Pietro Pila
Italy is synonymous with style and elegance. The company has a rich tradition not only in making watches, but more importantly in setting trends and markets for classic watches, past and present. This article examines the current Italian watch industry, which is often overshadowed by its European counterparts, a fate unfortunately shared by the Spanish watch industry.
There’s always something special about Italian watch brands, setting them apart from others by carving their own path with unique designs and impeccable attention to detail. The deep history and art that has existed in this country since the beginning of modern civilization has helped shape its current taste and ability to create timeless designs.
The result is a wide range of retail outlets. Beyond food, the country’s global reputation for luxury cars, fashion and art has created a creative environment that has influenced the watchmaking industry, making it a natural place to explore Italian creativity. . So whether it’s on the wrist of a burly sailor with its highly legible dial and sturdy case, or on the wrist of an elegant gentleman with its precious metals and intricate shapes, Italian watches are the perfect choice. always exudes a unique personality and charm. Let us take you to the Giro d’Italia and discover some of Italy’s best watch brands.
echo/neutral
Launched on Kickstarter in 2019, the brand is based in a small town in northeastern Italy. Founders Nicola Callegaro and Cristiano Quaglia come from very different backgrounds, the former as a product and brand designer and the latter as an aerospace engineer. With many watches taking inspiration from the local mountains, a passion of both founders, the brand’s philosophy has endured, thanks not only to high quality and care in the manufacturing process, but above all to timeless watches. It’s something you can love. A timeless design.
Gaga Milano & Gaga Laboratorio
Let’s talk about the two brands together. Although they share some design cues with their founders, the similarities end there, as they pay homage to different eras and have very different values ​​behind them. Their founder, Ruben Tomella, started Gaga Milano in 2004 with a 12 o’clock crown, welded lugs, and hand-wound watch inspired by old pocket watches. In 2020, together with his friend and industry veteran Moe Coppoletta, a spin-off of the brand was born with a more traditional take on the well-known case shape. Gaga means “dandy” in Italian, and its unmistakable style is interpreted in two different ways by the two brands. One is more classic and the other is more ornate.
HTD – Watch Tools Department
The Florence-based brand was founded in 2020 by Federico Del Guerra and Federico Zulian and focuses on small-batch production. The two founders met as students and were brought together by a shared love of watches and vintage machinery. As a result, the brand’s identity revolves around the spirit of the last century, with racing, diving and sailing as protagonists. While the vintage inspiration is obvious, it’s also immediately obvious that these are modern watches. As part of the brand’s philosophy, each release has a unique design and is never repeated in the same configuration.
gucci
When Gucci comes up in conversation, it’s usually not about the watch, but about its importance as a fashion statement. However, in recent years the brand has evolved from producing fashion watches to designing and producing mechanical watches with very distinctive designs.
Currently, both types of watches are available, but we are seeing a slow movement toward more technologically superior watches that we hope will take over this side of the business. With this in mind, a watch manufacturer was founded in 2023 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, with a particular focus on high-end products.
venetianico
This young brand was founded in 2017 by brothers Alberto and Alessandro Morelli, who live in the Venice area. The brand was started while they were still studying abroad in Venice and combines their passion for design and watchmaking. While most of their watches take inspiration from Venice’s artistic heritage, they are also at the forefront of a new wave of brands using hardstone dials.
They also often explore other artistic techniques and apply them to their watches. The brand’s logo is reminiscent of the cross at the top of Venice’s clock tower, and it believes in maintaining mechanical purity in all its collections. For this reason, we only produce mechanical watches with movements sourced from both Switzerland and Asia.
Giuliano Mazzuoli
First, there is the independent brand Giuliano Mazzuoli. This is perhaps one of Italy’s lesser-known watch brands, founded in Florence in 2005 by Mazzuoli himself, and is a niche independent watch brand with a unique and distinctive design language. Primarily a designer and architect, founder Mazzuoli has many successful designs, including unique writing instruments and stationery, and has a decades-long relationship with New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Mazzuoli was inspired by an air pressure gauge on an air compressor in a printing shop, and eventually began making watches. After several prototypes, the Manometro was born, the first in a series of unique watches inspired by dial instruments.
The series includes the Contagiri, inspired by the dial of the Alfa Romeo 8C supercar, the Trasmissione Meccanica, inspired by clutch and transmission mechanisms, and finally the case featuring a case made from Italian marble from the Apuan Alps. and the more traditional Carrara. It is located in Carrara, about 100 km from Florence.
U-boat
A relatively young watch brand, U-Boat was founded in 2000 at the foot of Tuscany’s Gragnano Hills. What is less well known is that the tradition is much older than that. Irbo, founder Italo Fontana’s grandfather, was commissioned to make a watch for the Italian Navy in the 1940s, but the project never materialized and the watch was never produced. Sixty years later, upon discovering his grandfather’s old sketches and design ideas for a military diver’s watch, Fontana Jr. decided to fulfill his grandfather’s ambition and continue making watches as we know them today.
