Welcome to Watch Guy Watches, GQ’s monthly curation of high-end timepieces for the true watch nerds among us. This October, A Lange & Söhne is celebrating a big anniversary in style, Urwerk is finding inspiration from an arachnid, TAG Heuer keeps pleasing Porsche fanboys, and everything is in balance on the new collaboration between H. Moser and Massena LAB.
30 years ago, the history of complicated watchmaking was changed forever. On October 24th, 1994, a reconstituted A. Lange & Söhne debuted its first four collections in Dresden, Germany. The realization of the lifelong dream of Walter Lange, the newly (re)birthed family business was made possible through the help of several now-legendary personalities: Günter Blümlein, head of IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, contributed his design genius and business acumen, and star watchmaker Kurt Klaus—who is 90 years old this week!—added his horological ingenuity. But while all four collections were well received, there was one in particular that blew the watch world’s collective mind: the Lange 1.
The Lange 1’s offset dial, golden mean-inspired geometry, outsized date window, incredible movement, and gorgeously sculpted case make the watch an all-time classic timepiece. Nothing was left to chance when it came to Lange’s debut piece. The nascent company refined every interior angle and every movement component until the Lange 1 was simply perfect. Designing the watch led the team at Lange to borrow ancient geometrical formulae and esoteric inspirations to inform its design. The outsize date window? It was inspired by the Five-Minute Clock in the Semperoper Dresden opera house, which was designed by company founder Christian Friedrich Gutkaes, under whom Ferdinand Alfred Lange apprenticed.
Lange Uhren GmbH
