Grand Seiko announced at this past Baselworld a collaboration with two of Japan’s top photographers, Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama. Both are world-renowned in their field and are known for their images of the cities they are from, Tokyo and Osaka respectively.
The video below describes the partnership and the role the photographers played in the collection.
Photographer Daido Moriyama’s style is more abstract and modern than Nobuyoshi Araki’s. His strap designs include a women’s legs in fishnets (very Helmut Newton-esque) and his famous Stray Dog photograph. Daido says, “I like the feeling of how my photographs have a chance to circulate in the city once again.” While Araki’s straps use his vibrant flower subjects as their material.
The new watch straps are placed on the Black Ceramic Limited Edition watch, which is powered by either the Spring Drive Chronograph GMT 9R96, and the other two use Spring Drive GMT 9R16. These watches replica are all accurate to ±10 seconds per month, a level that is higher than any other existing spring-wound watch in the world. As a symbol of this enhanced accuracy, the Grand Seiko lion in 18-karat gold is built into the oscillating weight. And just in case the wearer doesn’t want the extra-length watch strap, an additional regular length strap featuring an image of each photographer’s work will be given with each watch.
Two of the Black Ceramic Limited Edition, chronograph versions, will be launched in June 2016 and the other two, GMT versions, launched in July.