The watch: Zodiac’s Super Sea Wolf Aquamarine Dream
The single best thing about this watch: It looks like one of Poseidon’s treasures.
The backstory: Over the past few months, watch brands
have begun to saturate their flagship models in color. Rolex made Day-Dates in Wonka colors, Tag Heuer sold out a green Monaco in an instant, and a new line of Cartier Tanks look like rectangles lifted from a Mondrian. To those folks, the watch brand Zodiac might say: welcome to the party. Make no mistake, Zodiac produces lots of nice conservative pieces, but the brand is probably best known for its vivacious takes on its Super Sea Wolf model. In the brand’s archives are an orange-and-blue “Gulf Oil”-inspired colorway, another named “Watermelon Candy,” and one that resembles an orange creamsicle. These colorful limited editions always sell out. Now, in collaboration with Ariel Adams, the founder of watch site ABlogtoWatch, Zodiac is releasing a dreamy Caribbean-themed watch that goes big on blues and seafoam green. The colors are inspired by a trip Adams took to the Bahamas, where he took pictures of the seafloor and shared them with Zodiac as reference points for the piece. The hour markers and hands are rounded to replicate smoothed-over stones chilling underwater, while the case back is engraved with the phrase “I’d rather be swimming.”
This watch matters in the world of watches because: even if the fashion and sneaker industries are obsessed with big-name designer partnerships and celebrity collaborations, many watch brands prefer to keep their own company. Collaborations between watch brands and the sites responsible for writing about them are becoming commonplace in the industry: Hodinkee now boasts a wide range of partnerships with everyone from Omega to Swatch, Fratello recently put out a piece with Rado, and Revolution has a new Polo Bear watch with Ralph Lauren. For watch brands, there are few better potential collaborators than those who cover their pieces obsessively. Many watchmakers are receptive to feedback from the collector community—and who could possibly be more in touch with those desires than collectors themselves? These are watches by collectors and for collectors.
Ariel Adams ?The Little Mermaid’sSebastian: Darling, it's better, down where it's wetter, under the sea.
Where and when to buy it: The new limited-edition Super Sea Wolf ($1,495) is available at Zodiac’s website now.