The houses behind the catalogue

Chistopol, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia (then the USSR)

Vostok is a Soviet-Russian watch factory born in 1941, when the First Moscow Watch Factory was evacuated to Chistopol to escape the German advance in the Second World War. An official supplier to the USSR Ministry of Defence from the sixties, it is today one of the last Russian makers still producing mechanical watches with its own movements, known for military toughness and for the Amphibia, its cheap and iconic diver.

121 in the catalogue →

Tokyo, Japan

Citizen began in 1918 as the Shokosha Watch Research Institute, founded in Tokyo by Kamekichi Yamazaki with the aim of bringing pocket-watch production home to Japan. Today it is one of the largest watchmakers in the world, with a vertically integrated manufacture and a reputation built on Eco-Drive, its light-powered technology.

93 in the catalogue →

Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan

Casio grew out of Kashio Seisakujo, the workshop Tadao Kashio founded in 1946, and was formally incorporated as Casio Computer Co., Ltd. in June 1957 with his three brothers. It began in calculating machines, not watchmaking, and only reached the wrist in 1974. Today it is one of the largest watchmakers in the world, known for putting the digital watch within everyone's reach and for turning extreme toughness into a brand identity with G-Shock.

85 in the catalogue →

China

Watchdives has more pieces here than any other brand, and although its name and half its output point at diving, that is not all it does: of the 204 watches in this catalogue, 103 are divers, 59 are 37-millimetre quartz dress watches, 16 are chronographs and 16 carry a second time zone.

74 in the catalogue →

China

Agelocer aims higher than most of its neighbours: it makes skeletons, moon phases and the odd tourbillon, with long power reserves and finishing that looks to Swiss dress watches rather than Japanese divers.

74 in the catalogue →

La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland

Movado began in 1881 as a small Swiss watch workshop opened by the 19-year-old Achille Ditesheim in the canton of Neuchâtel. In 1905 the house took the name "Movado" — "always in motion" in Esperanto — which it has carried ever since. Today it is American-owned (Movado Group) and known worldwide for the Museum Watch, whose minimalist dial carries a single dot at 12.

61 in the catalogue →

New York, United States (original workshop on Maiden Lane, Manhattan)

Bulova is an American watch house founded by the Bohemian-Jewish immigrant Joseph Bulova as a jewellery shop in lower Manhattan. In time it became a pioneer of standardised watch production and of electronic watchmaking. Today it is an accessible-to-mid-range brand owned by the Japanese Citizen group, known for its space heritage and for its high-frequency quartz.

57 in the catalogue →

Grenchen (Granges), canton of Solothurn, Switzerland

Certina began in 1888 as a small parts and movement works founded by the Kurth brothers in Grenchen, in the watchmaking heart of the Swiss Jura. Over the decades it became a maker of tough, good-value watches, known for its "DS" approach to resistance. Today it is an entry-level brand within the Swatch Group, recognisable by its turtle emblem and by its automatic sports and diving watches.

57 in the catalogue →

China

Pagani Design is the best-known homage house on the market: it reproduces famous silhouettes — the steel diver, the racing chronograph, the pilot's watch — with Japanese movements and for tens of dollars. It does not hide it, and that is both its appeal and its limit.

57 in the catalogue →

China

Sugess builds almost its entire catalogue on movements from Sea-Gull, the Chinese state watchmaker, and above all on the ST19 — the hand-wound chronograph descended from the Swiss Vénus 175. It is the cheapest way there is today to own a genuine mechanical chronograph.

55 in the catalogue →

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States

Hamilton was founded in 1892 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as an American maker of railroad-grade pocket watches. After closing its US manufacture in 1969 and passing into Swiss hands (SSIH, today the Swatch Group), it is now a Swiss brand with an American spirit: accessible mechanical watchmaking with a strong military identity (Khaki), a strong design identity (Ventura), and a notable presence in Hollywood films.

54 in the catalogue →

Tokyo, Japan (a Seiko group brand; launched commercially in Europe)

Lorus is the affordable watch brand of Japan's Seiko group, launched in Europe in 1982 to bring Seiko's reliability and quartz technology to a smaller budget. It remains one of the best-selling entry-level brands in the world, with a broad catalogue of analogue and digital models for men, women and children, built to the same standards as the rest of the group.

54 in the catalogue →

Tokyo, Japan (origins in the Ueno district; historic manufacture in Hino and later in Akita Prefecture)

Orient is a Japanese watch manufacture descended from the trade of Shogoro Yoshida, who opened a watch shop in Ueno, Tokyo, in 1901. The brand as it exists today was constituted in 1950 during the post-war rebuilding and established itself as one of the few Japanese makers with automatic movements of its own. It now belongs to the Seiko Epson group and remains a benchmark for affordable mechanical watchmaking, valued for what it gives for the money and for its high-end Orient Star line.

