Worn Out Wednesday – Michael Satsky

When I was a groomsman in my twenties, I was too broke for gifts. The best I could offer was a thoughtful card and a colorful toast after the wine started flowing. Youthful charm more or less excused showing up empty-handed—along with overindulging in Champagne and making passes at bridesmaids. As I approach forty, however, it’s not quite as cute. Forgoing a gift is as tacky as staring at the bride’s décolletage.

Wedding gifts are often items for the couple: coffee makers, bedding, fancy soap dispensers. But leave such boring gewgaws to great-aunts, chums of the bride’s parents, or the family dentist no one expected actually to show up. As a groomsman, you have a duty to present your stalwart pal with loot he’ll cherish. A beautiful bottle of whiskey. A handsome watch. Perhaps some art for his (gentle)man cave.

Long before influencer partnerships existed, Miles Davis was doing unpaid brand work for Breitling just by wearing his Navitimer on stage. The watchmaker is finally returning the favor with a 500-piece tribute marking the jazz legend’s centennial.

Davis famously wore a Breitling Navitimer ref. 806 Mk5 throughout the 1960s, and this new release is built to recreate the specifics of that exact watch rather than just gesture at the era.

Can you even call something a Chronomaster if it doesn’t have a chronograph?! Zenith thinks so — the Swiss manufacturer’s new Chronomaster Solo Sport has, for the first time in the collection’s history, absolutely no chronograph function anywhere on it.

The Chronomaster line has existed to showcase El Primero, the automatic chronograph movement Zenith launched in 1969. Its famous for its 5 Hz (36,000 vibrations per hour) high-frequency beat and its ability to time down to a tenth of a second. Every Chronomaster before this one basically built its entire identity around that stopwatch function.