A Week On The Wrist: The A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus

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The A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus was released last October, which feels, now, in March of 2020, like a million years ago. The Odysseus was the first full production stainless steel watch from Lange, which prior to its launch confined itself almost exclusively to precious metal timepieces. Sure, there were very occasional releases of some steel watches, but they were insider's watches with a vengeance – Lange did not go out of its way to announce their existence and, to this day, there is still no official confirmation from the company on the actual number made (although certainly, reasonable figures are fairly common knowledge among Lange enthusiasts and collectors).

For makers of luxury watches, steel was, historically, a bit of a sideline. When I first began traveling to Switzerland and visiting watch factories many years ago, I remember one industry lifer saying to me, "You know, when I was a kid, if someone was being driven in a limousine, the guy in the back was wearing gold, and it was a Patek, and the guy in the front was wearing steel, and it was a Rolex." Steel was very occasionally used by top-tier haute horlogerie firms such as Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, and Vacheron Constantin, but it was unusual. These firms made fine watches designed for wealthy clients who wanted a Swiss watch that expressed all the conservative values of high-end Swiss watchmaking. As a rule, this meant gold, gold, platinum, and more gold. Steel was a utilitarian material – appreciated for its technical qualities but certainly not loved for its intrinsic beauty, and generally, it was considered beneath the dignity of a fine watchmaking house to clothe its timepieces in it.

All this changed in 1972. The watch industry was already experiencing considerable turmoil thanks to the introduction of quartz watches. On Christmas Day in 1969, Seiko launched the Astron, and both analog and digital quartz watches began to follow in rapid succession, including the LED-dial Pulsar, which was first shown to the public on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1970. At Baselworld 1972, however, Audemars Piguet showed the Royal Oak. Its public debut was not without irony – the complex case was very difficult to machine in stainless steel, so the prototype shown was white gold. Audemars Piguet's now-retired museum director, Martin Wehrli, was there and once told me, "Everyone looked at the watch in the booth and they said, 'congratulations!' Then they would walk around the corner and say, 'they'll be out of business in six months.'"

Obviously, the dire predictions proved unfounded, and with the launch of the Nautilus, from Patek, in 1976, the luxury stainless steel sports watch became a permanent part of the modern horological landscape. However, when A. Lange & Söhne launched its first post-German-reunification collection in 1994, a luxury watch company (and Lange clearly, from the outset, intended to compete point-for-point against the best Switzerland had to offer) was still a company that made primarily precious metal watches. The idea of presenting a steel model as a regular production piece was, at the time, antithetical to the old-school vision of luxury watchmaking. While Lange pioneered both revolutionary designs and its own very idiosyncratic take on high-end watch finishing, it still adhered to the notion that luxury in watchmaking was mostly a precious metal party.

However, as the 20th century came to an end and the 21st began, I think it gradually became clear to Lange that to be too doctrinaire about sticking almost exclusively with precious metals meant missing some interesting opportunities, both commercial and aesthetic. The result of many years' deliberation is the Odysseus.

Odysseus, as those of you with classical inclinations will know, is Ulysses, the Greek commander and veteran of the Trojan War who took twenty years to come home. (I have always thought it a black mark against his character that he spent a good chunk of that time canoodling with Circe when he knew perfectly well that Mrs. Odysseus was waiting back in Ithaka, but that's a rant for another day.) The development of the Odysseus watch didn't take twenty years, but it was a multi-year process. For a company so strongly identified with very formal precious metal watches to take this step was not only out of the ordinary, it had the potential to seem out of character. The folks at Lange obviously put a lot of thought into making something that would clearly be a Lange watch – instantly identifiable as one, in fact – while at the same time breaking new ground.

Pictures Vs. Reality

When the Odysseus launched last year, we were able to get a sample into the office for a few hours to shoot it for the Introducing post, and I already felt, at that point, that I would have to be prepared to revise my initial impressions. The press photos were quite solid technically, but there were elements to the design about which I felt very uncertain. In person, however, the watch made a very different impression.

I was frankly anxious before actually seeing it. I have been in love with the watches made by A. Lange & Söhne for many years. I can remember reading about them on Timezone.com and ThePurists.com long before ever actually seeing one in person, and, as with Grand Seiko, it's a company in which I can't help but feel a considerable personal investment. Their watches have always seemed special to me – partly, I think, because they're not part of the small group of centuries-old Swiss brands, but also because without sacrificing the virtues of classical watchmaking, they managed to reinvent the design vocabulary of the wristwatch and produce timepieces of extremely high quality as well. I wanted the Odysseus to be a winner, and I was afraid, from the pictures, that it wouldn't be. This is no fault to the Lange press release, but obviously a picture is no substitute for hands-on experience.

I've had experiences in which actually seeing the watch in the metal both confirmed and refuted initial first impressions. The first impression in the metal in this case was pretty different from the image. I still wasn't entirely convinced, but I was very intrigued, and so were a lot of Lange fans and HODINKEE readers; the Introducing story generated hundreds of comments. More than anything else, though, the experience made me want to spend more time with the watch ... which, in the event, I finally did.

