Horological heroes
of the hour
CASE
STUDIES
PHOTOGRAPHY: FABRIZIO RASCHETTI WRITER: CARAGH MCKAY
By artfully mining its heritage, Swiss watch brand Tudor
has created a new design identity that’s all its own
In 1969, unique ‘snowlake’ hands began to appear on
Tudor’s Submariner diving watches. Today, the wide
hands, resembling a magniied snowlake particle, are
a powerful graphic signiier of a Black Bay, the brand’s
bigest-selling design, and of Tudor’s wider resurgence.
Others in the ‘snowlake’ series include the Black Bay
Fifty-Eight and this year’s Black Bay GMT. The Pelagos
steel bracelet models also take the snowlake hands,
but the Black Bay owns them, so to speak.
This quirky detail has been singled out as a mainstay
of Tudor’s contemporary ofering by Rolex and Tudor
CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour, whose vision chimes with
that of Hans Wilsdorf, who established Rolex in 1905.
Wilsdorf had long toyed with the idea of producing a
watch ‘at a more modest price than our Rolex watches,and yet one that would attain the standard of
dependability for which Rolex is famous’. In 1926,
he acquired the exclusive rights to the Tudor
trademark from Swiss watchmaker and dealer Veuve de
Philippe Hüther and continued to make watches under
that name. Wilsdorf, a savvy marketing man, waited
for the right moment to implement his original vision
of a more afordable alternative to Rolex. In 1946,
the year after the end of the Second World War and
with desire for luxury goods in an understandable
slump, he launched the Tudor brand.
Early advertising campaigns, featuring a road
builder and a coal miner, reveal Wilsdorf ’s economic
target– the blue-collar worker. A Tudor watch was
all about precision, robustness and desirability. »Modern times
RIGHT, THE SNOWFLAKE
WATCH HANDS ARE A GRAPHIC
SYMBOL OF TUDOR DESIGNWatches
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