learned to appreciate their boutiques, as discussion topic of a lot of articles and reports: for me they are the most beautiful, in the world of horology.

That being said, you can imagine how I was impatient to visit the first boutique opened in my country. When, in May, I was in Rome, I went directly to Piazza di Spagna 28, to see the shop in the flesh. Unfortunately, I was late for another appointment, so I could only give a quick glimpse to the shop windows. My impressions were mixed: the position of the boutique is absolutely incredible, just a few steps from the scalinata, but it is too small and nobody of the tourists seem to take care of it. With a bit of disappointment, I said to myself: "it's true, my poor beloved Country is really at the boundaries of the contemporary economic world". Then, I looked at the showcase: there were some watches and the Ingenieur Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month caught my attention, since in person it is far more beautiful than in pictures; moreover, the man of the boutique that arranged the price display had made a mistake and this very important piece had a price tag of less than six thousands euro!!! If this timepiece had positively impressed me, the rest of the watches on display left me a bit cold: I've sometimes criticized the brands that propose a lot of "new-vintage" timepieces, especially when they look simply "old", but with IWC I can't understand the sense of most of the latest launched products, I can't see a true IWC personality, and in general they seem to over-designed. With this last statement I want to say that a product claiming to be "Engineered for men" must have an overall coherence and must look plain and understated, without any frills and any bling. Do the current IWC collection - you have skillfully introduced in your article from Rome - respect this golden rule? I'm sorry, I would sadly say no.

What do you think?

Ciao,

Elio

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