Second Time Around

Having the watch back in the office for A Week On The Wrist only deepened my feeling that this watch will definitely grow on you given a chance. Handling it is an exercise in the tactile experience of quality, which is pretty much what you expect from Lange. Horological writer (among other things) Walt Odets, who basically invented the whole genre of the online technical watch review single-handedly on Timezone.com in the late 1990s and early 2000s, wrote about how substantial Lange watches felt to him – as if one Saxonia had as much gold in it as ten Calatravas. When I first saw Lange watches in person, in the early 2000s, I had an identical impression. That impression, however, was very much tied up, albeit subliminally, with the notion that preciousness was the exclusive domain of precious metals – the Royal Oak and Nautilus notwithstanding.

This is all by way of saying that to my pleasant surprise, the Odysseus exuded the same indefinable but definite quality of density as well – of being a thing of substance and permanence in the world, a monument, in a way, to itself, and also to watchmaking. I hadn't expected that from any watch in stainless steel. Both the Nautilus and the Royal Oak have their unique qualities as well (if there is any watch that has the ability to refract light from polished steel like a brilliant-cut diamond, it's the Royal Oak), but this quality of somber, sober, reassuring seriousness that's been part of watchmaking at Lange since it got started again in the '90s was one I would not have expected from something not made of gold or platinum. And somehow, there it was – sitting in my hand with all the quiet self-assurance you could expect from any precious metal Lange Timepiece.

Putting the watch on was also an unexpected experience. Generally speaking, wearing a Lange watch is not an overtly sensuous pleasure – you have, it's true, a sense of the presence on your wrist of something substantial, but you are not, as it were, seduced by the physicality of the watch per se. The Odysseus, on the other hand, with its beautifully engineered adjustable clasp and very flexible five-link bracelet, is a genuine sensuous pleasure to put on and wear. When I was a kid, my father had one of the most excessively grand garments I have ever seen in my life – it was a cloak, from Russia I think (how it came to him I will never know and I would give my eyeteeth to find out), made of wolfskin. I can remember putting it over my shoulders as a child and feeling an overwhelming sense of luxurious weight as it settled around me – in its own way, the bracelet of the Odysseus does the same thing. It fits closely and extremely comfortably, and it is heavy enough to hold its own against the watch head and distribute the mass of the watch evenly around the wrist. It's an almost serpentine sensation, as if you had a young anaconda coiled around your arm.

Textures And Colors

Lange watches in my experience have a certain uniformity of quality which I have not found in timepieces from other luxury watch companies. There is no Lange watch I've ever held and worn, from the simplest Saxonia Thin 37mm all the way up to the Grand Complication, that felt perfunctory. Instead, Lange watches have always felt especially thoughtful to me; they have a considered quality which is much of what makes them so pleasurable to wear.

The dial, dial furniture, and hands of the Odysseus draw very much from the typical Lange playbook, although this is probably going to be the most lume we'll see on a Lange watch in a while (the company has made very creative use of luminous material before, in watches like the Lange 1 Luminous and Zeitwerk Luminous). As a watchmaker part of whose basic spirit is a no-nonsense devotion to clarity of expression, you expect Lange watches in general to perform the basic task of conveying the information they have to convey with ease and rapidity, and the Odysseus is no exception.

Beyond that, the Odysseus gives you lots to look at but in an unobtrusive way. The Nautilus and the Royal Oak have both always seemed to me to want to dazzle you a little – neither watch overdoes it, mind you, but there is an overt attempt to charm; sort of like the smile an Olympic gymnast flashes the judges at the end of a floor routine. The Odysseus has its own charms but they exist a bit more as a background to the experience of the watch as a whole. The dial textures and typical-for-Lange rather Teutonic typefaces, the open tail of the seconds hand – these are not vying with each other for attention nor clamoring for yours. Instead, they exist to make your day more pleasurable should you need them, rather like the well-trained staff of some great country house – capable of consistently faultless execution as a matter of course.

This extends to the operation of the watch as well. The two pushers for adjusting the big day and date displays don't look like pushers at all, but rather appear to be a continuation of the lines of the bracelet (which they also are) and part of the design of the case. That they are functional as well as decorative is one of the small delights of the Odysseus – it's sort of like discovering that turning a decorative vase in a wall sconce opens a secret door. They are enjoyable enough to use that I think owners will find themselves looking forward to months with less than 31 days in them – not just a nice consolation for not having a perpetual calendar, but a real pleasure in their own right.

The case and bracelet, once the watch is donned, continue to emphasize this feeling of aristocracy. The watch felt to me very ready to be a part of daily life, but it does encourage you to perhaps mind your Ps and Qs sartorially a bit more. Yes, this is a watch that I think clearly signals a desire to be more versatile than some of Lange's classic round precious metal watches, but at the same time, it partakes enough of Lange's overall sense of formality that you rather want to measure up as well. It is certainly a watch you can wear casually, but I think it is also a watch that encourages you to wear it thoughtfully.

