Magazine Feature Time Travel With A Few Of Our Favorite GMT Watches

Magazine Feature note: This story was originally published as part of Volume 3 of HODINKEE Magazine in the Fall of 2018. With travel on many of our minds, we felt like revisiting James Stacey's thoroughly thought out and beautifully shot story on the best watches for travel. Whether you're hopping on a plane halfway around the world to escape the cold, driving to the mountains for the weekend, or staying put and channeling a spirit of adventure, check out the watches below.

Travel is the ultimate freedom. The ability to freely roam the earth and experience its many people, places, and scenery is a luxury defined by mobility and informed by curiosity and wanderlust. With some far-flung locale in mind, we accrue vacation time, book flights, read guidebooks, and fall asleep to old episodes of No Reservations.

I adore travel, and part of the appeal is in the thoughtfulness that goes into the things you carry with you to other parts of the world. The need to be minimal and purposeful in packing to a limit lends a special kind of clarity. What you choose to bring should be tuned to the frequency of your destination, not only to avoid additional baggage fees but to allow you the maximum comfort en route and to ensure you’re ready to make the most of your new locale.

While phones and international data plans have made travel and foreign experiences much less opaque, the ultimate travel tool, and a pillar in my travel kit, will always be a great travel watch. You can lose your bags, forget your sunscreen, and your phone can be long dead, but the right watch will ensure that you’re on time for the adventure and that you don’t lose track of home while seeing the rest of the world.

In an era where travel has never been more precious, nor the world’s edges more accessible, it’s not surprising that GMT watches are having something of a moment. From modern interpretations of classic pilot’s watches to luxury-inspired dual-time designs and totems to old-world exploration, these watches work without the need for a data connection. Like any seasoned traveler, the perfect travel watch jumps effortlessly from one locale to another, picking up the rhythm of the new space and presenting nothing that might get in the way of enjoying the journey.

With both new releases and classic icons of the genre seeing a huge uptick in popularity, GMT and travel-specific watches have become the hot complication in any manufacturer’s lineup. While chronographs and dive watches have enjoyed long-standing popularity, consider the effect Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have had on keeping exotic locales and amazing travel experiences directly within our eye line. From First Class to Paris or the jumpseat in a safari-ready Defender, travel watches speak directly to that adventurous wanderlust when we double-tap another photo of a place we hope one day to see for ourselves.

During a recent trip to Los Angeles, I spent a week with some of the best travel watches on the market today, and from classic icons to fresh faces, each reflects the philosophy of travel in its own way.

At 41mm in steel with a sporty, matte, burgundy and blue bezel, Tudor’s excellent Black Bay GMT combines the platform of their well-loved dive watch with the pilot-inspired functionality established by their sibling brand, Rolex. With a true local jumping hour GMT movement, the Black Bay GMT mimics the feature set of the classic Rolex GMT-Master II but does so with a more casual and laid-back appeal. This functionality allows you to land in a new time zone and quickly jump the hour hand of the watch to the new time without affecting the timekeeping or adjusting the 24-hour hand that shows the time back at home. For a newcomer to the GMT space, Tudor created a ringer and I can only imagine how cool these will look with 20 years of travel burned, dinged, and etched into the case and bezel.

In contrast to Tudor’s specifically sporty design, Vacheron Constantin’s lovely Overseas Dual Time omits a traditional 24-hour display for the subtle simplicity of a second hour hand and a simple AM/PM indicator. Perhaps more for docking a sailboat in Manhattan Beach than running a cafe racer through Hell, California, the 41mm Overseas Dual Time’s case is steel and it feels amazing on the quick-change rubber strap, offering a certain ’70s appeal that is a perfect complement to any luxurious travel arrangement.

Carrying the clarity and precision exemplified by much of Japanese culture, the Grand Seiko SBGJ213G is a technical marvel wrapped in a travel-ready 40mm titanium case with beautiful hand-finished details. Inside, this Grand Seiko GMT offers a high-beat movement that hums along at 36,000 vibrations per hour, leading to remarkable accuracy. With razor-sharp finishing on the dial and a lovely yellow 24-hour hand, the SBGJ213G is a perfect piece of Japanese engineering, and from Tokyo to the glittering waters of the Venice Canals, it manages to shine anywhere in the world.

In contrast to the stoic and straightforward nature of the Grand Seiko, Montblanc’s 1858 Geosphere is a tribute to the iconography of travel, a nod to exploration, maps, and the art of representing the globe against the fixed nature of time. At 42mm wide with a ceramic compass bezel, the 1858 Geosphere is characterized by a pair of rotating hemispheres that illustrate the layout of time zones across our world. With a central reference and a sub-dial showing AM/PM, while the 1858 Geospheres may be less practical than a traditional GMT, it manages to capture the romance of exploration in a fanciful and unique design.

Offering a slightly smaller expression of Patek Philippe’s roguish Calatrava Pilot Travel Time 5524G, the 37.5mm 7234R may be marketed as something of a ladies model, but to my eyes, it offers the same handsome design and travel-ready layout in a smaller case that is nicely complemented by the warm rose gold tones. While these pilot-inspired Travel Time models are indeed a departure from Patek’s usual sport watch methodology, the brand has very strong roots in travel-specific watches and even had a hand in one of the earliest example of a worldtime. Furthermore, the 7234R feels fantastic on wrist and its trick locking crowns make any new time zone a tactile treat. Dressed down with a travel-proven denim work shirt to match the somewhat military-derived aesthetic, this rose gold pilot’s watch was an easy fit for LA’s casual outlook on excess and luxury.

Finally, it’s the brand new Rolex GMT-Master II in Oystersteel on a matching Jubilee bracelet. One of the hottest sports watches on the market, the GMT-Master II is the iconic post-war travel watch. With a design that has endured more than 60 years of evolution, the GMT-Master II captures the high-low reality of travel. While decidedly luxurious and beautifully made, and with a warm ceramic bezel in red and blue atop its 40mm steel case, the GMT-Master II is also hard-wearing and undeniably adventure-ready. It is the enduring high bar in the travel-watch game, and this year’s addition of a steel version with a Pepsi bezel and the glittering Jubilee bracelet undoubtedly caused a spike in the rising popularity of GMT watches. 

On the wrist, this true-to-its-roots GMT-Master II feels special, adventurous, and the bezel color speaks so specifically to the legacy of this design and the aesthetic of those who wore one. Despite the evolution of several generations, this new steel GMT-Master II captures the Avante-Garde spirit of the jet-set age; it makes me want to dress up for my next flight or write Chuck Yeager a letter after reading about his exploits on the back of a cereal box. The new GMT-Master II on the Jubilee isn’t only THE GMT watch, it’s arguably THE sports watch on the market today.

A good travel watch is a thoughtful blend of function, design, charm, and hard-wearing construction. And from Tokyo to Los Cabos, Johannesburg to Los Angeles, the result should never look out of place, never get in the way, and only grow in appeal with the progressive development of travel-derived patina. Sun-faded, scratched up, and always on-wrist, a great travel watch captures the imagination as both a tool of enduring practicality and as an object in tribute of personal freedom.

Photography by Walker Tovin and James Stacey.