BackGoing back in time
A 1970s revival in fashion and accessories is afoot in 2016, as is evident from the big and bold new Rado HyperChrome 1616 watch
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Vintage design is the safety blanket that watchmakers reach for in times of business crisis. So the last five years have seen watch brands launch a variety of pieces inspired by the past.
The results are, usually, successful both aesthetically and commercially. This is perhaps why IWC coolly launched a vintage-look pilot’s watch collection this year that almost completely replaces the far more contemporary-looking “Top Gun" family it had launched as recently as 2012.
Redesigning and launching entire families of watches is time-consuming and expensive. Watch brands rarely phase them out in just four years. And yet IWC has.
Why do watchmakers, and many other actors in the global luxury business, go “retro" in times of turmoil? Before delving into some recent examples of this trend, especially a splendid wristwatch, it is worth dwelling on the business rationale. Brands are notoriously tight-lipped about why they do what they do. But we can speculate.
First, “heritage-inspired" collections are quick to launch and easy to justify. Re-interpreting a best-selling wristwatch—or a refrigerator or a pair of shoes—is generally easier than designing from scratch. They are also easier to explain to retailers and clients. Brands like creating origin-mythologies for everything they make. Updating a cult classic from the archives, therefore, is an easy story to spin and sell.
Heritage pieces can also be good for business. Especially when sales forecasts look gloomy. Despite the ongoing crisis in the Chinese luxury market, China remains the most important luxury market in the world. And, like buyers in many markets that are still somewhat “young" for the luxury world, many Chinese prefer their luxury objects in comfortingly orthodox, immediately identifiable packages. Thus the profusion of elegant, minimal two- or three-hand wristwatches that have flooded the market over the last few years, even from some of the most expensive brands in Switzerland.
But this is also a move towards old-fashioned simplicity in times of austerity. A tendency we see in almost every walk of life, post the crash of Lehman Brothers in 2008, from rustic farmhouse tables in cafés to the stark typography of indie magazines.
So where in the past must we go back to in order to find the trends of 2016? The answer seems to be the 1970s, a decade that Stephen Doig of The Telegraph recently called “style’s more precarious decade". In a piece in which he heralded a 1970s revival in spring fashion collections, Doig said: “There’s a sense of potent seduction about certain elements of 1970s style. Think of a young Mick Jagger, or the style legacy left by Bowie. Not that many of us will be dressed as Ziggy Stardust on the morning commute, but a sense of playfulness is no bad thing."
This playfulness, this audacity sans gravitas, is beginning to show in all kinds of products. Not least of these is the new Rado HyperChrome 1616 watch. One glance at the watch face and you are instantly transported to a decade’s worth of clock faces and consumer goods. The use of metallic embellishment in the indices and the oversized bezel are all design nods to a decade of bigness and boldness.
The watch is inspired heavily by the Rado Cape Horn collections of the 1960s and 1970s. There is an origin myth here. But that is irrelevant when the design is so unabashedly retro. Executed in a titanium case, the superb watch is remarkably light and comfortable to wear despite its bulk (which is, admittedly, something of a departure from how things were in the 1970s, when clothes and accessories punished anything but the slightest silhouette).
This watch is a piece of the Martin Scorsese-Mick Jagger television show Vinyl, set in the New York music scene in 1973, which premiered in February. If the show achieves international success, it may provide critical mass to the 1970s revival afoot in fashion and accessories. Women’s Wear Daily (WWD), a fashion industry trade journal, credits Vinyl with being one of the harbingers of this wave of 1970s nostalgia.
The 1970s are often called, very unfairly, the decade that taste forgot. This reflects a lack of appreciation of the exuberance of that decade. It was a period of transition from austerity to prosperity across much of the Western world. So perhaps in 2016, a 1970s revival is not just a return to comforting nostalgia, but also a yearning for optimism and a certain lightness. The world is a miserable place. Our clothes, accessories and wristwatches don’t have to be.
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