As time went by during the week, the various elements of the watch which I'd initially worried might not cohere seemed to play more and more in harmony with each other. Of course, what was really changing was not the watch, but rather, my perception of the watch; I was beginning to see it less with new eyes, and perhaps more as the folks who had designed it meant it to be seen. One of the biggest questions I had was about the use of a seconds subdial on a sports watch – after all, a center seconds hand is more legible and more in character for a sports watch if you are going to have a running seconds at all (the first Royal Oak notably dispensed with a center seconds, in the name of both flatness and visual clarity). However, as an element of a Lange watch, I think it works well in the Odysseus. Lange watches have oodles of charm, but it's a charm that arises from a very specific identity, deeply rooted in the impression created by the intersection of its design language with its build quality. Had they tried to tone that quirkiness down in the Odysseus, I think they would have come up with something perhaps more immediately appealing, but with less of its own character.

The Lange Caliber L 155.1 Datomatic

A word on the movement. A. Lange & Söhne is a company that has, in many respects, been all about its movements. Over the years, it has produced not only many mechanically ingenious mechanisms, but also many, many very beautiful ones. In fact, for sheer consistent beauty in movement architecture and finishing, I think they have few real competitors. A big part of the joy of being a Lange owner has always been the semi-secret pleasure of knowing what a genuinely dazzling experience you could have just by taking off your watch, turning it over, at looking at the secret world hidden away inside the case.

The caliber L 155.1 Datomatic was developed specifically for the Odysseus, and it was intended to be not only a vehicle for Lange's signature high-end finishing, but also a robust self-winding movement that offers all the toughness and convenience you would expect from a modern mechanical sports watch movement. It's as handsome as you might expect for a Lange movement, but it is not an exercise in visual pyrotechnics. This is not to say it's not beautifully finished (and intelligently engineered for accuracy and long term rate stability, with a free-sprung adjustable mass, 28,800 vph balance and a 50-hour power reserve) – it is. But the overall experience of the watch seemed to me more rooted in the execution of the watch overall. During the time I had a Datograph on loan from Lange many years ago, I felt that I was taking the watch off every five minutes to ogle the movement (which, by the way, I still think is arguably the most beautiful chronograph movement ever made). But with the Odysseus, the movement experientially is a little bit more of a background player. It is, however, still an essential section of the orchestra, and the watch would not be nearly as interesting were the movement not a Lange caliber, with all that that implies. The caliber L 155.1 Datomatic may be a supporting player rather than a diva, but it is no less essential for the overall impact of the watch.

Steel And Luxury

The Odysseus is a watch which takes time to reveal its character. After a week of living with it, it left me with some interesting (to me, and I hope to you) thoughts about what it means to try to make a so-called luxury steel watch these days.

If you're a long-time Lange fan, as I am, you have some hurdles to jump over. I think people's expectations were probably quite different before the watch came out, but the general sense I have had from talking to Lange collectors over the years is that there was a desire for something rather simple – perhaps a steel Datograph on a bracelet or a round watch in a steel case with a grains-of-rice bracelet. Certainly, both of those would have been commercially successful (if Lange ever wants to print money, all it has to do is release a steel Datograph at a price reasonably under the gold and platinum models, and it can laugh all the way to die Bank.)

Instead, they did something much more interesting: Create a new design language for a watch case, dial, and bracelet which, while not entirely new in all their particulars, are new in their presence in the same watch. Steel, we noted earlier, is not a material which in the watch industry was historically associated with luxury. To the extent that it is, it is a material made to give a luxury impression through complexity of faceting and finish. The Odysseus, however, eschews the obviously bright, reflective surfaces that are the stock in trade of many luxury steel sports watches for a quieter presence, which nonetheless depends on the specific nature of steel as a material. It feels, on the one hand, like a tool – one solidly built and impeccably engineered, for the telling of time; that is its characteristically Germanic nature. But it is also, and clearly, more than that.

The wristwatch is one of the very few objects left which has inherited a largely abandoned notion of machines. When clockwork devices began to be produced – watches, clocks, and related objects – there was no distinction made between functionality and beauty. The apotheosis of this perspective is probably the movement of the Harrison H4 marine chronometer, which is as lavishly engraved as any pure objet d'art, but that view has been passed down as an accepted part of high-quality craftsmanship in watchmaking ever since. The Odysseus is a manifestation of this perspective. It is a machine, and a tool, before it is anything else, like any watch. But it also demonstrates that to be a useful object is not diametrically opposed to the achievement of beauty – and that, in fact, it can give rise to a kind of beauty all its own.

The A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus: case, stainless steel, 40.50mm x 11.10mm; 120 meters water resistant, with screw-down crown and sapphire crystals front and back. Integrated pusher mechanism for the big day and big date displays flanking and enclosing the crown. Dial, brass, multi-level, with applied gold markers filled with luminous material; hands, white gold with lume. Movement, new Lange in-house caliber L 155.1 Datomatic, unidirectional winding with platinum oscillating mass. Adjusted to five positions; freesprung adjustable mass-type balance with fine adjustment for beat error; hand-engraved balance bridge. 312 parts total, including 99 for the date mechanisms; dimensions, 32.9mm x 6.2mm. Bracelet, stainless steel, with fine adjustment mechanism for the length. Price, $28,800. For more information, visit Lange online. Images, Tiffany Wade; video and editing, Greyson Korhonen.

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