Seasonal Picks

On the second of August, Kuwait does not celebrate. It remembers — a day that wounded the country, and the same day that belongs to its heroes: those who were lost, and those still among us.

This is the first Arabic edition in William Wood's history — the only watchmaker in the world building timepieces from decommissioned firefighting material, and a house whose every release has been a salute to those who stand in the front line. Smiths has been its first partner in the Arab world for five years. That a Kuwaiti company should be the one to bring this piece home felt inevitable.

It takes the form of a diver because Kuwait is a country of sea and pearl-diving — and because the sea teaches what this people already know: patience, a long breath, and the certainty of surfacing again. The mirror-silver dial is heat-treated to graduate from the blue of the sea below to the clarity of the sky above, ringed by applied Arabic numerals in sunburst blue. At its centre sits the Kuwaiti boom — the dhow once carried on the nation's currency — with the word الكويت engraved and gilded at its heart.

The crown holds brass stamped from a retired firefighter's helmet. The strap is cut from genuine upcycled fire hose. Nothing on this watch sits far from the story it tells.

Fifty pieces. Not simply a watch for the wrist — something to carry.

Caseback commemorative coin — after the words of the late Amir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah: "From Kuwait we begin, and to Kuwait we return."

An STR Project

STR — Smiths × Tokei Ronin

United We Are · A tribute to the Smiths community in the United Arab Emirates

Some tributes are spoken. This one is worn. United We Are is the opening chapter of STR — Smiths × Tokei Ronin — a limited run of thirty pieces, created as a gift from us to the Smiths family across the Emirates. At its heart sits an artisan black aventurine dial: a captured fragment of night sky, scattered with countless points of light that deepen and shift as they meet the sun. Upon it rests the United Arab Emirates' official emblem of 1973 — applied by hand and finely moulded for this project alone — beside a single applied Hindu-Arabic ٧, drawn for the seven emirates and the unbreakable bond between them. Thirty watches. Seven emirates. One quiet promise: united, we are.

Capri in its deepest colour. A 33mm cushion case in warm gold, a deep green dial, and a small seconds hand keeping its own quiet pace at six.

Wind it by hand each morning — a few turns, thirty-nine hours — and it becomes yours in a way no battery ever allows. Sized for a woman's wrist, worn on green leather.

Amalfi — named for the Italian coast where white stone meets blue water. A white panda dial on the GranTurismo Chronograph 39 platform: the Seiko VK64 meca-quartz pairing quartz accuracy with a mechanical chronograph module — true sweeping chrono hand, instant flyback reset. 39 mm of 316L steel under domed sapphire, water-resistant to 100 m, on Naga's hand-finished integrated snake-scale bracelet with hidden butterfly deployant.

The purest reading of the shape. Polished steel, a clean white dial, numerals and hands with nothing to hide behind.

Without gold to soften it, you see the case for what it is: sculpted lines, a framed bezel, a domed crystal that bends the light at its edges. Thirty-three millimetres, hand-wound, on dark grey leather. The one that goes with everything — and means it.

A diver in the fullest sense. A black lacquered dial with Wolbrook's signature arrow hour hand, white BGW9 Super-LumiNova® on every hand and index plus a luminescent pearl at 12. Under a glass-box sapphire crystal, inside a 316L steel case with HexapleX® shock architecture and a 120-click unidirectional steel bezel, water-resistant to 200 m. Driven by the Miyota 9015 automatic. The first 949 pieces — a tribute to Wolbrook's 1949 foundation — carry an individually numbered caseback, deep enamel-filled with the motto THE PROOF IS IN THE DIVING and two narwhals. On the military green Tropic rubber strap.

Kuwait keeps time in company. A watch crosses a table, a story arrives before it does, and a dozen opinions are offered before the coffee has cooled.

Legacy of Time is the first coffee table book written entirely by a Kuwaiti collector and printed in Kuwait — Sulaiman Khuraibet's record of a community that grew up around the wrist. What we wear and why. Which pieces we chase, and which we quietly let go. How taste here moved from gold to steel, from the showroom to the group chat.

Written from inside the community rather than about it, it reads less like a catalogue and more like a decade kept on paper — the trades, the arguments, the first watch, the one that got away.

Two editions: printed in Arabic and in English. Choose your language above before adding to cart.

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