Meditações - every watch deserves a second, if not a third, life

The surge in the pre-owned market says it all. This eagerness to infiltrate the cogs and wheels of a bona fide mechanical timepiece signals a backlash against an imposed regimen of planned obsolescence – surely every watch deserves a second, if not a third, life? It also signifies that timepieces from this pre-digital age are associated with values we now tend to take lightly, such as the integrity of the product and that of the person selling it. Watches from the post-war years thus became sought-after objects, inspiring brands first to reproduce them, then to imitate their form. And so it was that watchmaking discovered vintage. What began as nostalgia grew into a fashion for neo-retro styles before expanding into a full-blown trend.

Gilles Lipovetsky