In-Depth Marc Newson Opens Up About Ikepod, The Pathbreaking '90s Watch Brand That's Cool All Over Again

He is also the founder of the watch brand Ikepod, a company that – since its founding in 1994 – has been profoundly influential on the rest of the industry for its bold approach to design.

First, there was Newson's singular focus on producing big, beautifully designed watches unlike anything else. Ikepod was one of the first independent watch brands to produce true "concept" watches, a precursor to brands like Urwerk, De Bethune, and other indies. Unlike other watches at the time, Ikepod watches were big. Soon, that'd change, as brands like Panerai and Hublot would boom in popularity after Ikepod came onto the scene. Finally, Ikepod brought ideas like limited-edition production and high-end luxury pricing to watchmaking (concepts Newson also used with his other objects), giving its watches the impression of something more than just watches, but high-end objects of design that you happened to wear on the wrist.

Newson, now 59 years old, seems both aware and humbled by the success he and his designs have achieved during his lifetime.

"Creators are not in control of the destiny of iconic work," he told me recently. "It just evolves on its own. And that's happened to me in many aspects of my work."

Newson has long been fascinated with watches and timekeeping – he often tells the story of taking apart a Timex his uncle gave him when he was 13 years old, building another case for it, and then disassembling and reassembling the watch.

"I was always interested in small mechanical things," Newson said. "Watches were the best example of a small mechanical, complex thing. It was like a universe in a teeny little size." He explained that, when he was growing up in the 1970s, everyone was obsessed with the concept of miniaturization, working within the day's mechanical and electrical constraints to make things smaller. At the time, watches were going through a revolution too, as quartz technology swept through the industry. Newson recalled the Concord Delirium – the Delirium IV is still the thinnest watch ever made – as an early fascination and inspiration of his.

"My life as a designer is all about detail. Watches were the first way that I could imagine and see how the concept of detail could be demonstrated in a physical object. So they became hugely influential in what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life."

After he graduated from the Sydney College of Arts, where he studied jewelry and sculpture, one of Newson's first projects was a watch. Eventually, his fascination with watches led to the co-founding of Ikepod. Commercially, the brand was a modest success through the 1990s and early 2000s, but it folded in 2006, and then again in 2012, after experiencing a brief rebirth from 2008 to 2012. Newson's involvement ended then, and a couple of years later he joined his pal Jony Ive to work on the design of the Apple Watch.

The Ikepod brand was acquired by new ownership in 2017, without Newson's involvement. Today's Ikepod has focused on creating watches that reference Ikepod's original designs, but at lower price points. The original Ikepod's most recognizable designs had MSRPs starting at $10,000 in gold (in the '90s!), but the modern Ikepod's first few watches are priced under $1,000.

Meanwhile, Ikepod's original designs have experienced a recent surge in popularity, with seemingly in-the-know collectors starting to gobble them up and auction prices experiencing a commensurate rise. This is likely thanks to a few factors: (1) the association with Newson; (2) the general trends toward indies and neo-vintage, both categories that Ikepod sits firmly within; (3) the trend toward different-looking watches (the Cartier Crashes, Urwerks, and Vianney Halters of the world, if you will). Sure, they've been spotted on celebrity wrists, including on the cover of GQ, but often, attributing the rising popularity of an entire brand to a few watch spottings can be a little reductive when so many other factors are at play.

In addition to my conversation with Newson exploring Ikepod's most important designs, this article also explores the growing collectibility of these original Ikepod watches. Which Ikepod models are most interesting to collectors, and why? I hope this conversation with Newson himself helps us better understand his designs and the context in which they exist. As Newson himself said, creators of a work "don't own its destiny;" that's up to the collectors. But hey, if that's a privilege we're to take on, it probably doesn't hurt to hear from the creator.

"There were two things about that watch that I wanted to play with. The first was the scale of the watch. The idea of big, oversized watches wasn't a thing in the mid-'80s," Newson said. "The second thing I wanted to play with was the idea of using dots, and not hands to tell the time." He'd seen all kinds of obscure watches use dots – the Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox, and Longines Comet – and he wanted to implement the concept in his own design.

