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Daniel Wellington Arrives Stateside

By Cator Sparks Published December 21, 2019

Watches are a big accessory for men these days, as we have previously reported. But many are way over our budget limitations. When we discovered Daniel Wellington we were stoked to find something so classic and cool but figured they would be in the baller price range. When the sales associate told us they range from $195-$225 we took another look.

Hailing from Sweden, the watch company was founded by Filip Tysander in 2011. Daniel Wellington is already one of Sweden’s most popular brands selling in more than 200 stores and recently they decided to roll out in the U.S. The name of the company hails from a man Filip randomly met who had such incredible style he decided to name his company after him. Filip always noticed that Mr. Wellington wore his Rolex on an old Nato strap, hence the wide variety of straps available.

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Nato straps, by the way, originated in the British Navy where divers would use the strong nylon straps over their wet suits. It got it’s name because the strap has a NSN or NATO stock number which identifies this certain type of strap.

The watches themselves are clean in design, thin and come in 40mm and 36mm allowing men and women to choose the size that fits them perfectly. The watches have a silver or rose gold casing featuring Quartz Japan Citizen 1L22 movement and all are water resistant.

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Watches

Fashion & Style

Longines refreshes its cult-favorite central power reserve in light blue

The Swiss watch company is giving the Conquest Heritage Central Power Reserve some new dial and bracelet options.

Wristwatch, Arm, Dial

Longines has been around since 1832, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating watchmakers on Earth — old enough to have spent decades strapped to the wrists of aviators and explorers before most brands existed. So when the Saint-Imier company, now part of the Swiss giant Swatch Group, revives something from its own archives, it's got real history to draw on. The Conquest Heritage Central Power Reserve is a good example.

The Conquest line dates to 1954 — the first Longines collection to have its name trademarked with the Swiss IP office. And in 1959, one Conquest model introduced the complication this watch is built around: a power reserve indicator planted dead center on the dial. For 2026, Longines has given the modern revival a light refresh: a new light-blue opaline dial and (for the first time on this model) a stainless-steel bracelet alongside the returning dark leather strap.

Fashion & Style

Shohei Ohtani’s newest Seiko is out of this world

Seiko built Shohei Ohtani a one-of-one watch that tracks a million hours across five rotating discs — and you can't buy it.

Wristwatch, Arm, Body Part

The Seiko Star Time, presented to Shohei Ohtani on July 3, marks his tenth year as a Seiko ambassador. It's not for sale, will never be for sale, and there's exactly one on Earth — currently strapped to the best baseball player alive. Oh, and also? It looks absolutely nuts. Instead of hands, the Star Time tells time with five stacked, concentric discs, each tracking a different scale of accumulated time: 24 hours, then 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and finally a disc that runs all the way to one million hours.

That's roughly 114 years — a full human lifetime, give or take. The discs turn continuously, so slowly you can't see them move. Seiko named it "Star Time" for exactly that reason: like stars drifting across the sky, the motion is imperceptible in the moment but relentless. A little existential for a watch company, but let's go with it.

Fashion & Style

The Internet Killed Expertise and Then Made It Cool Again

How the Internet Killed Expertise, Made It Worthless, and Then Made It Cool Again

Watchmaker's workshop. Mechanical watch repair.

We’ve gone through a little period that I like to call the “Dark Ages of Knowing Things,” when the internet had an entire generation of men convinced they no longer needed experts. Why would they? Everything was available at the drop of a hat, and with one Google search, you could have the world at your fingertips. There were deep-dive forum threads written by a retired Swiss watchmaker in Neuchâtel who had seen 40 years of studying the serif on a Rolex dial (probably, but I can’t actually verify that.) It was all there, free for the taking, and unfortunately, completely indistinguishable from a guy who just bought his first watch 6 weeks beforehand and was already writing a buying guide.

For a while at least, it felt like the walls were coming down, and in some ways, they were. The gatekeepers no longer had their gates, which meant that a kid from Doncaster could learn to identify a fake Submariner faster than a back-alley dealer who had been in the business for 20 years if he simply spent enough nights casually perusing Reddit threads. Knowledge, we were told, should be free. Of course, nobody mentioned that free knowledge and good knowledge are not the same thing.