Introducing
Naoya Hida & Co. × Revolution Type 3B-2 “Rising Star”
Words by Wei Koh
“Style is not an embellishment … it is — like color with certain painters — a quality of vision, the revelation of the private universe that each of us sees and that others do not,” espoused the French novelist Marcel Proust. In our time, two individuals who, to me, give great credence to this are fashion designer Ralph Lauren and Naoya Hida & Co., founder of independent watchmaker Naoya Hida & Co.. Ralph Lauren, born to Belarusian Jewish émigré parents and raised in the Bronx, possessed from youth a preternatural ability to see the small aesthetic details, proportional balance and visual poetry that lend certain objects their elegance — subtleties others often overlook.
But Hida-san will, of course, not explain this to you. You need to figure it out for yourself. This is why, from time to time, you’ll see a hastily typed, invariably anonymous comment on that necessary evil of interconnectivity — social media — lamenting the price of his watches. As Naoya Hida & Co. evangelist, watch connoisseur (a term I do not use lightly), and one of America’s most influential painters today, Wes Lang, puts it, “That’s why it drives me crazy when you look in the comments section of a website and people who know nothing about this man, who have never held one of his watches, look at a number [the price], see that the watch is from Japan and decide it’s not ‘worth it’ or whatever. You’d rather buy something else? Fine, go f*** yourself.”
I concur with Lang that those who make such statements about Naoya Hida & Co.’s watches do so out of ignorance, because they’ve never held one of his watches in their hands. At their core, these timepieces embody the most powerful neoclassical design voice in modern watchmaking, and are repositories of refined, imaginative detail that are wonderfully uplifting. I would go so far to say that if you were to secretly record a former skeptic encountering the grandeur of a Naoya Hida & Co. watch, he would soon dissolve into penitent tears, like a sinner at the moment of reconciliation with the Almighty.
Exclusively Crafted
I believe that Hida-san and his partners, watchmaker Kosuke Fujita and engraver Keisuke Kano, have deliberately chosen to keep their atelier small, despite the global tsunami of demand for their watches.
Says Hida-san, “We go to work each day looking forward to our days. We work with passion, happiness and dignity to the best of our ability. We have no desire to scale, to industrialize or to grow in this way. For us, the size of our business or commercial success is not our goal. It is to create the best watches possible according to what we love, and to do so with a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives. It is perhaps hard sometimes for Westerners to understand this. But our sense of self-worth is not defined by becoming ‘rich,’ but to do our job well. To see that all that we put into the design and creation of watches creates happiness in our clients is the greatest motivation to us.”
The board members of Naoya Hida & Co.: Kosuke Fujita, Watchmaker(left); Naoya Hida, Founder & CEO(center); Keisuke Kano, Engraver (right)
As such, the delta between Naoya Hida & Co.’s limited supply and the global interest feels at times insurmountable. But that is a pressure this team is not affected by because they are focused entirely on their job at hand. Naoya Hida & Co.’s sales partner in Hong Kong and New York, and a key figure in the renaissance of classic tailoring, Mark Cho, says, “I think that this is a big part of what makes Hida-san’s watches so appealing. That they are created with patience and incredible focus on refinement with no temptation to take shortcuts.
Take, for example, his dials. They are all crafted from German silver and have their indexes as well as the signature hand engraved by Kano-san. Then, he hand applies the cashew lacquer himself to ensure that each of these details is perfect. Hida-san likes to look at vintage details but expresses them in a way that is both more beautiful and far more difficult to accomplish. Look at the applied dot markers on the Type 1D-2 and 1D-3. The raised minute track first has holes excavated, and in these tiny hollow forms, tiny spherical solid gold markers are applied. Another detail is the layered construction of the dials, with polished edges where one level meets another. Then, there is the three-dimensionality of the hands that often have a tiny spine running through them.”
The Collection: From Type 1 to 5
Naoya Hida & Co.’s lexicon of horological gems are as follows.
Type 1 features a small seconds indicator at 9 o’clock and harks back to the classic chronometers of the ’30s and ’40s. It features voluptuous leaf-style hands and fiery Latin stylized Breguet numerals. The bezel designed by Hida-san is elegantly concave, creating captivating reflections across its surface.
Type 2 features a center seconds and sector type dial and expresses the prevailing aesthetics of the ’50s. It uses minimalist baton hands combined with hand-engraved cashew-filled Arabic indexes and a polished flat bezel.