"That was my first foray into the world of manufacturing with CNC (computer numerical controlled) technology," he said. Newson also made the rubber straps himself, laying the groundwork for what would become perhaps the most recognizable watch straps in the world, as an evolved version would be used on the Apple Watch 30 years later. The Large Pod Watch actually worked pretty well, until you hopped in an airplane and reached about 20,000 feet. With the changes in air pressure, the press-fit aluminum dials might start to pop off the case.

The Large Pod Watch was one of the first objects Newson created after finishing his studies, an early work made with his own hands. A seamless case of aluminum, the Pod Watch was also a precursor for many of Newson's now-iconic designs, like the Pod of Drawers or Orgone (the Pod of Drawers is a frequent hit at auctions, having sold for as much as $1.05 million). In December 2021, an example of the Large Pod Watch sold at Christie's for $27,500. According to Christie's, that example was one of a set of four, coming from the collection of a friend of Newson. Sure, it's a lot for a 60mm watch with an off-the-shelf movement, but when compared to other important objects by Newson, it's easier to understand. The Large Pod Watch anticipated Newson's other work – both in watches and not – and it feels like appreciation for early works like this will only grow with time, both by collectors of watches and of design.

"The Large Pod watch was, if I look at it now, perhaps the most modern and pure form that I'd ever made until that point," Newson said. "It's devoid of any sort of decorative embellishment. Despite the size, it's a very rational kind of object. In many ways, it was a precursor to a lot of the other things I did, not just subsequent watches that I designed. It really was the genesis of a lot of ideas."

Soon after the Large Pod Watch, Newson wanted to evolve some of his ideas for timekeeping from the wrist to other objects.

"With the Large Pod Watch, I had already taken a leap into the world of oversized timepieces – it's still wearable, but only just wearable. I started to become interested in more sculptural shapes that told the time. I was very literally inspired by the Cartier 'mystery clocks' from the 1920s through the '40s, and the idea of telling the time invisibly in a kind of a magical way." So Newson went to work on creating his own Mystery Clock.

"The Mystery Clock was my experiment in trying to create a sculptural object that you could put on the wall that looked good, but it wasn't immediately apparent that it was a time-keeping device. It was a sculpture that just happened to tell the time." The result is a wall clock with two small spheres that appear to magically travel in concentric circles on the Mystery Clock's face (Newson devised a magnetic system to move these markers). These two small spheres rotate around the dial to tell the time.

The Mystery Clock was intended to be produced as a limited run of 20 clocks. To date, perhaps six are known, and they're highly covetable, recognized as an important, early work of Newson's. In 2020, Chicago's Wright Auction sold an example for $77,500.

By the way, I have a round Nest thermostat hanging in my house that you rotate to change the temperature. It's hard not to see the potential influence of Newson's concentric, rotating mystery clock design on the Nest (oh, and we know Nest founder Tony Faddell loves watches, specifically Ikepod). This is just one example of Newson's influence on the design of everything around us; was the Nest literally, directly inspired by the Mystery Clock? I don't know for sure, but Newson's aesthetic is so omnipresent around us that the influence may have been as subconscious as it was conscious.

Newson decided he needed to develop a commercial watch with broad appeal. Through his previous efforts, Newson realized he couldn't do this by himself, and that if the watch was to be taken seriously, it probably needed to be produced in Switzerland, too. So in 1994, Marc Newson and his business partner Oliver Ike, a Swiss businessman who, at the time, was a furniture distributor (by then, Newson had become a well-known furniture designer), co-founded the Ikepod brand. As Newson explained, the company was initially set up to manufacture and sell that one watch, which became the Seaslug.

The Seaslug was Newson's take on a dive watch, featuring a bowl-shaped case with a bold, nearly convex bezel, and smooth, organic details that evoke many of Newson's other objects. The Seaslug also had a GMT function with its second, internal bezel ring. Ikepod produced the watch in Switzerland – "we had a real, grown-up watch factory," Newson said – and used chronometer-certified, ETA movements. "We had borderline success," Newson said. Because of the Seaslug's design, completely different from any other watch being made at the time, Ikepod received a lot of attention for its efforts. However, the Seaslug was still expensive – about $1,800 on a rubber strap in 1996 – eventually, Newson decided he'd need to start designing more ambitious watches if Ikepod was to be a successful, long-running brand.

