Over my career, I’ve built something of a reputation for the odd philosophical preamble. It’s not that I like to do it, but every now and then, a watch comes along that stops you in your tracks and forces you to evaluate not just it, nor just its place in the wider context of watchmaking, but, far more personally, where it fits in your personal story and why, for whatever reason, it has such an effect on you. That’s exactly what happened to me when I first got to know the Dennison ALD collection. It was the beginning of a self-reflective saga that persists to this day.
I’m prefacing the preamble to say this: bear with me. This is a watch review. It’s simply one that attempts to add a little emotional depth to a conversation that’s been raging worldwide since the ALD hit the shelves last October…
The Dennison ALD Rubellite
Falling down the rabbit hole that is watch collecting is easily done. Escaping it? Less so. But why is that? Why can we not stop ourselves when we feel the urge to reach for our money clip, bank card, or firstborn’s college fund becoming dangerously strong? Is it just because we like shiny things, and that we quickly become accustomed to fawning over them daily? Or is there more to it? Is there something happening that isn’t just an external appreciation of design and/or craft? Personally, after years of suffering from this glorious sickness, I’m inclined to say that there is.
Aside from the obvious answer that the more you know about watches, the more there is to love about them, the real reason why we find ourselves almost corporally drawn to watches may be much more primal and inevitable than that.
When I first tried to unpick my love for watches, I quickly ran into a brick wall. Like untangling a knotted chain, there appeared to be many obvious places to begin, but after tugging and teasing at those notions for no more than a few seconds, I realised that every logical thought that entered my mind was wrapped in a thick, gooey film of feeling that made words alone insufficient tools to identify a single starting point of my obsession. I found I could not express my love coherently. At the very best, any passable attempt at explaining my deep, writhing passion would likely have used up Great Britain’s annual quota of semi-colons.
What became apparent thereafter was that the watch journey upon which so many of us have embarked is more than one step after another. We are not moving as much as we are changing. It is not a passage from point A to point B. It is an internal evolution. The changes are not perceptible as they happen. They manifest later, often spliced with something that need not be related. As such, our watch collecting careers are likely to move in transitional phases occasionally punctuated by the sudden manifestation of a latent allele that has been quietly kicking around in the mix for several “generations” of taste. It can feel like a complete about turn, but it isn’t. It was always there. It was just waiting for the right moment to switch back on.
Seldom, but once in a while, a watch comes along that forces you to reassess what it is you want and expect from a timepiece. A curveball release you never knew you needed can upend your watch-world view entirely. That’s what happened to me when I first saw (or perhaps better expressed, experienced) the Dennison ALD collection.
Dennison is a famous name in watchmaking. Famed for its role as the “name behind the names”, Dennison plied its trade as the industry’s case maker extraordinaire. The British brand, founded by an American (Aaron Lufkin Dennison — ALD) in 1874, made housings for brands such as Rolex, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Longines, Omega, and IWC among others. Its reputation was peerless. It was, for want of a comparison that hammers home the collaborative nature of watchmaking for the majority of the craft’s existence, to cases what Gay Frères (GF) was to bracelets.
In 2011, the dormant company name was bought by Toby Sutton. At the time, Sutton was working as a derivatives trader, but would go on to found Watches of Knightsbridge one year after acquiring the Dennison name, finally entering the family business around which he’d grown up.
A gutsy attempt to revive the name in 2016 didn’t stick. While the first watches released with the Dennison name on the dial this century were nice, appropriately well-made items, they didn’t find the favour the company’s heritage deserved. Mildly disappointed but undeterred, Sutton returned to the drawing board and began mulling over his options.
During the creative genesis of a hit, it’s rarely possible to pinpoint a single decision that would ultimately alter a brand’s fate. Normally, it is the combination of many little choices, all made in pursuit of a singular vision. But in this instance, one could highlight the acquisition of the talents of Emmanuel Gueit, legendary designer of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore.
Gueit has a pedigree befitting the brand. Dennison, as Sutton eloquently put it in an interview on The Real Time Show podcast (aired in August), is a “maker of shapes”, and Gueit embraced the remit with gusto.
Mining the back catalogue was never the goal for this iteration of the Dennison brand. Of course, past projects were studied and inspiration gleaned, but the resulting floating, lugless cushion-shaped case, measuring 37 mm “lug-to-lug” and 33.5 mm across, is totally new. It successfully draws a line from what the brand was to what it has become — a thoroughly modern, bold maker of not just shapes, but trends, also.
Maybe accusing the Dennison ALD of being trendy is doing it a disservice. It certainly ticks a lot of trend-related boxes, but its seamless combination of so many desirable elements in one package feels too well-rounded a proposition to dismiss as nothing more than extremely timely.
This watch is perfectly unisex. The size is a sweet spot. The lug-free design is essential to this and works very well with the liquid curves of the case. Hard stone dials have been popular forever, but they have only recently become available in affordable watches. To that point, these watches occupy a sub-£1,000 entry-level bracket (with the stone-dialled models coming in at a remarkably accessible £522). Employing a quartz movement means this piece, which for most people will likely be an occasional wear rather than a GADA beater, will remain on time and ready to go for years after purchase. Top quality branding, packaging, and customer service round out a purchase proposition that has more green flags than a Formula 1 season.
Several different stone dial versions are available. You can choose from red agate, malachite, tiger’s eye, lapis lazuli, and rubellite, with aventurine and wood also included in the same category (despite not technically being stones themselves). It’s hard for me to choose a favourite, but the tiger’s eye and malachite are frequently referenced as the most popular. Personally, I love the shade of the red agate used (and the sensitively colour-matched strap), and adore the texture of the wood dial, which evokes a sense of cigar smoke, log fires, and brandy drunk in the comfort of a wing-backed chesterfield, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with leather-bound tomes. However, perhaps the most unusual and noteworthy, is the Rubellite model photographed as an accompaniment to this article.
One massive advantage of the ALD watches is their comfort. At just 6.05 mm thick, these ultra-lightweight timepieces are barely perceptible on the wrist. While some may pine for a bit more heft from their daily companion, this airiness is very welcome at the more formal events to which an ALD is ideally suited. As a watch nut, however, I noticed a secondary benefit to the Dennison ALD’s lightness: if you ever find yourself tempted to “double-wrist”, the ALD is the watch to choose for your non-dominant arm. It is supremely comfortable and can even be worn on a hole larger than you’d normally choose because its weight won’t distract you should it slide about a bit. Maybe that’s not the number one reason to buy a Dennison ALD, but it is the attribute of these watches that is likely to make one of their number the most often worn watch of the year for me.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, Dennison is off to a flying (re)start. The brand has plans to further diversify this line (we’ve seen marquetry, 3D patterns, and a dual-dial GMT already) and release more ambitious designs that speak to its case-making heritage. It may be a tough ask to follow the ALD with a similarly well-received model family, but given the experience this endlessly capable team has accrued over their combined years in the business, I wouldn’t bet against it.
