My Pièce Unique from Unimatic
I worked with the team at Unimatic to create a custom watch. This page talks about Unimatic, my inspiration, and the final product.
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I’ve always loved watches.
I loved how one thing — a watch — could take so many different forms. It could be made of rubber, steel, gold, or anything (probably) and be worn functionally, for decoration, and everything in between.
Throughout my life I’ve probably owned a few dozen different watches. I was always into customizing them and switching straps out, and I loved trying to curate a collection that where each piece felt meaningfully different.
Over the years, my wardrobe normalized and I found myself gravitating towards a very narrow color palette and wearing fewer and fewer watches until it was just one watch in the world and a different one in the gym.
After a while, I started getting the itch to try and design one (or at least customize one to a greater degree than I had before).
Thankfully I found Unimatic.
About Unimatic
I forget where I first learned about Unimatic, but I’m going to give credit to this Hodinkee article.
Unimatic Watches was founded in 2015 by Giovanni Moro and Simone Nunziato, two friends who met studying product design at Politecnico di Milano. They started off with a Modello Uno — a dive watch that (to me) feels reminiscent of the Rolex Submariner with a more brutalist and less dressy design. While their (now-named) classic collection includes 4 different takes on a dive watch (or chronograph), their limited editions and collaborations with groups ranging from NASA to Spongebob Squarepants are where you really see them play outside of their more stark black and white designs. (You can see all of this in their archive.)
Now, I want to be clear that my comment about the Rolex above was no dig. When I hear the word “watch” my mind goes to the No Date Submariner (and I’ve worn mine almost daily for the last 7 years). I have a strong bias for sport/dive watches. This also meant that when I first saw Unimatic’s minimalist design language, I was intrigued.
But It wasn’t until I sent my own watch in for service that I ended up picking one up — the U1S-MN (seen with a red strap in the photo).
I loved the watch, especially how clean it was. Then a few things happened all at once:
I stumbled upon Virgil Abloh’s beautiful Pièce Unique from Patek Phillipe.
Unimatic launched a GMT in collaboration with Hodinkee.
I realized that Unimatic does private commissions (scroll to the bottom).
So, a few emails and a Stripe link later, I started the process for my own unique piece and all I had to do was wait.
Each Unimatic watch arrives in a custom tough case with room for a second watch.A Blank Dial GMT
Almost every design decision for my watch stemmed from the fact that I was ordering it to mark my birthday and the importance of time — specifically the idea that all we have is this moment (see the engraving on the back).
This was one of the reasons I went with a blank dial (a face without any markers or indices) — the other being that my father used to wear a Movado which also had a blank dial. The lack of numbers or markers felt like a good way to remind myself that time is what you make of it.
I added the GMT/dual time functionality because I travel often and wanted the ability to mark a second timezone. I also thought this was a bit ridiculous and playful given the blank dial, since there’s no real way to know what the second time zone is unless you were the one who set it.
All in, the watch turned out perfect, and I’m incredibly grateful to Giovanni, Simone, and their team at Unimatic for this piece.
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(I also want to give a shoutout to Andrew Valantine for his lighting help on these photos and the Ricoh GR iii for continuing to be one of the most impressive cameras I’ve ever used.)