Still, some collectors started to take notice of this new, weird brand called Ikepod. Phil Toledano, an artist and watch collector who's bought a few Ikepod watches in the past few years, recalled coming across Ikepod in the 1990s at the types of fashionable boutiques you'd stroll into just to see what's next. And that's what Ikepod was in the '90s: a kind-of-obscure watch brand with totally weird and different designs, helmed by a young designer with a growing international profile.

Ikepod had begun to establish itself as a new type of design-forward watch brand, and while it'd caught the eye of the generally fashionable set, hardcore watch collectors also started to take notice of the brand. As a perfect illustration of this: Robin Williams' 2018 estate featured an Ikepod Hemipode he bought back in 2000; meanwhile, Max Büsser also took notice – he showed us his Ikepod on Talking Watches).

Some collectors today have come to love the Seaslug as the first design from the new Ikepod brand, even if it's not as popular or recognizable as some of the later designs we'll see. If you're looking to own just the "iconic" Ikepod designs, the Seaslug might not be your first stop, but it is an important first stop in the story of Ikepod. For example, the modern Ikepod recently sold a new-old-stock (NOS) example of an original Seaslug for $5,000, on the more accessible end of original Ikepod watches on the market today.

"The Seaslug was an attempt at taking a step forward, commercially," Newson said. "It was a relatively straightforward watch to manufacture because it was built in a very conventional manner. But I wasn't happy with the fact that it was so conventional in that sense – I wanted to design something that was complex and different, that wasn't made like a normal watch." Looking around, Newson felt that not many watches were being built in an unconventional manner at the time. With the Seaslug, he'd gained experience in manufacturing and understanding what resources were available, as well as technical limitations.

"The Hemipode was a culmination of all of these things," Newson said. Building on an idea he'd had all the way back with the original Large Pod Watch, the Hemipode case was just two pieces – the body, with the bezel screwed on top. This meant Newson and team had to devise a way to assemble everything from the top.

Similar to the Mystery Clock, Newson loved the "mystery" of the Hemipode case, because just looking at it, you wouldn't understand how it's put together. Of course, watch nerds will recognize this as the "monobloc" construction often used in watches, perhaps most famously in the original Patek Philippe Nautilus 3700, but the Hemipode was designed for more than just watch enthusiasts – it was bold, fashionable, different.

With its round, 44mm case, the Hemipode is immediately recognizable, and unlike any watch before or since. Looking closer, it has many of the signature features of a Newson design: seamless curvature, with the crystal sitting perfectly flush with the case, creating a perfect ellipse. Add in quirky details like the hands, small window on the caseback, and eventually, the Ikepod bird logo on the crystal (the logo is actually a bird called a hemipode, a small, flightless bird), and there's a reason the Hemipode is the Ikepod watch that's become a cult favorite. This is also when Ikepod started charging higher prices for its watches: that first Seaslug was priced around $2,000; gold Hemipodes started at $10,000 (more than twice the price of a contemporary Rolex Submariner).

"It had this geometric purity that seemed to be lacking on any other watch out there. I thought, 'why don't people do that?' And then of course, I understood why, because it's really difficult to make things flush with continuity of form and curvature." With CNC technology still in its infancy, manufacturing the smooth, elliptical shapes that Newson wanted for the Heimpode was no easy feat. Similarly, the rubber strap had been refined since the early days of the Large Pod Watch: Not only did the strap attach flush with the case, creating a "pure intersection of two shapes," as Newson called it, but the tail of the strap also tucked under the buckle. It's hard to describe, but if you've ever put on an Apple Watch Sport Band, where the feature was eventually implemented, you know what I'm talking about.

Ikepod used the Hemipode case for a number of different references, in a variety of metals (every color of gold; steel; titanium; even platinum): A chronograph, chronograph with GMT, the Grande Date (a chronograph with large date window at 12 o'clock). These Hemipodes used an ETA 7750 caliber with a Dubuis-Depraz chronograph module.

