There Is No Watch Better Than a Beautiful Beater (EXCLUSIVE)
Much like the best clothes are ones you don't have to think about, the best watch is one you never have to take off. Noah's ongoing Timex partnership has proven potent precisely because it plumbs the most logical depths of what an "affordable" timepiece can be.
That is, a $300 watch can be every bit as gorgeous as one that costs 10 times as much. However, Noah's latest truism takes a different tact: your six-figure grails will never be as ruggedly reliable as a Timex.
Noah's 36mm Timex MK1 is a tangible acknowledgment that the best things in life aren't expensive. They're experiences. (how's that for a turn of phrase?) And if your watch can't join you on those experiences, what can it do?
Specifically, Noah's new Timex is intended to hit the beach.
"We wanted to make a watch that felt at home [doing all the things] our team spends time [doing]: sailing, surfing, fishing, harvesting clams," Noah's design team tells Highsnobiety. "It's grounded by an anchor insignia on the dial, a homage to the environment it's built for."
Elegant and understated as ever, Noah's new Timex is also its most rugged. Based on an incredibly short-lived military timepiece — only produced for two months in 1982! — designed to be disposed, the MK1 is a rock-solid do-anything, go-anywhere object remixed by menswear lifers like Goodhood and Todd Snyder. Noah's aim wasn't to reinvent the (ship's) wheel but to simply polish it.
Available on Noah's website on August 27, the Timex Mk1 follows in the tasteful tradition of prior Noah collabs in that it sports a superbly clean face with a dash of graphic flair. Stainless steel case for toughness and bespoke straps — fabric in this case, all the better to dry in the summer sun — to flatter the unpretentious vibe of it all. These may be utilitarian watches but that doesn't mean they lack good taste.
This is the essence of Timex at its very best but also true of Noah, which greeted its 11th year in business by getting back to what made it so vital in the first place.
Noah knows good looks. It always has. But even as a lot of menswear begins to look quite similar, Noah keeps honing its best qualities.
Fall/Winter 2026, its most recent collection, is a summation of everything that justifies a decade of Noah. Strong clothes made thoughtfully and presented as both approachably wearable and aspirationally tasteful. No pretense, just real stuff done one better. Just like a Noah Timex.
