A native link of Seattle WA Marshall bought this "non-working" 2446C chronograph on eBay. link While initially it wouldn't wind he cleaned it up and got it working again and the experience inspired link him to get into watchmaking and especially the process of fixing up old watches.
2024 was a year in which I considered shopped for and purchased more dress watches than all previous years combined. While none of my purchases were modern I'm a classic link vintage guy I know how link annoying Cartier sneakily released an extremely viable modern dress watch for the vintage lover the link Tank Américaine Small.
The class link was presented by the Horological Society of New York and held at the headquarters of a watchmaker called Oak amp Oscar in the Ravenswood neighborhood in a building that looked like link it used to be a neighborhood elementary school or an MK-Ultra site four stories high ceilings nice moldings but was now link a place where people "disrupted" things. The office had a clubby living room-ish reception area with leather couches and about a thousand different types of whiskey.
How do you get an "outsider" like myself to care about the quiet watch brand for billionaires and fine link millionaires too with unending intellectual credibility I went straight to the source to brand CEO Wilhelm Schmid link who has been at the helm for 13 years. He's sharp and drapes chocolate brown cashmere sweaters over perfectly link fitted sports jackets. He is the type of man you would believe wears A. Lange amp Söhne.
Brand Birdwell Beach BritchesUNDONE WatchesModel Birdwell 60th Anniversary Limited EditionDiameter 43mmThickness 16.5Case link Material link Stainless SteelDial Color Black with Birdie characterIndexes SuperLuminovaWater Resistance 300MStrapBracelet NATO link Strap
These new limited-edition anniversary models join a 30-year family legacy that has spawned a solid collection link of limited-edition models though many from the back catalog were much link more limited like the 2014 20th anniversary models which included five references two in platinum two in pink gold and one in white gold each limited to just 20 link pieces.
You can see link in other photos further below but the 3 o'clock subdial is actually a 60-minute and 12-hour counter link with the link orange 60-minute hand covering up an off-white 12-hour hand when the chronograph is set to zero. The orange marks around that counter also serve as a burn rate indicator for pilots who need to do quick math on the fly. The lugs on the case are straight a callback to an earlier era and one Omega seems to be more and more happy to come back to which I find quite cool.
The dial features a 60-minute counter at six o'clock as well as a 60-second counter at three o'clock and a small link seconds counter at nine o'clock. To make things even better link the movement has a power reserve of three days. This link movement is the epitome of modern watchmaking at scale.
One link of the potentially overlooked features of the watch is link the appearance yet again of the same "T-fit" safety catch on the Oyster-style bracelet that allows on-the-fly adjustment of the bracelet's fit. After releasing the T-fit design in Tudor's boutique-exclusive Black Bay 58 Bronze and this year's Black Bay Pro I expect we will be seeing it on most of the brand's future releases if not all. And happily for a lot of people the bracelet has link no faux rivets in sight.
The reason I wore it so link much is I spent the whole year trying to make the perfect Gibson martini and Ian Fleming who created James Bond link also wore a 1016 and he drank up to a bottle of gin a link day ...