53 in the catalogue →

Tianjin, China

Sea-Gull was founded in January 1955 as the Tianjin Watch Factory, the company that produced the first mechanical watch made in China and closed the era in which the country could only repair watches, not build them. Today it is one of the largest mechanical movement manufactures in the world, state-owned, known for making its own calibres end to end and for putting complications such as the column-wheel chronograph and the tourbillon within reach.

53 in the catalogue →

China

Berny is above all a quartz house: of its 127 watches in this catalogue, 53 are steel quartz and 31 are titanium. It also makes divers and automatics, but its hallmark is the sweeping quartz seconds hand, which glides instead of stepping and makes a battery watch feel mechanical.

53 in the catalogue →

Waterbury, Connecticut, United States

Timex began in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company, a factory in America's "brass capital" that bet on mass production to put the time within anyone's reach. Renamed as the Timex brand in 1950, it is today a global giant of the affordable watch: the house that popularised the dollar watch, the Ironman stopwatch and Indiglo backlighting.

47 in the catalogue →

Biel/Bienne, Switzerland

Swatch is a Swiss watch brand born in 1983 in answer to the quartz crisis, when cheap Japanese watches were threatening the Swiss industry. The name is a contraction of "second watch": cheap quartz pieces in plastic, colourful and disposable, conceived as a fashion accessory. Today it is the anchor brand of the Swatch Group, the largest watch conglomerate in the world, and has grown into collaborations that upended the market.

44 in the catalogue →

Tokyo, Japan

Seiko began in 1881 when Kintarō Hattori, aged 21, opened a watch and jewellery shop in Tokyo called K. Hattori. What started as repairs and retail became a manufacturer, and in time the house that put the world's first quartz watch on the market. Today it is a vertically integrated group making its own movements, spanning affordable watches (Seiko 5, Prospex) up to the high watchmaking of Grand Seiko, since spun off as its own brand.

43 in the catalogue →

Shenzhen, China

CIGA Design is the house that broke through the ceiling: in 2021 its Blue Planet won the Challenge prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève — the most serious award in the trade — against 208 entries, and was the first Chinese watch to win in the history of the competition. It was founded by an industrial designer rather than a watchmaker, and it shows in everything it does.

41 in the catalogue →

United Kingdom; manufactured in Hong Kong

Spinnaker makes diving watches with sixties and seventies looks at an entry price. It belongs to Dartmouth Brands, a British house, and is built by Solar Time in Hong Kong, which has been in the trade since 1977.

40 in the catalogue →

Geneva (Plan-les-Ouates), Switzerland

Frederique Constant is a Swiss watch manufacture founded in 1988 by the Dutch couple Peter Stas and Aletta Stas-Bax, with the aim of offering Swiss mechanical watches of their own making at accessible prices. Today, from its base in Plan-les-Ouates (Geneva) and owned by Japan's Citizen group since 2016, it is recognised as one of the few houses producing its own calibres at a price that is the doorway to high watchmaking.

35 in the catalogue →

United States (an American company, historically based in California); Swiss Made watches

Luminox was founded in 1989 by the Americans Barry Cohen and Richard Timbo, out of the idea of applying self-powered tritium tubes to hard-use watches. Its name joins the Latin "lumi" (light) and "nox" (night), and its hallmark is total visibility in absolute darkness. Today it is a reference for the tactical and adventure watch, Swiss-made, and has been part of the Swiss Mondaine group since the mid-2010s.

34 in the catalogue →

China

Tactical Frog makes compact divers with Swiss and upper-range Chinese movements, and shares its origin and its designs with Thorn. Its name refers to frogmen, the combat divers.

33 in the catalogue →

China; the name is German

SPECHT&SÖHNE makes skeleton and German-styled watches at an entry price. The name — "Specht and Sons" — sounds like a Saxon manufacture, but the house is Chinese, and that is worth knowing.

27 in the catalogue →

China

Boderry makes titanium watches with mechanical movements, and is one of the few to combine the two at an entry price: titanium is usually reserved for expensive pieces because it costs more to machine than steel.

25 in the catalogue →

New York, United States

Praesidus grew in 2019 out of one specific story: the veteran Tom Rice lost his A-11 watch at sea jumping over Normandy on D-Day, and the house made an almost exact replica of it. Since then it has worked with veterans and with airborne units, the 101st Airborne in particular.