Today, the Hemipode is the Ikepod model that most collectors know; it's big, audacious, and immediately recognizable. The Hemipode with four subdials (three for the chronograph, one for a second time zone) is probably the one you'll see collected most, with the dial feeling more balanced than the Grande Date. The Hemipode case has a huge presence in person, particularly in yellow gold or pink gold, as if a solid-gold UFO crashed into the wearer's wrist.

Ikepod's rise in popularity is probably best illustrated by the rising prices of the Hemipode. Just three years ago, a gold example might sell for $3,000 to $4,000 (example here). Today, however, a gold example can command anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 (examples here and here). These are the Ikepods that we see celebrities (or at least, celebrity collectors) buying. More importantly, the Hemipode feels like the culmination of the first decade of Newson's work in design and in watches. Its organic shape and seamless structure fit, well, seamlessly with the narrative of his other work, making it more than just a watch, but also an object of design from one of this generation's most important designers.

Before we look at the next Ikepod model, it's a good time to discuss the collectibility of these early Ikepod watches. While many watches will be numbered out of 9,999, it's pretty certain that none of the models came anywhere close to being produced in such large quantities. At most, some of the most popular models might've reached 50 percent of that number. Gold examples were numbered out of 999, but again, production never reached this level, so early Ikepods were significantly less-produced than numbers might first suggest.

To me, the pink gold Hemipode chronograph GMT (the one with four subdials) with a matching pink dial is the Ikepod to buy, if you can only have one. First, it's generally thought pink gold is less common than yellow gold or steel. And sure, it's a big chunk of gold on the wrist, but the brushed finishing on the case means it's not too shiny. But honestly, if you're wearing an Ikepod, people are probably going to notice, so you might as well lean into it. The same way collectors go crazy for pink-on-pink Pateks, I go crazy for pink-on-pink Ikepod.

Among these First Generation Ikepod models, one complication is truly rare: the Tourbillon. Ikepod produced about 30 Hemipode Tourbillon watches with the tourbillon exposed at 6 o'clock. In the '90s, Ikepod was already pushing the boundaries of watchmaking, and putting a tourbillon in its watches pushed its concept watches to the absolute limit.

"It gave me an opportunity to experiment with new materials like titanium," Newson said. By making the watch larger, Newson also introduced additional graphics that might be theoretically useful. 

"Nobody used titanium at the time, except IWC with the Porsche Design," Max Büsser said of the Megapode in his Talking Watches episode. "It's also got colors – watchmaking was serious, but this was not serious, it was designed to be artistic."

"It was designed to be worn by pilots," Newson explained. "Of course, pilots don't really use watches to navigate or calculate anything these days, but it still did everything a pilot would've needed it to do." The original Megapode used yellow and shades of grey on the dial to communicate a lot of information: Two logarithmic scales could be operated to calculate fuel consumption and distances and to convert units. The start and stop buttons were placed, unconventionally, on the left side of the case, so that pilots could access them more easily (Newson also felt it balanced the design). The Megapode also had dual-time functionality, and the inner bezel rotated.

As Newson talks about the Megapode, smiling as he explains all this amazing, but ultimately useless functionality that's squeezed onto the watch's dial, it becomes clear that this is what animates him, what keeps him so fascinated with watches: playing with what a watch is, the push and pull between something that's functional and something that just looks good. Surely, this is the case with the thousands of other objects he's designed, too, but it's perhaps most apparent with his watch designs, objects whose functionality has long been obsolete but remains romanticized.

Newson's first Large Pod Watch was a ridiculously large contraption, equally inspired by the tools of divers and astronauts, as it was by the fashionable Gianni Agnelli, who wore a dive watch over his dress shirt cuff just because it looked cool. It's these two ideas – functionality and fashion – that both inspire Newson and are in constant tension with each other.

If, as many say, great creative work is the result of an underlying tension between two ideas, many watch brands struggle by trying to paper over this tension with half-measures and compromises intended to satisfy acolytes of each school of thought. Newson instead lets this tension bubble to the surface, but rather than let it control or burden him, he plays with it, creating designs that are both, somehow, fully functional and fully fashionable.

