Jaeger-LeCoultre watch and Jony Ive

[Yankeexpress]

Jaeger-LeCoultre watch and Jony Ive

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...urrentPage=all

"At my first meeting with Ive, a few weeks earlier, he had worn a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch that he and an old friend, Marc Newson, the Australian-born designer, had customized for an auction benefitting Project Red, the charitable organization co-founded by Bono; they made three watches and kept one each; the third sold for three hundred and sixty thousand dollars. "

[Vincent Vega]

That is without a doubt the, longest, most boring article I have ever started (I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs), then quickly scanned a few more paragraphs, just to be sure.

[Yankeexpress]

As a G-Shock hater, you are easily bored.

[Matt]

I was struck by this:

“The materials in this thing are insane,” Howarth said. People, he noted, were saying that the watch’s face was made of “sapphire glass”: “It’s not glass, it’s sapphire crystal—completely different structure. And then the stainless steel is super-hardened. And the zirconia ceramic on the back is co-finished with sapphire as well.” He added, “This would cost so much money if a different company was making it—Rolex or something. It would be a hundred grand or something.”

I don't know, but that sounds like bog standard sapphire crystals with zirconium oxide PVD over case hardened steel to me and that's not so much insane as everyday. Certainly the Timefactors Seafire I picked up the other week and retailing at around £250 has that spec. Hell, some of Tianjin's products exceed that spec.

And that ultimately is the problem with this breathless, sycophantic name dropping hagiography. It is utterly and totally uncritical of any aspect of the PR puffery it is amplifying in such purple tones. When I think of some of the great writers, Dorothy Parker, for example, who have written for the New Yorker, I can scarcely believe it is the same publication. There is no interest in watches here apart from to accessorize the shameless name dropping and knee bending:

The room was full of reporters and fashion-industry guests—including Lily Cole, the model, wearing a gold Rolex Oyster that her friend Olivier Zahm, the studiedly louche editor of the magazine Purple, Instagrammed before the event was over. (“Sorry Apple,” someone commented.)

I started counting the number of names dropped, but I gave up at forty and with no end in sight. I started wondering if this was in fact some sort of satire, but there was no evidence beyond the fact that satire could not take the hyperbole any further.

I'm just flabbergasted. I can't remember ever reading something that was so well written and yet so revolting. I think 'studiedly louche' sums the whole enterprise up. They were aiming at raffish, but ended up with merely being disreputable and in poor taste.

I think this paragraph says it all:

He is impeccably solicitous, with frowns of attention and apologies for lateness or workplace untidiness, and he seems to extend this tone to everyone—including, presumably, to the crew of his twenty-seat Gulfstream GV, which he bought from Powell Jobs after her husband’s death, in 2011.

Presumably? as Dorothy Parker once almost quipped in her New Yorker review column 'Constant Reader':

And it is that word 'presumably,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The shape of things to come at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

The author has no idea how he treats his staff, he doesn't even pretend to, he just wanted to drop in the detail that this chap has a private jet he bought from Jobs' widow. Stunning.

I own a G-shock, but I wouldn't quite know where it is. Perhaps I loaned it to Bono when he dropped around to borrow my fragment of the true cross and asked me what all of this has to do with watches?

Incidentally, Hodinkee has a piece on the customised JLC - they changed the outer dial from a US to a European one and the centre dial for a red one. Well, someone did anyway. I assume they chose the shade of red. Sarcasm fails me.

[MarkO]

Thanks Matt for your summary. You have saved me valuable time as I now have no need or desire to read the article.

[I-B]

As a G-Shock hater, you are easily bored.

LMAO

[Rdenney]

And that ultimately the problem with this breathless, sycophantic name dropping hagiography. It is utterly and totally uncritical of any aspect of the PR puffery it is amplifying in such purple tones. When I think of some of the great writers, Dorothy Parker, for example, who have written for the New Yorker, I can scarcely believe it is the same publication. There is no interest in watches here apart from to accessorize the shameless name dropping and knee bending:

I just wish I'd written that paragraph.

Rick "knee-bending" Denney

[Matt]

I just wish I'd written that paragraph.

Rick "knee-bending" Denney

Not as much as I wish I'd noticed the typo before you quoted it!

And that ultimately is the problem with this breathless, sycophantic name dropping hagiography. It is utterly and totally uncritical of any aspect of the PR puffery it is amplifying in such purple tones. When I think of some of the great writers, Dorothy Parker, for example, who have written for the New Yorker, I can scarcely believe it is the same publication. There is no interest in watches here apart from to accessorize the shameless name dropping and knee bending:

[Vincent Vega]

As a G-Shock hater, you are easily bored.

Oh my gawd... yes, because that particular G-Schlock is so soooo amazing! !

Hate to say it but..., that article still su€#$ donkey d!#!$, oh, and so does your "watch".

[Matt]

Oh my gawd... yes, because that particular G-Schlock is so soooo amazing! !

Hate to say it but..., that article still su€#$ donkey d!#!$, oh, and so does your "watch".

There's nothing wrong with a G shock and while I didn't like the article, I thought that was a handsome G.