24 in the catalogue →

China

1963 Watch takes its name from the chronograph the Chinese air force commissioned that year, and its catalogue turns on that piece and its derivatives, with the Sea-Gull ST19 movement inside.

23 in the catalogue →

United Kingdom; manufactured in Hong Kong

AVI-8 makes aviation watches named after British aircraft — Hawker Harrier, Spitfire, Lancaster — at an entry price. It comes from the same house as Spinnaker and is built by the same Hong Kong watchmaker.

20 in the catalogue →

Ibach, canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

Victorinox began as a Swiss cutlery works in 1884 and is the house behind the famous Swiss Army Knife; its name joins "Victoria" (the founder's mother) and "inox" (stainless steel). As a watch brand it is much younger: it launched its first watch in 1989 and is today an accessible-to-mid-range Swiss watch firm known for tough, functional, solidly finished pieces.

19 in the catalogue →

Asia

Ratio makes diving watches with high water resistance at a low price, with the FreeDiver series as its backbone. Sapphire crystal, screw-down crown and Japanese movements.

19 in the catalogue →

Denmark

About Vintage is a Danish house making retro-styled watches with Swiss and Japanese movements, in the restrained line of Scandinavian design: clean dials, slim cases and little text.

12 in the catalogue →

no public address

Duxot makes automatic diving watches finished above their price. It publishes no history and no address, and none is invented here: what can be said is what it fits and how it is built.

11 in the catalogue →

Hong Kong

Infantry makes military and tactical-styled watches: 24-hour dials, big markings, nylon straps and field functions. Low price and hard use.

8 in the catalogue →

Ismaning, near Munich, Germany (production in Ruhla, Thuringia)

Zeppelin is a German brand of aviation- and vintage-styled watches launched in 2002 by the POINTtec group, which runs the brand under licence from Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH, the company that carries the legacy of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin's airships. Today it is a benchmark for affordable German watchmaking "Made in Germany", with collections drawn directly from the historic aircraft and assembly carried out by watchmakers in Germany.

7 in the catalogue →

China

Thorn makes compact mechanical watches with upper-mid-range movements, and shares its origin and its catalogue with Tactical Frog. Several of its references are the same piece under a different name.

6 in the catalogue →

Pforzheim, Germany

Laco was founded in 1925 in Pforzheim, the historic watchmaking city of south-west Germany, as "Lacher & Co" — hence the acronym La-Co. Its name is written into history as one of the five makers chosen to produce the Luftwaffe's B-Uhr observation watches during the Second World War. Today it is a manufacture specialising above all in pilot's watches (Flieger) faithful to that military origin, still based in Pforzheim.

5 in the catalogue →

Guangzhou, China

San Martin is among the best-regarded Chinese microbrands for finishing: ceramic bezels, two-texture polishing and titanium cases at prices nobody else offers them. It fits Japanese NH35 and Swiss movements, and makes no secret that many of its models are homages to familiar silhouettes.

4 in the catalogue →

China

SEAKOSS has fewer pieces here than any other brand: it makes automatics with Sea-Gull movements in 40-millimetre cases, with the Red Star as its known reference.

3 in the catalogue →

China

Addies Dive makes very cheap diving watches with sapphire crystal and genuine 100- and 200-metre water resistance. It is one of the few brands in its range that does not cut corners on the crystal, which is where almost everyone else saves.

2 in the catalogue →

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Lattafa is the house that changed what a perfume costs. It makes fragrances in Dubai, with its own raw materials and at a fraction of the price, that play on the same field as European niche — and over the last five years it has become the best-selling name in this catalogue by a margin that is not close. The name comes from the Arabic "latif", soft, and "lateefa", pleasant.

143 in the catalogue →

Milan, Italy

Versace is a Milanese fashion house whose perfumery stands on its own: Eros and Dylan Blue are among the best-selling masculines in the world, and Blue Jeans and Jeans Couture — which are nineties fragrances, not trousers — still have a following thirty years on.

118 in the catalogue →

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Al Haramain is among the oldest perfumers in the Gulf and one of the few still making attar — the traditional Arabic perfume, alcohol-free and oil-based — alongside its Western line in spray. Its name refers to the two holy mosques, and much of its historic catalogue was sold to pilgrims.

96 in the catalogue →

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Maison Alhambra is not an independent house but the label under which Lattafa puts out its broadest and cheapest catalogue. In five years it went from not existing to more than two hundred launches, and its method is explicit: take an expensive niche fragrance and offer a reading of it for a tenth of the price.

