After a 35-Year Wait, a Legendary Vintage Watch Brand Has Finally Returned

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The watch industry’s sleeping giant is slowly stirring. As collectors have fallen hard for vintage timepieces over the past few years, one of the most talked-about brands wasn’t even producing watches anymore. Universal Genève has all the credentials for a watchmaker that should be a dominant player in 2024: a sexy lineage of chronographs, elegant and distinctively shaped ladies' pieces, and a foundational model designed by none other than Gérald Genta. Brands today can be a runaway hit by checking just one of those boxes—UG ticks all three with a fat marker. Fortunately, last December, Breitling announced that it had acquired the beloved Universal Genève brand and planned to restore it to its former glory.

There’s still a long road ahead before UG begins producing new watches, but the brand took its first major steps in that direction yesterday with the launch of its very first website (welcome to the 21st century!). Out-of-the-know collectors, you’re officially on the clock: this is your chance to get acquainted so you can say you knew UG before it was cool—or cooler than it is, anyway.

So, what’s a Universal Genève?

Universal Genève—also known as Universal, UG, or U-Genny from the Block (kidding)—is a historic Swiss watchmaker that’s developed a cult following over the last decade and a half. The company was founded in 1894 and gained a reputation for its inventive chronograph watches. To put UG’s importance into context, in 1935, the brand moved its headquarters to Geneva’s Rue du Rhône where it was situated directly between Rolex and Patek Philippe. But in 1989, the brand struggled mightily to navigate the Quartz Crisis and eventually folded. Stelux Holdings then purchased the UG name and unsuccessfully attempted to reboot the brand in 1994 and 2005. The brand has essentially remained dormant for more than three decades.

What makes Universal so special?

Universal’s resume is stacked. Many collectors find their way to the brand through a healthy love for Patek Philippe, whose ref. 1518, a legendary (and legendarily expensive) perpetual calendar, bears a close resemblance to UG’s Tri-Compax model. That’s how super-UG collector @DandyWatchman first discovered Universal. “You're never going to be able to have the 1518, but you really love the look of it. So, how do I make that happen? And going down the road of the 1940s Tri-Compax was basically how you made that happen,” he told me over the phone this week.

But once collectors are hooked on UG, they quickly learn that the brand is so much more than a poor man’s Patek. “One of the big [appeals] is the diversity of what they did,” Dandy said. Indeed, in its heyday, Universal made a watch for virtually every use case. Pilots, doctors, and even film directors were all served by specific UG chronographs. One of the coolest (and hardest to find) UG examples is the Film Compax, which has a scale that measures the amount of film tape is being used in feet per second. The esteemed dealer Sacha Davidoff and Italian collector Mr. A once researched the reference and found that only seven known examples existed. UG’s history is filled with delightful little models like this.

The Polerouter

One of the most important pieces in UG’s history is the Polerouter. In 1953, Scandinavian Airlines began flying direct between the USA and Europe. The routes between New York City and Los Angeles to Europe took flights over the North Pole, where Earth’s magnetic fields are strongest. Scandinavian Airlines enlisted UG to make an anti-magnetic watch for the crew to solve for the issue. So in 1954, a 23-year-old, then-unknown jewelry designer by the name of Gérald Genta—who would go on to devise several of the most iconic watches of all time, including Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak and Patek’s Nautilus—created the Polerouter. The historic watch is the archetypal UG. Today, you can still find them for a couple thousand dollars on Chrono24.

My personal favorite UG examples, however, are more complicated and colorful. While the comparisons to Patek hold water, I find the watches in UG’s archives to be far more playful and vivid than that analogy suggests. Look at pieces like the Tri-Compax and Polerouter Sub and try not to fall in love. Impossible!

What will the new UG look like?

