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Italian watch label U-Boat makes luxury men's wristwatches that stand out above all for their striking design. It is perhaps best described as a blend of retro style, steampunk and high-tech. Although the brand is not yet two decades old, its roots reach back to the 1940s.
Italo Fontana: Watches Instead of Fashion
U-Boat watches are inseparable from their founder, Italo Fontana. Born in Tuscany in 1965, he was not originally destined to make a name for himself as a maker of luxury watches. His family ran what was then a well-known fashion design company, and he was brought into the business at a relatively early age. That suited his inclinations well, since he had shown a keen interest in fashion and design from a young age.
Fontana's move into the watch industry therefore came as something of a surprise and was owed primarily to chance. In 2000, then in his mid-thirties, he was rummaging through his grandfather's archive. His grandfather had been a master watchmaker and in 1942 had been commissioned to develop a men's watch for the Italian Navy. The project was never completed, but the designs survived until Italo Fontana rediscovered them more than half a century later. He was so fascinated by his grandfather's sketches that he delved ever deeper into the subject and eventually decided to launch luxury men's wristwatches of his own. Neither Fontana nor his grandfather had steampunk in mind when creating the designs.
The First U-Boat Timepieces Take Shape
In developing his own watch models, which he released under the brand name U-Boat, he focused on the same qualities his grandfather had valued in his designs. In keeping with their military purpose, they were to be especially robust and at the same time highly functional. Once Fontana's concepts had progressed far enough for production to begin, it was above all Munir Muffarige, managing director of the French fashion house Ungaro, who encouraged him to launch his creations. Fontana went ahead with his plan, and within a short time his newly founded label had gained considerable recognition in the watch market.
The watches more than live up to the brand's slogan, "a new dimension in time." Their cases are not only robust and styled in a distinctive steampunk high-tech design, they are usually remarkably large as well. Diameters of 48 or 50 millimeters are by no means unusual in the U-Boat lineup. Their shapes and design details often recall machinery, industrial plants – or indeed submarines, the engine rooms of large ships and the like. In that sense, many a model from the U-Boat range could rightly be called a steampunk watch and would perfectly complement a matching outfit.
Yet the young Italian luxury label is just as popular with many watch connoisseurs who aren't necessarily looking for a steampunk wristwatch. One reason is the bold, masculine design so typical of U-Boat watches. Add to that careful handcrafted production and high-quality, precise Swiss automatic movements. And if the wearer happens to be into steampunk, so much the better.
Robust Watches with an Unmistakable Aesthetic
The rather conspicuous size of most models from Fontana's manufacture is not purely a matter of fashion or aesthetics; it has a practical background. Watches that must be built especially sturdy because of particular demands on their durability, or that need to remain legible in poor lighting, generally benefit from somewhat larger proportions.
You see this just as often in dive watches built for extreme conditions as in classic pilot's watches. In that respect, the large, rugged-looking cases of collections such as the U-Boat Classico, U-Boat Chimera, U-Boat Flightdeck or U-Boat U-1001 are, in a sense, heirs to the never-built predecessors that Fontana's grandfather designed in the 1940s.
The left-hand crown and the crown guards and locking levers visible on many models are likewise details found more often on military and dive watches; while they suit the aesthetic of a steampunk wristwatch, they exist first and foremost for practical reasons. The same applies to the sometimes strikingly large indices, numerals and hands, whose generous coating of luminous material ensures good legibility in the dark. Admittedly, this holds true for only some U-Boat watches; in a number of cases it is clear that the play on a distinctive aesthetic, unusual material combinations and dial designs that Bauhaus purists might consider almost playful took center stage.
Unusual Material Combinations Create a Wow Effect
Beyond the design, it is precisely these aspects that make some of the models the perfect steampunk watch – for instance when rugged brown straps reminiscent of saddle leather are paired with cases of stainless steel, gold or bronze, or when the bezel, studded with numerous screws, looks like the porthole of an early submarine.
Select timepieces from the lines stand out with lavish diamond setting, colored gemstones, mother-of-pearl dials and similar decorative details that contrast fascinatingly with the decidedly rugged exterior. The range has long since ceased to be limited to men's watches: women looking for a luxurious steampunk watch will now also find a number of original options in the collection.
With that, nothing should stand in the way of the young luxury watch label's continued growth and its gradual reach into new target groups.