91 in the catalogue →

United Arab Emirates

Armaf is the house that popularised the whole model: take an expensive designer fragrance, offer a recognisable reading for a tenth of the price, and make no secret of it. Club de Nuit Intense Man is by some distance the perfume most people have bought on the strength of the phrase "smells like".

84 in the catalogue →

Parma, Italy

Acqua di Parma was founded in Parma in 1916 as a hand-made cologne in short runs, with its cylindrical mustard-coloured tin and the Art Deco label it still uses. Colonia is one of the few fragrances to have been in production for more than a century with practically no changes.

75 in the catalogue →

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Rasasi is among the Gulf houses that took technical perfumery seriously earliest: it has its own laboratory, perfumers on staff and a catalogue that moves between traditional oud and composition of a French cut. Hombre 2 and La Yuqawam are its two big names.

73 in the catalogue →

Metzingen, Germany

Hugo Boss is a German tailoring house from Metzingen turned global brand, and its perfumery is among the best-selling in Europe: Boss Bottled, from 1998, is still the reference masculine in the mid-price band, with its accord of apple and cinnamon.

62 in the catalogue →

New York, United States

Bond No. 9 does one thing and does it whole: it perfumes the neighbourhoods of New York. Each fragrance takes the name of a street, a park or a district, and the bottle is a starfish carrying the image of the place.

57 in the catalogue →

Founded in India; headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Ajmal is the oldest of the Arabic houses in this catalogue and the only one with plantations of its own: it grows its own agarwood in Assam, distils its own oud and controls the chain from tree to bottle. That is the difference between a perfumer and a raw-material house that also perfumes.

54 in the catalogue →

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Afnan is among the Gulf houses with the most careful presentation: heavy bottles, rigid boxes and a finish that blind would pass for European at three times the price. Its catalogue splits between the traditional oriental and rereadings of Western niche, and 9PM is its big name.

52 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Memo Paris builds its catalogue like a travel notebook: each perfume is a place, and the whole is an itinerary. Irish Leather and Lalibela are its big names, and its presentation — enamelled bottles with filigree — is among the most carefully made in niche.

47 in the catalogue →

Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Swiss Arabian is the first perfume factory in the United Arab Emirates, founded in 1974 by Hussein Adam Ali, a young Yemeni, three years after the country came into being. Half a century on it is still in Sharjah and still the house against which every other Gulf perfumer's age is measured.

46 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Paco Rabanne was the Spanish couturier who dressed people in metal — aluminium discs, chainmail, plastic — and whose house ended up living mostly on perfumery. 1 Million and Invictus are two of the best-selling masculines of this century. Since 2023 the house signs simply "Rabanne".

45 in the catalogue →

Milan, Italy

Dolce & Gabbana built a whole aesthetic on southern Italy — Sicilian mourning, lace, tailoring — and its perfumery follows with the same clarity. Light Blue is one of the few perfumes people identify with a specific place: the Mediterranean in summer.

43 in the catalogue →

Berlin, Germany

Escentric Molecules did the opposite of everyone else: instead of composing with dozens of ingredients, it put a single molecule on the market. Molecule 01 is Iso E Super and nothing else, and in twenty years it has become a cult object.

42 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Diptyque opened in 1961 on the Boulevard Saint-Germain as a shop for fabrics and objects, and came to perfume by way of the candle. Its oval with the crowded lettering is one of the most recognisable marks in the trade, and L'Ombre dans l'Eau and Philosykos are undisputed classics.

40 in the catalogue →

Stockholm, Sweden

Byredo gave niche perfumery its current look: a bare bottle, a typographic label, English names and legible formulas. It was founded in Stockholm by a former basketball player with no training in perfumery, and in under twenty years he sold it to Puig.

34 in the catalogue →

Fermo, Italy

Tiziana Terenzi comes from a family that has been making artisan candles in the Italian Marche since 1968, and its perfumery inherits that logic: short runs, expensive raw material and bottles that are objects. Kirke and Cassiopea are its big names.

34 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Francis Kurkdjian was twenty-five when he composed Jean Paul Gaultier's Le Mâle, and spent fifteen years signing hits for other houses before opening his own in 2009. Baccarat Rouge 540 is the most recognisable — and most cloned — niche perfume of the century.

33 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Parfums de Marly takes its name and its imagery from the Château de Marly, Louis XIV's residence, and its entire catalogue is named after horses from the royal stables. Layton and Herod are among the best-selling niche perfumes of the last decade.

33 in the catalogue →

London, England; later Paris, France

Creed sells the idea of lineage more dearly than anyone: it claims to go back to 1760 as a London tailoring house and to have perfumed half the royalty of Europe. The documented history is shorter than the story, but Aventus, from 2010, is by its own right one of the most influential perfumes of the century.

