Mayer, of course, isn’t just wearing any old version of the Orb. The musician worked with Vanguart and Yoni Ben-Yehuda, Head of Watches at Material Good, the only retailer stateside to get a Vanguart watch, to sprinkle a little Mayer magic on it. It was important for Mayer to “make something true to what Vanguart built,” Ben-Yehuda says. Rather than the diamonds on the standard version of the watch, Vanguart set Mayer’s orb with blue sapphires. “It’s a little bit of a tip of the hat, but it’s not so different that it separates the design,” Ben-Yehuda says.
It’s ‘90s… in a good way
Third Eye Blind, the movie Clueless, Michael Jordan—the ‘90s weren’t all bad. Ben-Yehuda, who’s spent plenty of wrist time with Vanguart, gets a distinctly ‘90s vibe from the brand’s watches. “It reminds me of the designs that I loved growing up, like the Oakley glasses and Nike products,” Ben-Yehuda says.
Like Oakley’s face-wrapping sunglasses, Vanguart shares the particular strain of retrofuturistic design that emerged in the ‘90s. It was a decade when the future felt so close: the idea of flying cars, jetpacks, and a phalanx of robot helpers seemed entirely possible. These designs were defined by their smooth, never-ending forms and chrome finishing. It was a time when it was still possible to be optimistic about the future, before we all read The Uninhabitable Earth. Vanguart’s work shares a spirit with these designs; if I saw it in a reboot of Total Recall, I wouldn’t blink an eye.
Technical wizardry
If you just saw the silhouette of the Orb, you might confuse it with a traditional watch. But Vanguart packs this piece with so many interesting details, many of which are highlighted with diamonds. Maybe the coolest innovation is how the rotor functions on the Orb. (A rotor is the weight, typically hidden in the back of the watch, that rotates around when you wear a watch and automatically winds the movement to keep the watch ticking.) On the Orb, the rotor is visible at the front of the watch and looks like the inner outside wall of the dial until it starts whipping around. The shape reminds me of the Gravitron, the carnival ride that would go around so quickly it pinned you to the wall. Vanguart’s is a little classier: you can keep track of the rotor’s movement thanks to a single diamond set into it. Of course, all this is only visible because of Vanguart’s intricate skeleton dial that gives the wearer a look inside the watch’s engine. At the press of a button, the wearer can also lock the rotor in place.