Really, it's funny that the Hemipode is known for being a round watch, when, well, most watches are round. Of course, the Hemipode is notable for how round it is, the same as, say, the Cartier Pebble. But for a designer like Newson, it was only a matter of time before he started to play with shapes in watchmaking, and that's what happened with watches like the Ikepod Manatee, Platypus, and eventually, the Solaris.

"I felt that the Hemipode was such a pure sort of expression of that [round] form," Newson said. "So I wanted to stop there." After the Megapode, Newson felt he'd refined the round shape such that "the only place left to go was square." The Manatee came first, introduced in the early 2000s as a rectangular watch with rounded edges that also incorporated a world timer.

Like the Seaslug, the Manatee isn't as sought-after as the Hemipode or Megapode. I've seen dealers listing examples anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000, depending on condition. Still, less than a decade ago, these were selling for well under $1,000 without anyone taking much notice. Meanwhile, the Solaris is most notable for another design feature: It's reversible, with a dial on either side telling the time independently, each powered by its own quartz movement. It was the last new design introduced by Ikepod, produced until the company folded for the second time in 2012. Newson mentioned the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso as a favorite vintage watch of his, so it's natural to view that as an inspiration for the Solaris. However, the implementation of a "reversible" watch is completely different than that of the Reverso.

Again, the Solaris isn't as sought-after as the Hemipode. In addition to being quartz, unlike most other Ikepod models, it's also more modern, having been introduced in 2008 (10 years after the first Hemipode), and not yet comfortably falling in the category we now call neo-vintage.

Inside the familiar Hemipode case measuring 42mm or 44mm, the Horizon introduced a new, architectural dial that gives the optical illusion of appearing convex and three-dimensional. It's named after an "event horizon" in astrophysics, which is the boundary of a black hole beyond which nothing, not even light, can return. Playing with this concept was an early theme of Newson's work, perhaps most famously in his Event Horizon Table (examples easily sell for more than six figures). That table was part of a collection that also included Newson's Orgone Chair and Stretch Lounge, which, together, defined a new furniture aesthetic of polished, aluminum furniture with smooth, sleek edges that felt simultaneously organic and industrial. Retro-futuristic, like his watches.

The Horizon watch is of the same aesthetic. Examples of the Event Horizon Table were actually produced under the Ikepod banner in the 1990s (remember, his business partner, Oliver Ike, was a furniture distributor) and similarities of the Horizon watch to the table are immediately apparent. The effect of the Horizon's dial is similar to that of the enameled interior of the table, creating an optical illusion that messes with our perception of the object: Is it two dimensions or is it three? The Horizon also did away with a seconds hand, calling to mind luxury watches like the Royal Oak or Nautilus. Perhaps that was a fitting choice, too: Time slows down near the black holes causing those event horizons. If, as Audemars Piguet or Patek Philippe quipped, those luxury watches were for those who didn't need to reckon time in seconds, well, there's certainly no reason to reckon with seconds near a black hole.

Artist and watch collector Phil Toledano called the Horizon his favorite Ikepod model.

"The dial is the least watch-like," Toledano said of the Horizon. "Other Ikepod watches still look like watches, whereas the Horizon is totally sculptural." Initially, Ikepod set out to produce just 66 examples of the Horizon in a few different metals – titanium, rose gold, platinum. Eventually, it'd produce the Horizon in other limited runs – different dial colors for retailer partners, limited collabs with artist KAWS. Still, Ikepod's current owners estimate that less than 300 Horizons were ever produced. In addition to the design, it's this rarity that makes the Horizon a favorite for collectors like Toledano that have fallen for Ikepod. Of the Ikepods I've handled, it's my favorite, too. It feels a bit more sleek and refined compared to the Hemipode, with the removal of the distraction of a seconds hand allowing for total appreciation of the design and nothing else.

"It allowed me have fun and play with the dial and use it to exploit some of the shapes and patterns that I'd kind of become known for at that time," Newson said.