29 in the catalogue →

Turin, Italy

Xerjoff is the Italian house that treats the bottle as jewellery and the formula as extravagance: expensive raw materials with no disguise, and a catalogue running from Arabic oud to Italian chypre. Naxos and Erba Pura are its two big names.

29 in the catalogue →

England

Clive Christian bought the Crown Perfumery brand in 1999 — a Victorian house from 1872 with Queen Victoria's permission to use the crown on its bottle — and relaunched it under his own name with the promise of making the most expensive perfume in the world. No. 1 came to cost more than a car.

29 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Initio Parfums Privés builds its argument on molecules: it claims to work with ingredients of physiological effect and organises its catalogue by what it means to provoke rather than by olfactory family. Side Effect and Oud for Greatness are its two big names.

26 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Frédéric Malle did something perfumery did not do: put the perfumer's name on the bottle. His house is a publishing imprint — he edits, the authors sign — and out of it came Portrait of a Lady and Musc Ravageur, two of the most respected compositions of this century.

23 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Kilian Hennessy, great-grandson of the founder of the cognac house, set up his perfumery in 2007 with luxury refillable bottles and a catalogue of gourmands that Good Girl Gone Bad and Angels' Share carried to the top of niche.

21 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Pierre Montale spent years in Saudi Arabia composing for Gulf royal houses, and on returning to Paris brought oud into Western perfumery before almost anyone. Its anodised aluminium bottles are unmistakable, and its catalogue is among the largest in niche.

20 in the catalogue →

Istanbul, Turkey

Nishane is Turkey's first niche house and the one that has best translated the crossing of East and West that Istanbul stands for. Hacivat and Ani are its two big names, and its presentation — black bottles with a colour band — is unmistakable.

19 in the catalogue →

Muscat, Oman

Amouage was founded by the royal house of Oman in 1983 on an explicit brief: make the most expensive perfume in the world, using Omani frankincense and paying no attention to cost. Four decades on it is still the house that best joins Gulf tradition to French technique.

18 in the catalogue →

Tokyo, Japan

Rei Kawakubo has spent half a century making clothes that argue with the very idea of dressing, and her perfumery is just as stubborn: incense, tar, photocopier, metal coin. It is one of the few houses to have used the unpleasant smell as material.

18 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Mancera comes from the same school as Montale and shares its taste for oud, dense fruit and a broad catalogue. Roses Vanille and Cedrat Boise are its two big names, and its value for money is among the best in niche.

15 in the catalogue →

Paris, France; laboratory in Marrakesh, Morocco

Serge Lutens came from make-up and photography, not perfumery, and built a house that smells like nobody else: dense, resinous, uncomfortable on purpose. Féminité du Bois changed nineties perfumery and is still a reference.

14 in the catalogue →

France

Stéphane Humbert Lucas was the perfumer behind the house SoOud and behind much of the Gulf's luxury perfumery before signing in his own name in 2013. His 777 series makes oriental perfumery of very high concentration on a French structure.

14 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Maison Margiela is the fashion house that made anonymity a signature — a blank label, no name — and its Replica line does something equally conceptual: rebuild one specific smell from memory, with the date and the place printed on the label like an archive card.

13 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

BDK Parfums is a young Parisian house that made its name quickly with Gris Charnel and Rouge Smoking, and works recognisable ground: clean compositions, good raw material and prices below top-end niche.

13 in the catalogue →

New York, United States

Le Labo mixes every bottle at the counter, in front of the customer, and prints a label with their name and the date. Santal 33 became the most recognisable perfume of the 2010s, to the point that the press called it the smell of design hotels.

12 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Marc-Antoine Barrois is a couture tailor before he is a perfumer, and his house has only a handful of references, all composed with Quentin Bisch. B683 and Ganymede are among the most praised perfumes of the last decade.

9 in the catalogue →

Barcelona, Spain

Carner Barcelona makes Mediterranean perfumery with a city's name attached: its fragrances portray Barcelona and its coast, and its catalogue works fig, leather and salt with a lightness very rare in niche.

9 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Romano Ricci, great-grandson of Nina Ricci, set up his house in 2006 with a name that is a statement: Shakespeare's Juliet, but armed. Not a Perfume, made from a single molecule, is his greatest success and his best joke.

8 in the catalogue →

Barcelona, Spain

Ramon Monegal is the fourth generation of a family that founded Myrurgia, the great Spanish perfumery of the twentieth century. After the family company was sold he set up his own house in Barcelona, with inkwell-shaped bottles and a small, very personal catalogue.

