Wayne Cheong

2 weeks ago | esquiresg.com | Wayne Cheong

The Luminor has always been the Panerai with presence. Originally made for the Italian Royal Navy or Regia Marina, there was always a military function in mind with the Luminor. Built like a submarine hatch, its defining form—cushion case, sandwich dial, and that unmistakable crown-locking bridge—were hallmarks for a Panerai piece. At this year's Watches and Wonders, the Luminor undergoes a slight makeover proving that Panerai models can evolve and yet still remain.... Panerai.

2 weeks ago | esquiresg.com | Asri Jasman |Wayne Cheong

After smashing success with its smart watches, Samsung surges ahead in the wearable market with a smart ring. Coupled with advanced sensors and Samsung’s AI-powered health ecosystem, the Galaxy Ring makes sense as a wellness monitor: it’s unobtrusive, leaves your wrist free for that luxury watch to flex and still deliver cutting-edge health-tracking in an entirely new form. Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Grand Soir isn’t a new fragrance by any means.

2 weeks ago | esquiresg.com | Wayne Cheong

“George Favre-Jacot”. Remember that name, especially those initialisms; they are gonna come up a lot. At Watches and Wonders, for its 160th anniversary, the ZENITH booth extolled its gratitude to the founder of the brand, George Favre-Jacot. For a solid decade in the 1950s, the Calibre 135-O movement (created by Ephrem Jobin) wasn’t just winning—it was dominating. Created only for the sole purpose of being entered into observatory chronometer trials, the Calibre 135-O crushed the competition.

2 weeks ago | esquiresg.com | Wayne Cheong

You’d think that watches, by their very nature, keep time. Reliable mechanical elves that you can count on. But as with everything, timepieces that rely on quartz crystal oscillators, can lose time due to "inherent inaccuracies in the crystal's frequency; each year, seconds are lost (or gained), making time less accurate than before. But what’s the big deal, you ask, if a few seconds go missing every now and then?

2 weeks ago | esquiresg.com | Wayne Cheong

At this year’s Watches and Wonders, Jaeger-LeCoultre pulled out all the stops for its homage to it polo origins. Its booth—the 1931 Polo Club—is an immersive three-storey space that reinterprets horses stables but it feels more like a museum, a temple of tribute to its enduring icon, the Reverso. We know the story of the Reverso’s origin—Swiss businessman César de Trey had a problem.