While the luxury watch market pushes the boundaries of horology at increasingly unattainable prices, and the indie market — more crowded than ever — battles for attention with innovative, unusual designs, Orient owns the specific but coveted niche of affordable mechanical dress watches with timeless designs.
Thanks to the massive scale and fully equipped infrastructure of the Seiko Epson Corporation, Orient is able to sell handsome automatic watches with respectable specs at prices that would bankrupt most brands in a single fiscal quarter.
Orient is a full-service watch brand, offering divers, chronographs and even moonphase complications. But the flagship collection that earned Orient respect in the American watch community is the Bambino.
Consisting of seven Versions, or generations, with distinct dials that cater to a range of tastes, the Bambino collection has something for any frugal watch shopper. There is, however, one small detail running through the entire collection that I could do without: a date window.
From the 1960s swagger of the Version 1 to the modern minimalism of the Version 7, every iteration — except for the odd open-heart reference — has a date window.