8 in the catalogue →

London, England

Roja Dove is probably the most visible living perfumer in Britain: the first Briton to hold the title of Professeur de Parfums at Guerlain, where he spent twenty years, and his own house makes perfumery of a classical cut with no concessions to price.

7 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

L'Artisan Parfumeur invented niche perfumery as it is understood today: in 1976, long before the word existed, it was already selling author fragrances in short runs with literary names. Premier Figuier was the first fig perfume in history.

7 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

État Libre d'Orange makes a business of discomfort: unprintable names, declared notes of blood and sweat, and compositions often far better than the provocation lets on. Jasmin et Cigarette and Fat Electrician are among its best work.

7 in the catalogue →

Milan, Italy

Armani is the house that deconstructed the men's jacket and with it changed how half the world dresses. Its perfumery works at two heights: the designer level, with Acqua di Giò and Armani Code, and Armani Privé, which plays in the niche league.

5 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Hermès began making horse harnesses in 1837 and never stopped behaving like a saddlery: its perfumery is one of the few from a fashion house to have kept a perfumer on staff, and with Jean-Claude Ellena in the post it produced some of the most-cited compositions of recent decades.

4 in the catalogue →

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Orto Parisi is Alessandro Gualtieri's second house and takes his method to the extreme: very high concentrations built around the smell of the body, with names taken from parts of the anatomy. Terroni and Stercus are the best known.

3 in the catalogue →

London, England

Penhaligon's is a London perfumery from 1870 with two royal warrants, and its Portraits collection — bottles topped with animal heads — turned a Victorian house into an object of contemporary desire without betraying its archive.

2 in the catalogue →

Paris, France

Dior founded his house in 1946 and the following year presented the New Look, which gave European fashion back its waist and its volume after the war. Perfumery was born with the house — Miss Dior dates from 1947, the same year — and today carries much of the business, with Sauvage as the best-selling masculine in the world.

1 in the catalogue →

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Nasomatto — "mad nose" in Italian — is Alessandro Gualtieri's house, and its premise is that a perfume ought to provoke a state of mind. Black Afgano is its big name: resinous, green and dark to the point of discomfort.

1 in the catalogue →

South Shields, England

Barbour has been making waxed jackets since 1894 for people who work outdoors in the north-east of England. **Barbour International is its motorcycling line**, born in 1936, and the jacket Steve McQueen wore at the Scottish Six Days of 1964 comes from it.

87 in the catalogue →

Detroit, United States

Carhartt has been dressing people who work on their feet since 1889: it began with overalls for Detroit's railway workers and remains an American family company. Its waxed duck canvas and the Detroit jacket are among the most copied work garments in the world.

86 in the catalogue →

Fort Worth, Texas, United States

Dickies has been making workwear since 1922, and its 874 trouser is probably the best-selling work garment in history: straight cut, polyester and cotton, and a factory-pressed crease that never comes out. Dressing a labourer and half the punk and hip hop scene turned out to be the same business.

78 in the catalogue →

San Francisco, United States

Ben Davis is the grandson of Jacob Davis, the tailor who patented the rivet with Levi Strauss in 1873. He founded his house in San Francisco in 1935; it is still family-owned and still makes workwear with the same gorilla on the label.

69 in the catalogue →

Greensboro, North Carolina, United States

Wrangler was born in 1947 with one very specific brief: a trouser that could take a day on horseback. It was designed by a rodeo tailor with real riders testing it, and out of that came the hidden rivets and the forward-run inseam that still set the 13MWZ apart.

59 in the catalogue →

San Francisco, United States

Levi Strauss & Co. did not invent denim trousers: it invented riveting them. The 1873 patent, signed with the tailor Jacob Davis, is the birth certificate of the jean as it exists today, and the 501 has been the same trouser ever since.

53 in the catalogue →

Munich, Germany; manufactured in Wollaston, England

The Dr. Martens air sole was invented by a German army doctor in 1945 while he was recovering from a foot broken skiing. Thirteen years later an English work-boot factory licensed it, and on 1 April 1960 the 1460 appeared: the model everyone has worn, and for opposite reasons.

48 in the catalogue →

South Africa

Jim Green makes work boots in South Africa with vegetable-tanned leather and a stitched, not glued, sole, and has built its reputation on something almost nobody offers: that the boot is repaired rather than thrown away. The Razorback is its big model.

47 in the catalogue →

San Francisco, United States

The North Face opened in 1966 as a mountain shop in San Francisco and took its name from the north face, which in the northern hemisphere is the coldest and hardest to climb. The Nuptse jacket, from 1992, came off the Himalaya and ended up on the street.

