Ladoire Roller Guardian Time Punk Rock Watch
I met with Lionel Ladoire in January at the Geneva Time Exhibition. While he personally makes a lot of the components of the Ladoire watches, he is far from the typical watch maker. The timepiece design and naming of it are really an extension of his personality. A young, almost counter-culture looking guy, you'd expect to see him at a concert as opposed to sitting at a watch maker's bench. After meeting him, things like the "Punk Rock" part of this watch's name, or the spider web engraving on one of the discs in the watch start to make sense. In the image gallery you can see two images I took myself of his watches. A good guy overall, I look forward to seeing what his talents come up with next.
Quality and style of the Roller Guardian watches really need to be seen to be appreciated. While reading the watch is a bit tricky at first, it is actually quite logical. Functions include the time, as well as a second GMT timezone (in a 12 hour format). The largest hand is actually the GMT hand, and can be adjusted on the fly via the pusher on the right of the case. There is a retrograde indicator for the home time, and separate dials for the minutes and the seconds. While the emphasis is on doing things differently, it is basically a different style of regulator watch with emphasis on the second time zone.
Inside the watch is an in-house made automatic movement (with a micro-rotor seen in the back of the watch). The oddly shaped case is flattering on the wrist and sized larger that most watches. It is 56mm wide and 45mm tall - though not unwieldy at all while worn. Each of the case components is very well made, and interesting to operate. I quite like the style and size of the unique crown and the various almost-qulited straps. Case materials range from titanium to various colors of gold. This limited Punk Rock edition model has Clos du Paris engraving all over the case bezel (very cool). Price for all this uniqueness and small production isn't as high as some of Ladoire's competitors. Price is 158,000 Swiss Francs. You can bet there will be follow up models to the Roller Guardian Time watch line as well.
Ariel Adams publishes the luxury watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.