The design of the watch is unique, and it’s refreshing that it’s not a direct copy of the typical dive watch DNA found in most brands. They may have simply incorporated elements from dive watches from multiple brands, but they still make watches like Capsoil and Dark Moon. These watches are large, oil-filled watches that create an optical effect when submerged in water, creating the illusion that the crystal is not there. Clearer display and much better readability. While its aesthetics often divide opinion, it’s what makes the watch truly distinctive and shows that U-Boats aren’t afraid to go their own way, and that’s something to be admired.
unimatic
Unimatic is the product of Giovanni Moro and Simone Nunziato, two Milanese industrial design students who met at university at Politecnico di Milano. The two developed a friendship after realizing they shared a common interest and passion for watches, including industrial design. In 2015 they released their first watch as Unimatic, the Modello Uno. Due to continued success, the product line has expanded to four major watches. There are many collaborative special editions, including divers, field watches, chronographs, military-inspired watches, and more.
Once again in true Italian style, Unimatic has done things its own way, taking traditional design elements and applying its own minimalist, industrial, almost brutalist style of composition. The dial and bezel are neat and the edges of the watch case are thick, angular, and rough. It almost looks like it’s missing an element, until you realize the look is intentional, and it’s interesting how something so practical could be made to look chic .
panerai
In 1860, Giovanni Panerai opened his first shop on Ponte alle Grazie in Florence. Panerai’s story begins here, from a diving store, to a watch shop and workshop, and finally to the city’s first watchmaking school, deep in the heart of Italy’s craftsmanship and artistic creativity. . At that point, Panerai was already producing precision instruments for the Italian military, but in order to meet the ever-growing demands of the Italian military, Panerai developed a radium-based dial to make the dials of these instruments brighter in the dark. We have developed a powder of At this point in 1916, Radiomir was born. The first Rolex watches with Panerai dials were not produced until the 1930s, and the reference 2533 is known as the first Radiomir.
Although it is now part of the Richemont Group and has modern manufacturing facilities in Switzerland, it is a brand proud of its Italian heritage. Panerai currently has three core lines, consisting of the traditional Radiomir, the more technical Luminor, and finally the hardcore Submersible. Each line offers a wide choice of materials, from stainless steel, bronze, gold, and even carbon fiber, and features not only its distinctive size, but also its patented crown guard system and oversized numerals. If your wrist is large enough, there is a watch in our collection that will suit everyone. These days, it’s a brand that doesn’t get as much attention as it used to, but considering its history and contributions to the development of society, it’s definitely worth more. Putting Italy on the watchmaking map.
bulgari
Bvlgari is one of the most respected jewelry brands in the world. Founded in Rome in 1884 by Greek silversmith Sotirios Volgaris, the brand quickly established a reputation for exquisite craftsmanship and unique creations. Over the intervening decades, they continued to create some of the jewelery world’s most famous icons, most notably worn by legendary figures such as Elizabeth Taylor in the film Cleopatra. Or, for those with more modern sensibilities, the $7 million, 107-carat sapphire worn by Anne Hathaway at Cannes 2022 shows just how important the history of Buglari jewelry is. You will understand.
Do watches fit here? In fact, it goes back to many of the biggest watch brands across the industry. Records of wristwatches being incorporated into women’s jewelry date back to the 1920s, following the Art Deco style that was prevalent at the time. Rectangular watches began being offered to gentlemen in the 1930s, but really took off in the ’40s with the first Serpenti models that wrapped around the wrist and lower forearm. This was Bvlgari breaking boundaries and setting a trend that no one dared touch. Their watches took a sportier approach from the 1970s to the 1990s with watches made from aluminum and other materials, paving the way for the watches seen in today’s Octo collection. They continue to push the limits of the Octo, introducing challenging materials and technologies, and have so far created eight thinner worlds, from the 5mm Tourbillion to the astonishing 1.8mm tall Octo Finissimo Ultra. A record was achieved. Bvlgari is more than just a jewelry brand that sells watches. They are a powerhouse of Italian design and innovation, and what they have achieved over the decades is frankly amazing.
Honorable Mention: Oisa 1937
Although this last mention is not a watch brand, it is worth adding to this list. Italy is not famous for watchmaking in general, but it is even less famous for making movements. Founded in 1937 by Domenico Morezzi, Oisa could produce up to 10,000 movements a month at the time, but was forced to close in 1978 due to the quartz crisis. In 2017, Domenico’s successor, his grandson, decided to revive the family business. Currently, the factory is located in Pavia, south of Milan, and produces several versions of the movement. We also offer bespoke solutions in terms of movement construction and finishing for truly Italian and unique products.