25 in the catalogue →

Ventura, California, United States

Patagonia came out of a forge making climbing pitons and ended up as the clothing company that in 2022 gave itself away to an environmental trust. Its most famous advertisement said "don't buy this jacket", and there are almost no pieces of it in this catalogue because it **deliberately restricts its sales on Amazon**.

1 in the catalogue →

Detroit, United States; WIP based in Europe

Carhartt has been dressing railwaymen and builders in Detroit since 1889. **Carhartt WIP — Work In Progress — is something else**: a European line that has licensed the archive since 1994 and cuts it for the street. They share patterns and do not share a company, and it is worth knowing before comparing prices.

0 in the catalogue →

Walden, New York, United States

Schrade Cutlery was one of the great American cutlery houses of the twentieth century and the parent of Old Timer and Uncle Henry. George Schrade had earlier invented the modern automatic knife. The name now belongs to Smith & Wesson and is used mostly on tactical and survival knives.

175 in the catalogue →

Yangjiang, China

Civivi is the accessible brand of WE Knife, the Chinese maker of fine cutlery. It was created in 2018 to bring the house's designs and finishing — ball bearings, decent steels, collaborations with well-known designers — down to a far lower price band.

119 in the catalogue →

Portland, Oregon, United States

Gerber began by accident: a Portland advertising man sent his clients handmade kitchen knives as a year-end gift, and they went down so well that he ended up building a factory. Out of it came one of the best-known outdoor cutlery houses in the world, today owned by Finland's Fiskars.

118 in the catalogue →

Post Falls, Idaho, United States (it began in Washington State)

Buck is the house that invented the modern folding knife as it is used today. Its founder was a blacksmith's apprentice who made every knife by hand from worn-out files, with a heat treatment of his own that left them harder than the competition's. Sixty years later a grandson brought out the model 110 and changed the whole category.

82 in the catalogue →

Bradford, Pennsylvania, United States

W.R. Case & Sons is the house of the traditional American pocket knife: jigged bone, stag or Delrin handles, and patterns with names of their own — Trapper, Sodbuster, Peanut — unchanged for a century. It is also the most collected knife brand in the United States, largely because of its dating system.

38 in the catalogue →

Savoie, France

Opinel is the French peasant's knife: a beechwood handle, a steel blade and a ring that locks it. Joseph Opinel created it in 1890 in the Alps of Savoie for the farmers of the area. Its design has not changed in any essential way in more than a century, and it is still made in the same valley.

35 in the catalogue →

Ibach, canton of Schwyz, Switzerland

Victorinox began as a Swiss cutlery works in 1884 and is the house behind the famous Swiss Army Knife; its name joins "Victoria" (the founder's mother) and "inox" (stainless steel). As a watch brand it is much younger: it launched its first watch in 1989 and is today an accessible-to-mid-range Swiss watch firm known for tough, functional, solidly finished pieces.

33 in the catalogue →

Albacete, Spain

Miguel Nieto is cutlery from Albacete, which is rather like saying watchmaking from Geneva: the city has been making knives since the sixteenth century and the trade is inherited. The house descends from an artisan workshop of the early twentieth century and today combines the old hand with numerical control.

22 in the catalogue →

Yangjiang, Guangdong, China

WE Knife is the house that broke the prejudice that China did not make serious knives. It manufactures in Yangjiang with first-rate steels and watchmaking tolerances, and works with independent designers from around the world rather than copying other people's models. Its budget line, Civivi, is probably the best doorway there is today into the quality knife.

12 in the catalogue →

Maniago, Italy

Antonini is an Italian cutlery house from Maniago, the Friulian town that has been forging steel since the fifteenth century. It is known above all for the Old Bear, a wooden-handled knife with a bear silhouette that is to Italy what the Opinel is to France.

10 in the catalogue →

Ellenville, New York, United States

Old Timer is not a company: it is the line of traditional knives Schrade launched in 1958, with grained Delrin handles imitating bone and carbon steel blades. It is the pocket knife half of America carried for four decades, and the name now belongs to Smith & Wesson.

1 in the catalogue →

Ellenville, New York, United States

Uncle Henry is Schrade's upper line: Old Timer's better sister. It was born in 1966 with stainless steel, Staglon handles imitating stag and brass bolsters, for anyone who wanted a finer traditional knife without going bespoke.