Type 3 is Naoya Hida & Co.’s first foray into small complications, which he does with one of the most beautiful moonphase indicators in contemporary watchmaking. It features a hand-engraved solid gold disk with a canopy of stars and a uniquely expressive moon that appeared somewhat aggrieved in earlier versions but has now turned benevolent, characterized by a charming smiling visage. Type 3 features Roman indexes, dot minute markers, leaf-style hands and a charming stepped bezel. It is important to note that the moonphase in Naoya Hida & Co.’s Type 3 is operated by the second position in the crown.
Type 4 is Naoya Hida & Co.’s sports watch and is the only 36mm round watch in his lineup with all other timepieces measuring 37mm in diameter. This timepiece features a double-curved sapphire crystal, diamond motif hands that can be described as masterfully architectural and a sloping bezel with a flat surface.
Type 5 is Hida-san’s first rectangular watch and features lovely dauphine style hands with a frosted multilevel dial, together with a combination of engraved trapezoid markers with an Arabic 12. What is remarkable is that not a single one of Naoya Hida & Co.’s watches repeats the same combination of bezels, hands and markers, yet such is his design identity that even with their hand-engraved signatures covered, you would know it was one of his watches with a mere glance.
The charm of owning a Naoya Hida & Co. watch is the discovery of all the details and the slavish devotion to quality that is at the core of the brand’s ethos. The famed watch dealer and collector Eric Ku revels in the three distinct levels he sees in the dial of his Type 2, each of which is finished to perfection not just on the flat side of the dial, but also on the vertical surface where levels meet each other. Hida-san’s cases clearly reflect an obsessive devotion to perfect finishing.
Each time he announces a new watch, it is invariably made in very few pieces, oftentimes 10 or less, delivered over one to two years. To purchase one of his watches, you need to submit an application for consideration.
The watches with round cases all feature solid casebacks with a screw-in pattern reminiscent of water resistant or “étanche” casebacks made by the likes of Borgel and others in the ’40s. Inside is a movement that takes as its base the Valjoux 7750 but is reworked into a manual winding caliber with its own signature baseplate.
Naoya Hida & Co. selected this movement, as watch collector Eric Ku pointed out, because of the perfect positioning of the sub-seconds indicator. Hida-san opted to remove the chronograph mechanism as well as the automatic components, and enhanced the winding sensation and sound through a modification.
Genesis of the ‘Rising Star’
Since the creation of the brand in 2019, its output has been as restrained as that of the most revered cult Burgundy producers. In total, the trio of Hida-san, Fujita-san and Kano-san have made under 300 watches. They’ve even published the entire breakdown of this output over the last five years, so if you are lucky enough to own a Naoya Hida & Co. timepiece, you can double check the limitation of your watch. The point is, Naoya Hida & Co.’s watches are very rare — so rare, in fact, that when I posed the question of a potential collaboration to celebrate Revolution magazine’s 20th anniversary in 2025, I was prepared for a polite “no.”
Remarkably, Hida-san mulled the idea over in his mind. He was very kind when he replied that he thought both my magazines, Revolution and The Rake, had each made a contribution to the editorial landscape on timepieces and classic elegance, respectively. He asked what I might be interested in, and I immediately replied, “A two-tone Type 3.” Bear in mind that this was in 2023 — he smiled and told me that the brand was considering launching something along these lines in steel and rose gold, featuring a magnificent lapis lazuli moonphase.
My proposed watch differed in that it would use 3N yellow gold as the contrast material for the bezel, hands, and even the crown, whereas his version would use a steel crown. As it happens, I love stepped bezels and consider the one gracing the Naoya Hida & Co. Type 3 to be one of the most sublime around. I also proposed a matching 3N yellow gold, hand-engraved moonphase indicator.
When asked how many watches I was thinking of, I replied, “10 pieces,” though I knew this was a truly large quantity for Hida-san’s normally miniscule production. Amazingly, and with genuine kindness, he agreed to the project.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we arrived at the watch we are now launching — one of the collaborations I’m proudest of.
Nine out of the 10 pieces were pre-allocated to collectors who were already major fans of Hida-san and somehow caught wind of our collaboration. The individual with piece number 1 is most deservedly Wes Lang, who brought his discerning eye to the watch through the addition of one important detail. Wes and I have a regular catch-up, usually in the morning Singapore time, which is late afternoon in Los Angeles. As we discussed the project (he was, of course, the first person to know), he said, “We should find a way to feature your Revolution star. I really like that part of your logo.”
I proposed this to Hida-san who came up with the brilliant idea of hand engraving it so that it would be slightly larger than the others in the moonphase disk, and filling it with red cashew lacquer. The result is not only a stunning watch, but also one that resonates with meaning. One remaining watch will be available for lottery, as following Naoya Hida & Co.’s system for allocation seems the fairest way to find this last timepiece an owner.
