admin To close out the year, GQ is revisiting the most fascinating ideas, trends, people, and projects of 2023. For all of our year-end coverage, click here.
Over the past couple of years, the watch industry has adopted a few strategies from the streetwear industry. Consider the drop culture surrounding the Moonswatch, complete with lines snaking around Times Square that made the average Jordan release look like a quaint affair. But no hypebeast-adjacent practice has permeated the watch world quite like collaborations, which became one of 2023’s most powerful driving forces for anyone interested in collecting.
“Sometimes a collaboration is so good it reminds you why collaborations became such a thing,” Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz wrote last week, on an Instagram Story of the new Online Ceramics G-Shock made in partnership with Hodinkee and John Mayer. And even if that four-headed dragon of heavy hitters didn’t get the heart racing, there are plenty of other new watches worthy of Wentz’s praise. The magic of a great collaboration doesn’t come from simply mashing two names together like it’s an online baby generator. The best linkups are the result of an unexpected and complementary pairing—in watch and human partnerships alike, opposites attract.