0 in the catalogue →

Hannover, Germany

Pelikan is the oldest house on this list and the last to reach the pen: it spent ninety-one years making ink and colours before building its first. When it finally did, in 1929, it copied nobody: it fitted a piston with a differential gear that is still its technical signature nearly a century on, and the reason a collector can pick out a Pelikan without seeing the logo.

290 in the catalogue →

Heidelberg, Germany

Lamy is the house that applied the Bauhaus to the pen. Where the others competed on ornament, Lamy competed on form: clean bodies, industrial materials and a credited designer on every model. The result is that its two most famous pieces — the 2000 and the Safari — have gone decades without needing a redesign.

68 in the catalogue →

Fort Madison, Iowa, United States

Sheaffer is the house of mechanisms. Its founder was a jeweller who went into pen making because he had thought of a better way to fill them: a lever on the side of the body that squeezes the ink sac. That idea, patented in 1908, dominated the industry for decades.

64 in the catalogue →

New York, United States

Waterman is where the story of the practical fountain pen begins. Before its 1884 patent, pens with reservoirs existed, but they leaked and failed so often that almost nobody wanted one. Waterman solved the flow problem, and with it turned a contraption into a tool for daily use.

61 in the catalogue →

Janesville, Wisconsin, United States

Parker is the house that made the pen a mass product without giving up the engineering. Its founder began selling other people's pens, got tired of repairing them and decided to make them properly himself. Out of that came two of the most influential pens of the twentieth century: the Duofold and the 51.

58 in the catalogue →

Stein, Germany

Graf von Faber-Castell is the luxury line of a house that has been making pencils for more than two and a half centuries. It was founded in 1993 by Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell, the eighth generation of the family, on a simple and risky idea: that a pencil could also be a luxury object, not only a pen.

41 in the catalogue →

Florence, Italy

Visconti was born of two collectors who wanted something that was no longer being made. In 1988, when the industry had abandoned celluloid for cheaper and more stable resins, they set up a house in Florence precisely to make celluloid pens again. It is the youngest of the great houses and the most technically restless.

26 in the catalogue →

Hamburg, Germany

Montblanc is the house that turned the pen into a status object. It began in 1906 under a name that promised nothing of the sort — Simplo Filler Pen Co. — and today the white six-pointed star is probably the most recognised writing logo in the world. Its Meisterstück has been in the catalogue for more than a century, a run almost no other pen can claim.

24 in the catalogue →

Turin, Italy

Aurora built the first wholly Italian pen, and still manufactures in the city where it began. Its name was chosen for what it means — the dawn that follows the night — in a country coming out of the First World War. It makes everything in house: body, nib and ink.

12 in the catalogue →

Pforzheim, Germany

Otto Hutt is the quiet one of the nine: no scandalous limited editions, no campaigns, only silver, geometry and Bauhaus. It sits in Pforzheim, Germany's jewellery city, and does everything there, down to the electroplating and the polishing.

6 in the catalogue →

Liverpool, England

Diamine is the only house on this list that does not make pens: it makes ink, and has been making it in Liverpool since 1864. It is the oldest fountain pen ink maker still trading, and its catalogue — more than a hundred colours in 80 ml bottles — is the broadest in the trade.

1 in the catalogue →

Turin, Italy

Persol was founded in Turin in 1917 to protect the eyes of airmen and racing drivers, and everything that sets it apart comes from that: the flexible Meflecto temple, the silver arrow on the hinge and lenses designed for real sun before they were an object of fashion. The name is a contraction of "per il sole".

115 in the catalogue →

Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, United States

Maui Jim began in 1980 selling sunglasses on the beach at Lahaina, and its subject is one thing only: the lens. Its PolarizedPlus2 technology does not just polarise — cutting reflection — but filters infrared and puts saturation back into colour, which is why the house sells itself on what you see, not on how you look.

90 in the catalogue →

Longchaumois, Jura, France

Julbo is the oldest house on this list and the only one born in the mountains: in 1888, in the French Jura, to protect the eyes of the crystal hunters of Mont Blanc. Its Vermont, with leather side shields, are the classic glacier glasses and are still made.

80 in the catalogue →

Rochester, New York, United States

Ray-Ban was created by Bausch & Lomb in 1936 on a commission from the US Army Air Corps: pilots needed a lens that would cut the glare at altitude. Out of it came the Aviator and, fifteen years later, the Wayfarer — the two most recognisable pairs of sunglasses there are.

72 in the catalogue →

Berlin, Germany

ic! berlin makes frames **with no screws, no soldering and no rivets**: a half-millimetre sheet of steel cut by laser and folded, with a slot-in hinge that assembles and comes apart with your fingers. It is the only house on this list whose patent is not a lens but a joint.

8 in the catalogue →