While appreciation for the Horizon has grown, prices still remain relatively attainable, at least in the world of Newson-designed objects. Using the pink gold Horizon as a measuring stick: A few years ago, we might've seen an example sell for somewhere between $5,000 to $7,000. Today, that figure might be a tick over $10,000. Sure, appreciation and prices have grown, but it's not been the hype-induced pandemonium we've seen in so many other watches. As collectors – of watches and of design – we begin to realize how rare the Horizon is, so there's certainly potential for appreciation of this particular Ikepod to continue to grow, and perhaps more quickly than for other models.

Focusing on Ikepod doesn't allow us to explore the Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos Clock designs Newson has worked on, but under the Ikepod brand, he did introduce another non-watch timepiece: the Hourglass. Like his Mystery Clock, the Hourglass was an effort to create a sculptural object that happened to tell the time. Newson called the Hourglass "an object all about time that doesn't even tell the time."

"It was a conceptual idea, creating this object that speaks about time, but really you're watching time elapse. It was designed with the idea of using time as a meditative function in the same way that you could look at a wave or a fire burning."

The Hourglass is produced in small and large versions, measuring 10 minutes and 60 minutes, respectively. Each is hand-blown out of a single piece of glass, which, if you've ever watched that Netflix show, you'll know is an incredibly difficult process. Inside each Hourglass are millions of nanoballs that make a mesmerizing sound as they fall through the glass.

Yes, the Newson Hourglass is a laughably expensive and incredibly unnecessary object, but the first time I heard one, I got it. It sounds like a horological rainforest, with those little nanoballs dripping down, sending you into a trance where you can't turn your eyes or ears away and you're not really sure why.

After introducing the Hourglass under the Ikepod name, Newson continued to produce it under the moniker HG Timepiece, often in limited editions (yes, including a limited edition for this very site). In fact, a unique Hourglass will be at auction this December, with Phillips auctioning off a unique 30-minute example that's a collaboration with De Bethune for its Time For Art charitable sale. Phillips places the estimate at $12,000 to $24,000, but I'd expect it to top that based on other recent results for the Hourglass. Like the Mystery Clock, the Hourglass is an object that can bridge the gap between watch collectors and design collectors, garnering interest from both. 

"It's just this beautiful, sculptural, mesmeric object, which is all about time, but no one buys it to tell the time," Newson said. Really, that describes most traditional watches today.

This second generation of Ikepod was never able to fully re-establish itself. After four years, it folded again, and Newson's association with the company ended in 2012. More than the watches though, this second generation of Ikepod, like the first generation, left its impact on the watch industry beyond just the watches it made. It showed how to do collaborations and blend watches with the worlds of art and fashion. While watch collectors might be more interested in the first generation of Ikepod for its forward-thinking approach and design, these second-generation watches and collabs attract collectors of all types, not just those from the world of watches.

"In many ways," Newson said, "the greatest thing I did was pre-think a lot of the qualities that we now associate with higher-end watches – championing qualities like simplicity, and fundamentally good design. I don't think these were qualities that were really being pursued by the industry at the time."

Besides the focus on design, Ikepod was also revolutionary for the way it produced watches: large watches, limited editions, high prices that weren't justified by the internal mechanics of the watch alone. Ikepod and Newson stood at the beginning of a new avant-garde of watchmaking, with watchmakers like MB&F, Urwerk, and De Bethune soon following to break with many of the established conventions of traditional watchmaking.

"Ikepod was a trailblazer in our industry," Max Büsser said in his Talking Watches episode. It's high praise, coming from someone who many describe as a trailblazer in his own right. Over the past few years, collectors have begun to recognize Ikepod's watches for these trailblazing qualities: its big, bold designs and general approach to watchmaking.

"On one level, it's enormously gratifying," Newson said. "I feel like people are starting to get it – all these attributes that, at the time, were lost on the broader public, not to mention on the industry."

Listen, Ikepod's original watches are probably weird enough – in a good way – that they'll never soar in value like so many watches did over the past few years. But there's a subset of watch collectors that have come to love them for a variety of reasons: the designs, what they meant to the watch industry, '90s nostalgia.

As Newson said, often creators don't control their work after it leaves their workshop; it evolves on its own. The recent growth of Ikepod feels organic in that way: passionate collectors have driven it, not dealers, auctions, or some modern marketing machine.

Thirty years ago, an Ikepod looked like a watch from the future. Today, it still does.