Three watches that will make great Christmas gifts
December 25 is still months away, but it’s never too early to plan your gifts
Ah Christmas! I know it’s only the middle of November, but the big brands have already started the “Christmas creep” propaganda. It used to be that the Christmas shopping season started after Thanksgiving but, nowadays, the store decorations and the offers start in October. OCTOBER! I should protest about this barely hidden corporate push to get us shopping earlier but, to be honest, I’m also a ditherer, so the longer I have to think about gift buying the better, I figure. Or something.
Anyway for all my fellow ditherers, here are three watches you can start considering now as potential gifts and still have time to change your mind at least six times before Christmas finally arrives.
A watch that design nerds will love both for its slavish influences and esoteric name checking is the Dufa 9021 (above), from the Vander Rohe Barcelona Chronograph collection. The collection takes its name from early-20th-century German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the last director of the hugely influential but short-lived Bauhaus school. He is considered one of the fathers of modernist and minimalist design and all of that influence and inspiration is right there in the design of the 9021 watch. The Barcelona reference is to the German pavilion Mies van der Rohe designed at the 1929 expo, which is considered his masterpiece and also gave the world the Barcelona Chair (I’m geeking out here a little).
Some might think Dufa is laying on the references a bit thick, but beyond all that this is simply a lovely timepiece that works both as a dress watch and an everyday watch. The design is clean, clear and pleasingly retro, with features including date and day indicators and a chronograph with three subdials, two of which are concave, which gives the timepiece depth.
The steel case is sized at 38mm and inside is a Japanese quartz movement, which keeps the price down to a bargain €349 (US$404).
