This Innovative Automatic Sports Watch Gets a Stunning Art Deco Update

In April 2025, Christopher Ward shared the tumultuous design and development of its latest groundbreaking watch, the C12 Loco, with a short documentary.

The team behind Worn & Wound and Windup Watch Fair makes a cameo in the film, discussing their long-running relationship with the British watchmaker.

Worn & Wound

We can now call this foreshadowing because, as it turns out, Worn & Wound’s Zach Weiss, Blake Malin and James Helms were already in talks with Christopher Ward’s CEO and design team about collaborating on another watch.

According to the Brooklyn-based watch editorial, the W&W trio just so happened to contact the watch brand when the C12 Loco was in its early stages of development. Since a strong relationship existed, having collaborated on the C65 Sandstorm in 2020, the Americans were let in on the secret.

Initial plans hoped to continue the Sandstorm motif by applying it to the new C12. However, Mike France, co-founder and CEO of Christopher Ward, insisted that the collaboration start over and focus on Worn & Wound’s hometown of Brooklyn, New York.

Worn & Wound

That refocusing led to an often overlooked landmark with a historically significant clock tower. The C12 Brooklynite updates the Loco’s dial with an Art Deco design inspired by the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower clock.

While everything else remains unchanged, the new dial plate and hour track present a completely different vibe than the standard ultra-modern Loco.

Save the clock tower

The Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower was built between 1927 and 1929, making it older than the Chrysler Building by a year and the Empire State Building by two.

Worn & Wound

Along with a Renaissance-esque domed top, the building’s most striking feature is an enormous four-sided clock tower. Each dial measures 27 feet in diameter, making it the largest four-sided clock tower until 1962.

Worn & Wound was founded less than a mile and a half away in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and the brand’s three co-founders were intimately familiar with its Art Deco face.

The overlooked New York architectural landmark presented the perfect inspiration for the collaborators’ new C12 dial.

Worn & Wound

The tiered dial plate, which originally featured a vertical brushed texture, has sand-blasted parallel raised lines resembling the building’s rows of rectangular windows.

Christopher Ward’s triangular applied hour markers are replaced with rectangular ones. The sapphire crystal ring holding the track is painted gray with a sand-blasted texture to match the limestone facade of the tower.

The most distinguishing connection between tower and watch is the diamond shapes with circular cutouts between the hour markers. They coincidentally match the unchanged lance-shaped hour and minute hands.

A crazy movement

As the name suggests, Christopher Ward’s Caliber CW-003 hand-wound movement, which powers the C12, is pretty crazy. The dial effectively splits the movement in half, with the balance wheel, hairspring, pallet fork and escape wheel placed on top.

Worn & Wound

What amounts to the watch’s beating heart is on full display alongside the time, placed under a box sapphire crystal and framed by a dodecagonal faceted bezel.

It is a hand-wound movement that beats at 4Hz and packs a massive 144-hour power reserve. The remaining mechanics are visible through a sapphire crystal exhibition caseback, with each watch numbered on the caseback ring.

Worn & Wound

Worn & Wound’s team has earned an esteemed place in the watch community for their editorial contributions and for organizing what might be the most significant American event for watch enthusiasts.

Receiving a signature reference of such a spectacular watch is fitting recognition, and I hope the Worn & Wound and Christopher Ward partnership carries on for years to come.

Availability and price

It is rare to see a great watch collaboration with such a strong geographic connection, so it is only fitting that the Worn & Wound x Christopher Ward C12 Brooklynite will be available to purchase for the first time at Windup NYC (which is in Manhattan, but close enough) on October 17 for $5,260.

This is a limited edition of 100 pieces, with 30 available at Windup, and the remaining 70 going on sale through Christopher Ward on October 21.

Worn & Wound

Worn & Wound x Christopher Ward C12 Brooklynite

Specs

Case Size	41mm
Movement	Christopher Ward caliber CW-003 hand-wound
Water Resistance	30m

• $5,260 at Christopher Ward

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