The Sotto

When our Kickstarter campaign ended in late 2016, one thing I realised was that my knowledge on watches was abysmal. But I also had it reaffirmed that I really do like these stupid things. My journey with watches has been somewhat backwards. Sure, I had a collection of common quartz pieces from a young age, but I didn't get my first automatic until after our Kickstarter campaign ended. Shameful, I know. But once I did, I fell hard.

Owning an automatic isn't necessarily a sign of 'moving up' in the world. It certainly wasn't for me. Sure, we had a successful campaign, but even to this day we don't pay ourselves a regular salary from Jacopo Dondi. I mostly stick with it simply because it's fun. No, I was donning no Rolex or Omega, but I found myself where most people begin their journey with mechanical watches: Seiko and Orient. You can find many of their pieces for little more than you'd pay for a fashion brand's quartz. Personally, I have nothing against quartz, but wearing a mechanical watch takes you to another level of romance with such an archaic object.

So here I am, a watch brand owner that is regularly caught out wearing another brand's watch. I don't feel overly hypocritical about this, but I can see why some would, and do, find this strange. The Cambio is very fun watch, and certainly gets lots of attention, but I want to wear different watches. If only there was a way around this...

The Sotto

Inspiration for the Sotto mostly comes from wearing my Mako. It's the watch I'm most - as some would see it - caught cheating on the Cambio with. It's actually very odd that I'd choose to create a dive watch out of all the styles out there as I'm someone that suffers with thalassophobia - something I discovered soon after moving to Australia. Thalassophobia is the fear of being in large bodies of water, of the vast emptiness of the sea, of sea waves, sea creatures, and the fear of distance from land. So it's safe to say that any future shots of the Sotto on a dive will not be of me. That's not to say that a dive watch doesn't have its uses on land. If the barista says I have a ten-minute wait for a coffee, I always set my bezel and head to the shops nearby. Maybe I shouldn't call this a dive watch after all? I at least feel the next colourway was conceived in this paragraph.