The 47 Zero Sliver and how it just might take me out of the luxury watch cult

This is less a review than a confession of sorts. I’ve had this 47 Zero for a few weeks now and I’m still marveling at how it’s so unlike anything I’ve owned, in no way a design, material, or color palate that would seem so versatile, and yet I seem to gravitate to it more and more. The dial—a metaphorical statement about how time passes—is executed through an acid-treatment to create a unique color and texture, and then hand-etched to constantly create motion through light-play. I can’t post video to Watch Crunch, but I wish I could convey how fascinating it is to see how the individual slivers dance around the dial as my wrist even slightly rotates.


The bronze case and caramel strap compliment the dial and handset’s colors beautifully. The whole thing inspires and captivates me like a piece of art and is a completely different experience than I get from anything else in my collection. The roughness and imperfections of the dial and handset aren’t evidence of poor quality as they would be on a mass-produced product, but are instead evidence of this being made by a single artist. An actual human being.


Bigger picture, it keeps making me look at my other watches in new ways. My “tool” watches suddenly seem a bit soulless and my “luxury” watches a bit pretentious. My vintage watches are retaining their charm, as are a couple Seikos that suddenly feel a bit more honest than the others. Most importantly, though, the 47 Zero and it’s backstory have me asking myself difficult questions like, “why have I paid multiple-times the cost for mass-produced ‘luxury’ watches churned out by factories than I did for this truly unique, truly hand-made piece of art?” Shouldn’t factory-made watches designed for mass appeal and manufactured in bulk cost a fraction of a watch with a wholly unique design conceived and executed by a single artisan in quantities limited to his own time? Don’t we have this whole thing backwards?

I’m not saying this specific watch is to everyone’s taste…but that’s my point. The watch is genuinely unique and so is my connection to it, and shouldn’t that have more value than, say, one of the million watches Rolex cranks out each year? Would I rather spend more than I paid for my first 3 cars combined on a piece of astronaut/diver/engineer/fictitious-spy/F1-driver cosplay than seek out something truly special that inspires deeper thoughts and feelings?

There's an honesty to this watch that I can't stop thinking about. It's not pretending to be a "tool," or using the dial to boast about specs that will never be tested (despite having more-than-respectable 200m of water resistance). It doesn't ask you to pretend that divers, drivers, astronauts, or airplane pilots didn't move on from mechanical wristwatches decades ago. It isn't engaged in a comically futile race to be almost as accurate as a $25 quartz watch (though it does have an accurate Swiss movement inside).

On a philosophical level, it stands in opposition to everything the luxury watch world has become. For me, it's helping pierce the reality-distortion-field required to make us believe that a mass-produced wristwatch, made of common materials, assembled on a production line, and most often using simple movements barely evolved over the past 75 years, should reasonably cost multiple thousands of dollars.

I don’t know where my head is ultimately going to land on this, but at the moment, I’m starting to feel like it’s time to sell off several pieces and rethink my engagement with this industry, the press and YouTube community that refuses to call bullshit on even its most egregious lies and obfuscations (i.e. what qualifies as “Swiss,” what qualifies as “in house,” what qualifies as “heritage,” and what qualifies as “value”), and the part of the enthusiast community that perpetuates the snobbery and flex-culture that reduces watches to gross status symbols.

My love of watches isn’t going away anytime soon—that’s been there since I was a teenager and first became fascinated with their individual design, technology, and craft on my path to becoming a product designer myself—but, rather, this 47 Zero (and for different but connected reasons worthy of its own rant, my Seiko 5 Snoopy pilot) is reigniting what first drew me into watches and pulling me out of the mentality that normalizes some pretty insane narratives, behaviors, and attitudes I found myself sucked into.

Truth is, I found myself getting way too emotionally invested in this stuff, getting triggered by reviews that overlooked the increasingly egregious dishonesty of luxury watch marketing while (literally) buying into it and embracing a mentality counter to my core values and the kind of person I aspire to be. So a hearty thank-you to 47 Zero, @Cormac and Tim at Caseback Watches for putting me back on the right path and reminding me what matters.