THE JOURNAL
A few years ago, Mr Matthew Lopez was nosing around the antiques stalls of Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road market when he spotted something incongruous lying half-buried in a bowl of old coins. “I saw a gold watch, barely working and with no strap, but it said ‘Longines’ on it,” he says. The vendor let him have it for a pittance, and Lopez took it home presuming it to be a fake. Nevertheless, it had a serial number, and contact with Longines HQ proved it to be the real deal. “That’s my lucky watch,” he says. “When I found it, I was lucky, and when I wear it good things happen.”
A good eye and an inquisitive nature has served Lopez well, both in watches and in his professional life as an art advisor, researcher and writer, based in Manila in his native Philippines. “I was supposed to be a lawyer and go to law school, but one of my teachers gave me a project of going to an art museum and writing about a painting,” he says. “I spent hours and hours in that gallery, just being astounded. That’s when I knew law was not for me.”
Lopez’s speciality subject is classical and modern art from Southeast Asia – a tradition that’s less recognised in the West, but, in painters such as the Filipino master Mr Juan Luna, Spanish-Filipino Mr Juvenal Sansó and the Japanese bohemian Mr Tsuguharu Foujita, offers up an engrossing diversity of characters, styles and subjects. And for Lopez, it’s in the rebalancing of ideas around just who influenced whom in the relationship between East and West that the subject gets most interesting.
“People think that Western art influenced everything, but it was more complex than that,” he says. “People like Monet had a big fetish for anything Oriental. Instead of West meeting East, what we see here is the dynamism of them coming together, and then art flowing from that.”
While art is his first love, watches have become his other deep obsession. “I’ve been collecting them since I was 18, starting with Casio, Swatch and Seiko, and then I got really bitten by the bug when I started buying second-hand online,” he says. “I like watches that are not showy, but have something special about them: if you know what I’m wearing, you know what it means.”
Lopez is a frequent traveller, hopping between cities, galleries and museums around Southeast Asia. “Whenever I travel anywhere, the moment I arrive I visit the art museum,” he says. “Always.”
As such, Lopez considers his watch to be a crucial part of his everyday kit. “I work in different time zones,” he says. “I don’t want to check my phone all the time, or to ask Siri. I’m a purist, and an elegant watch is just practical. It makes sense.”
So, which galleries and museums are his top recommendations? “You have to spend at least half a day at the National Gallery Singapore, which is the largest collection of modern Southeast Asian art – you’ll learn a lot. In Manila, go to the Ayala Museum, which has 500 years of Philippine art and culture in one place. And in Tokyo, the National Museum of Western Art: everything from the Renaissance to Dalí, in Le Corbusier’s building.”
01.
Vacheron Constantin Vintage 1992 Perpetual Calendar Chronograph
“In some ways Vacheron Constantin probably doesn’t get the wider credit it deserves, but it has that ‘inside baseball’ aspect. As a collector, you know that it’s the oldest watchmaker still going, that it’s one of the greatest names, that they have made highest quality timepieces like this for generations. And if you wear it, you’re really part of that club.
“This was made in 1992, and it evokes that ‘neo-vintage’ period of watches from the 1990s and early 2000s that is just now becoming really appreciated. I’m a big lover of grand complications, and this is a serious piece of watchmaking. It pairs the timing practicality of a chronograph with a perpetual calendar, which is really just the zenith of high horology, something only a very few can make. But it’s not ostentatious at all – it’s reminiscent of something from the 1930s, just a little more modern, and incredibly elegant.”
02.
Piaget Altiplano Ultimate
“I’d call this the party watch. It’s super-thin, it’s elegantly crafted, but it’s a statement, and that’s why you wear it – it’s really not so much for reading the time. But it’s so innovative. It’s one of the thinnest timepieces ever made, and you know that Piaget just hit it out of the ballpark creating it, because the engineering and the craft are very clearly what it’s all about. I’m a big fan of the ultra-thin watches Piaget made in the 1950s and 1960s: calibre 9P, which was the world’s thinnest movement in 1957, is incredibly important and shows how you can make the slimmest, most elegant dress watch that does the job just right.
“This is the modern continuation of that, and for me it exemplifies poetry in motion, in a very refined way. You could wear it for a very formal event, but I think it also would work more casually – it would draw a lot of attention, but also curiosity.”
03.
NOMOS Glashütte Zurich Weltzeit Automatic
“This is less extravagant, but it’s very practical because it’s a travel watch. It gives you the time where you are, but also in a second time zone. The travel complication makes so much sense to me, because I hate having to rely on my phone. It’s much easier to rely on your watch, and this one does it beautifully, and at great value. That you can make something like this, with an in-house movement, and do it so elegantly, that’s just incredible.
“The other thing that draws me to NOMOS is the Bauhaus aesthetic. I built a career from the arts, and that very clean, crisp, modernist aesthetic is something that really speaks to me. If you needed a watch that really worked when you’re on the go, and you want to wear it on a plane, to a meeting and then having drinks, it’s an incredible all-rounder for that, and you know it would also be reliable. It could be for anyone.”