Celebrating 10:10 issue 10 at IWC Bond Street

Celebrating 10 issues of Port’s watch supplement in Mayfair

10:10’s editor Alex Doak. All Photography RICHARD WILSON

This spring issue of 10:10 was a momentous one – resdesigned, and at the milestone of a tenth issue. One of its covers was graced by a legend, IWC’s Portugieser, so it was a pleasure to celebrate it last week at IWC’s flagship space with Portuguese wine and petiscos.

The Portugieser is a rare trailblazer, and 10:10’s editor Alex Doak commemorated it in his speech as the result of a series of miracles: IWC sticking by this marine chronometer through WWII despite demand for pilot’s watches, and a continued appreciation of mechanical watchmaking after the advent of quartz technology. Here’s an excerpt from his speech:

“As its launch editor eight years back, it makes me so proud to have seen 10:10 grow from Port‘s fine-watch supplement, pretty much to a magazine in its own right, with a visual ambition unlike any other horological title out there.

Which makes it a true honour to have horological blue-bloods like IWC embrace this ambition – sharing our celebration with an anniversary of its own: the 85th birthday of its Bauhaus icon, the Portugieser.

Back in 1993, the IWC Portugieser’s 42mm diameter was still ludicrously huge; it wasn’t inherently ‘Portuguese’; it was a revival of a back-catalogue oddity made in such vanishingly rare numbers that no one was able to get nostalgic about it, even if they wanted to…

And yet, here we find ourselves, in awe of a not-so-tiny trailblazer. With so many more stories beside.