Article | The Armoury Mark Cho Fp Journe Resonance Parking Meter Phillips Hong Kong Watch Auction Xxiii November 2026

Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo presents The Hong Kong Watch Auction: XXIII, a live auction taking place on 21–22 November 2026 at our West Kowloon headquarters. Featuring more than 320 exceptional luxury timepieces from makers such as Patek Philippe, Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Cartier, Vacheron Constantin, and F.P. Journe, the sale includes the one-of-five F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance “Parking Meter” featured in this story.

For a man who makes his living helping people find clothes that look good and fit well, it is little surprise that Mark Cho thinks watch brands should offer more choice in sizing. As he puts it: “I wouldn’t have a clothing store with no size smalls, right?”

Co-founder of The Armoury, a menswear retailer specializing in classic tailoring, Cho approaches watches with much the same eye he brings to the sartorial world. Size, proportion, color, and how something sits on the body all matter. A watch might catch his eye for its movement design or an unusual dial detail, yet prove less suited to him once he starts wearing it.

“Because I’m a clothier, fit is important,” he explains. “The idea of a watch being physically not suitable for me is just as annoying as it might be with a garment.”

Cho’s special-order F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance – a highlight of the upcoming Hong Kong Watch Auction: XXIII – gives a good sense of what does suit him: a 38mm platinum case, a blue dial with warm gray lettering, and white subdials picked out in navy, black, and red.

Delivered in 2018, it is one of five commissioned for Cho and four customers of The Armoury. Bringing it into existence involved a stolen watch, a sympathetic brand rep, and considerable time spent in Photoshop.

An Unexpected Turn

Born in London, Cho developed an interest in tailoring as a teenager, though his early career took him into real estate. In Hong Kong, part-time work for bespoke tailor W.W. Chan offered a way into menswear, before he co-founded The Armoury with Alan See in 2010. That same year, he became a co-owner of British clothing brand Drake’s. The Armoury expanded to New York in 2013, with Cho dividing his time between the three cities.

He had started collecting watches in 2006, buying a gray-dial Omega Chronostop with his first paycheck. Vintage offered an affordable way to explore different designs, and the smaller dimensions of older watches worked well on his wrist.

In 2012, he bought a 36mm F.P. Journe Octa Divine from a California dealer. Two years later, when its date stopped advancing, he submitted it for servicing through Journe’s New York boutique. The response was unexpected: the watch had been stolen from the brand’s Paris boutique years earlier and would have to be confiscated.

Fortunately, Cho had kept the correspondence and payment records proving he had bought it in good faith. Handling the awkward conversation was Pierre Halimi, head of Montres Journe America, who invited Cho to drop by.

During that visit, two of Cho’s customers happened to walk in, one after the other. Both knew Halimi, who recognized an overlap between their clientele. Halimi subsequently visited The Armoury, and the two began organizing joint events, introducing Cho’s customers to F.P. Journe and vice versa.

Cho also pursued the dealer for a refund. After legal correspondence and a settlement, he recovered his money. Halimi then helped arrange the purchase of the Octa Divine from the insurer and had it serviced, meaning Cho even got his watch back.

Something Borrowed

Halimi also knew of Cho’s preference for smaller watches. When the possibility arose of commissioning a special order, he offered access to his personal collection of F.P. Journe watches so Cho could spend time wearing one before deciding. Cho asked to borrow Halimi’s Chronomètre à Résonance.

The early example had the Résonance’s two symmetrical time displays and a gold dial that had developed a muted, almost bronze tone. Its appearance made an impression on the collector, who admired Journe’s newer watches but sometimes found their colors and contrasts stronger than he preferred.

“What really set it apart was the fact that the colors were rich, but they were kind of muted,” he recalls.

Wearing Halimi’s watch helped settle the choice of model. The proposed commission would use the Résonance RT configuration, nicknamed “Parking Meter,” with concentric 24-hour and minute discs in a semi-circular window on the left and a conventional 12-hour display on the right.

Behind those displays are two regulating systems designed to synchronize through the physical phenomenon of resonance. Cho appreciated the watchmaking ingenuity, but he also found something appealing in the idea of two mechanisms keeping each other in sync.

“I love the romance of these two things speaking to each other,” he says. “It’s kind of like a dialogue.”

Finding the Colors

Cho initially imagined a white dial. He spent months trying different combinations in Photoshop, and conversations with colleagues raised another possibility: perhaps some of The Armoury’s customers would like to participate in the commission as well.

A blue dial, he thought, might have broader appeal. But finding the right blue took longer.

The answer came during a visit to an Andreas Gursky photography exhibition at London’s Southbank Centre. A large ocean image caught his attention, its expanse of blue accompanied by coastal tones and pale surf. This was a palette he could work with.

“It was a serene shade of blue that you look at it, and you just felt better,” he recalls.

Back in Photoshop, he sampled colors from the image and applied them to the proposed Résonance design. The ocean supplied the blue for the main dial. For the lettering, he chose a warm taupe gray to soften the contrast he found in Journe’s usual treatment.

Another borrowed watch helped resolve the subdial displays. One of his customers, an established Journe collector who supported the special-order application, lent him a Répétition Souveraine. Cho admired its navy numerals against white and proposed using that combination for both time displays.

François-Paul Journe approved the design with one change: the right-hand display could have navy markings, but the left should retain its standard black-and-red treatment. As Cho explains, Journe considered the Résonance “two timekeepers cased together” and wanted their markings in different colors.

Cho accepted the suggestion. Journe also approved a smaller personal touch: the “à” in “Chronomètre à Résonance” would appear in The Armoury’s signature gold.

A Circle of Five

The five watches used Manufacture Journe’s last remaining 38mm platinum Résonance cases, designed to accommodate the model’s unusual crown positions at 12 and 4 o’clock.

One went to Cho. The other four went to customers he had come to know through The Armoury, including the collector whose repeater had informed the design.

All five watches have remained within what Cho calls “the Armoury family.” One example has changed hands twice, each time passing from one customer to another.

For Cho, those friendships give the mechanism a personal association.

“It’s a nice metaphor, too, for how I feel about other people. If you're with people who you like and love, and they like and love you back, they kind of keep you in sync as well, and I think that's really such a beautiful sentiment,” he says.

Number 168

Cho had requested no particular serial number. His watch arrived numbered 168-RT.

The number has auspicious connotations in Chinese culture. It also happened to be the street number of The Armoury’s New York store, at 168 Duane Street in Tribeca. Cho traces the commission back to that shop: the customers he met there, his introduction to Halimi, and the opportunity to create the watch. “It felt almost fated,” he says.

In 2022, Cho sold much of his collection through Phillips to help fund his luxury retail mall concept, the Pedder Arcade, a European-style indoor shopping arcade in Hong Kong with six curated stores – including Phillips Perpetual – and a café.

He now plans to put the proceeds from his Résonance toward a larger Tribeca flagship for The Armoury, giving the watch another connection to the shop where its story began.

For the successful bidder, there is an invitation to become part of that story. Cho is offering to make them a suit as a gift – and, in the process, spend some time getting acquainted.

“Sometimes, the best way to spend some time together is to do something together,” he says. “In our case, it’ll be us making a suit for you as a gift.”

And if his Résonance is the right fit for you, you can be sure Cho will have a few ideas about what else might be.

You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire Hong Kong Watch Auction: XXIII catalog here.