Regular readers will know that I joke incessantly about the existence of a Watch Illuminati—but there actually is a Watch Illuminati involved in the relaunch of Universal Genève. Breitling CEO Georges Kern enlisted roughly 30 UG obsessives to serve as an advisory panel as the brand solidifies its new direction. It’s a great idea to get buy-in from the community in general, but it’s also necessary given everything that’s happened in the watch world since the brand was last operational. “While UG was technically owned by Stelux, over the last couple of decades it was sort of owned by the community,” Dandy said, referring to the way fans of the brand have kept the flame alive through forum posts and vintage sales. “Kern has said from the onset that part of bringing the brand back to life meant doing it in conjunction with the community.”

The panel’s duties are high level. The group meets in person twice a year with Zoom meetings in between, according to Dandy and @Bazamu (another board member I spoke with who prefers to go by their IG handle). Both Dandy and Bazamu felt like the executives at Breitling genuinely cared about what they had to say. “The board's purpose and primary duty is to be a sounding board for the UG team before key decisions are made,” Bazamu told me via email. “In most instances, the UG team did not present the board with an announcement that a course of action was being taken (marketing, product design, etc.), but rather a set of choices/decisions that could be taken. Our purpose was to weigh in on our view of the best choices and also provide a ‘why’ behind our answer.” (When pressed for more details, Bazamu responded, “If I told you any of the specifics, I'd have to kill you!” After years of working with super-secretive Swiss watch brands, I don’t know if he’s kidding.)

The first fruit of the panel’s labor is the new website that went up on Wednesday. Think of this as an appetite-whetting amuse bouche in the UG journey. The most revealing part of the website is the brand-new logo featured at the top. It’s a little modern for my tastes—like the logo for a hipster doctor’s office—but one quality I like about UG is the diversity of its insignia over the decades. (The fat U is the best.)

The new logo is emblematic of the challenge facing Universal: How do you pull a historic vintage brand into the modern world without simply making carbon copies of what came before? This marks Universal’s first attempt to thread that needle. “In the new logo you can see clear nods to the most iconic logos of the past,” Dandy said. We’ll have to subsist on this logo for some time: The first new watches from the new Universal won’t arrive until the fall of 2026.

While we’re waiting, what are the coolest vintage UGs?

So glad you asked.

Ref. 881101 Exotic Tri-Compax

Phillips

Both Bazamu and Dandy brought up the “exotic” dial Tri-Compax as one of UG’s ultimate grails. The watch is named for its three distinct features: a moonphase, a chronograph, and a complete calendar. Eric Clapton famously wore the black-and-white Panda version, which is now known as the “Clapton Tri-Compax.” Still, I’m partial to the rare teal-dial variation seen above, even if it doesn’t come with guitar-god provenance.

Ref. 885103/02 Compax “Nina Rindt”

You can’t have a conversation about UG’s most famous watches without bringing up Nina Rindt, the wife of the late Formula 1 driver Joachim Rindt. Rindt was spotted and photographed wearing this panda-dial chronograph so frequently that it's since taken on her name among collectors.

A. Cairelli Split-Second Chronograph

“My top grail, because I don't have one, is the Cairelli [Split-Second Chronograph],” said Dandy. “Mainly because A) it’s a split-second and B) it’s just awesome.” We mentioned earlier that one of UG’s key attributes is its watches for every imaginable purpose. This watch is a great example: The massive 44-mm case and 24-hour dial were designed specifically for Italian Air Force pilots.

Ref. 885104/01 Space Compax

I just think this is one of the most unbelievably cool-looking watches in existence. The classic black dial and red accents in combination with those cartoonish numerals really works for me. No one is absolutely certain why this watch exists, but conventional wisdom says UG designed it hoping that NASA would take it to space (an honor that Omega claimed instead). That would explain the sporty, unique rubber pushers that are built to go anywhere.

Ref. 181102 Tri-Compax

Eguchi

I know, I know—I already showed you a Tri-Compax. But this all-gold version is insane. “That gold dial is another level of epic,” Dandy said.

Polerouter Sub

Analog:Shift

In an attempt to contend with the other powerful dive watches coming out of Switzerland, UG built a scuba-ready spinoff of its most popular model. The crazy typeface for 12, 6, and 9—also seen on the Space Compax—is so fun.

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