Arsène Lippens Artigiano Sashiko Denim
It’s impossible not to love Arsène Lippens. Co-founders Dries Lippens and Alberto Boccaletti and the rest of the small Geneva team are infectiously enthusiastic, and it shows in the watches. Their breakout Artigiano did something we hadn’t seen before. We’ve all seen linen dials, stamped to imitate fabric, but this was the real thing: woven Italian denim, cotton and bamboo stretched inside a slim 37.5mm steel case. Their latest creation, the Sashiko Denim, takes that idea to the next level.
Sashiko is the centuries-old Japanese art of reinforcing cloth with running white stitches on indigo, a philosophy of repair rather than replacement. Here every hour marker is hand-stitched directly onto the dial, a single thread passing through the denim itself. The work is by Pey van der Wel, the Dutch artist behind SASHIKODENIM, who has spent more than a decade on the craft. You’ve heard it before, but this time it really is true: no two dials are the same, and neither are the hand-finished denim straps they come on. Reservations opened on 9 October for delivery in December, and there are just ten numbered pieces.
Price and Specs:
More details at Arsène Lippens.
Danubius Black Sea Aventurine
Danubius takes its name from the Latin for the Danube, and it is the work of Alin, a Romania-based collector who has spent more than ten years chasing watches in unusual materials. His collection already runs from bronze and tantalum to mokume gane and timascus, but there was one thing he could not find: a watch in coloured crystallised titanium. The brands he approached said they would consider it and never delivered, so he made it himself. The metal is cooled slowly under pressure until its structure grows into visible crystals, then coloured a deep blue, so no two cases, bezels or crowns will ever look the same. It is believed to be the first watch made from the stuff, and it looks like nothing else out there.
Better still, it is a proper wearable diver, 40mm across with 200m of water resistance, and you can choose between a Musou Black dial that swallows 99.4% of light or the aventurine, which glitters like a night sky against all that blue. The buckle is also made from the same crystallised titanium as the case, which is a nice touch. Only 60 aventurine pieces will ever be made, €1,300 plus VAT, and delivery is expected from late 2026 into early 2027.
Price and Specs:
More details at Danubius.
AISION Kong
AISION is a Hong Kong microbrand working out of a shop in Tsim Sha Tsui Mansion on Nathan Road, and the Kong is the first of its watches to put the home city front and centre. Rather than reaching for the postcard imagery of Lion Rock, Victoria Harbour or the Star Ferry, AISION referenced the hand-painted shop signs that once decorated the streets. From the 1940s to the 1980s those signs were dominated by Beiwei calligraphy, a bold, sharp-edged style chosen because it could be read from across the road. As businesses closed and safety rules brought the signs down, the style began to vanish, until type designer Adonis Chan spent more than a decade turning it into a digital typeface called Zansyu. And that is what you’re seeing here.
The numerals are printed in red on a white lacquer sector dial with blue tracks and hands, and the pairing makes real sense: the sector dial was born in the 1930s for legibility, and Beiwei calligraphy for exactly the same reason. The polished case is slim too, at just 8.4mm before the double-domed sapphire. At under £500, it’s an incredible tribute to the Hong Kong I picture whenever I think of the city.
Price and Specs:
More details at AISION.
MINIM x L’Artisan Yang
I’ve met Chloe Chan a few times now, and we covered MINIM’s debut when it launched last year, so it has been a real pleasure watching the brand’s first year go about as well as a first year can. The MN01, with its Chinese-numeral guilloché dials, sold through to the point that the current run is on backorder until the end of the year, and the green aventurine Arabian Nights collaboration with Walid Benla has just turned up on Ryan Reynolds’ wrist. Not bad for year one.
The Yang is the first-anniversary follow-up, and it began with two young independents following each other’s work online: Chloe, the UK-based founder of MINIM, and Arnaud De Bal, who started L’Artisan in Belgium at seventeen and has built a reputation for stone and fossil dials. They met in person for the first time in Dubai last November and this is the result. The dial pairs an outer ring of mother of pearl with a central section cut from rhodochrosite, the banded pink stone also used for the sub-seconds, framed by MINIM’s Chinese numerals. It’s one of the rarer stones used on dials, and here it pops. The grey suede strap carries a pink accent stitch, which is no accident: a gem-set pièce unique will be auctioned with all proceeds going to Breast Cancer Now, a cause close to Chloe’s family, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Yang is on sale from 25 October and ships immediately.
Price and Specs:
More details at MINIM.
Angles DiscOne 39
Let’s address the elephant in the room first: the Angles DiscOne 39 does look a bit like an Otsuka Lotec, with its exposed discs, bridgework and bolted-down plates. Granted, there’s a big difference between the two, but the industrial vibe is there, and that’s no bad thing when Jiro Katayama’s watches are near impossible to get hold of and this one costs a few hundred dollars. There are no hands at all: a jumping hour disc on the left clicks over on the hour, a minute disc on the right turns continuously, and both sit raised above the dial so you can watch the mechanics do their thing.
The original Disc One wore big at 41mm and 13mm thick, and founder Roy Chan has clearly been reading the comments, because the DiscOne 39 is a far more wearable 39mm and 10mm. It comes in Raw Steel or a warm Champagne Alloy, each limited to 500 pieces, and a 25% launch discount brings a genuinely unusual mechanical display to around £300.
Price and Specs:
More details at Angles.
