Esquire: Eric Wind on What He'd Like to See In Rolex Releases

Esquire recently asked Eric Wind what he would like to see in future releases from Rolex.

“I’d love to see some of the 1950s-style watches bought back. Whether it’s the Explorer or the Milgauss with a honeycomb dial. And I’d love to see the Explorer II go back to 39mm, like the originals from the 1970s with the orange [GMT] hand. The [current] 42mm size is just too big. They’ve done a lot with the Daytona recently, including the ‘Le Mans’ with the black dial [announced last summer], but I wonder if they wouldn’t consider doing something with a white dial variation, which would be cool, like the original watch Paul Newman wore. They don’t have 34mm watches anymore. That’s such a nice size for a lot of people, whether male or female or anywhere in between. I would love to see them have that as a size again. In terms of what I think will be done, I would expect they’d do more with the 1908, which replaced the Cellini. They had a really nice moonphase Cellini which came out some years back. So, a more complicated 1908 seems like something they should do. They’ve been toying a lot with enamel dials so I would expect them to do more with that. White gold models have been pretty hard for them to sell, other than the ‘Le Mans’ Daytona. The GMT sells for almost a $10,000 discount on the secondary market. So, I don’t know what they’ll have to do to make the white golds more interesting to people. Probably some more interesting colours, whether it’s for the Submariner or the GMT. The general strategy of Rolex over the past five years has been to push more and more people into precious metals. They had been very successful with that, but the market has softened over the last year. So, they’re going to have to continue to do innovative and interesting dials and bezels."

https://link.esquire.co.uk/view/659fde6eb6b81f33e7dfc634krcsn.2r/d334d68f