66
Zenith
Bamford Watch Department X Fragment Design El Primero
A fine and rare stainless steel chronograph wristwatch with bracelet, center seconds, and date, made in collaboration with Bamford Watch Department and Fragment Design for Dover Street Marketplace
Full-Cataloguing
• Limited edition created in collaboration between Zenith, Bamford Watch Department, and Fragment Design
• Exclusively launched through Dover Street Market boutiques
• Featuring the iconic El Primero automatic chronograph movement
- Introduced in 2018, the Bamford Watch Department × Fragment Design × Zenith El Primero marked one of the earliest official collaborations following Zenith's appointment of Bamford Watch Department as the manufacture's authorized customization partner.
- Conceived in partnership with Hiroshi Fujiwara's influential Fragment Design, the watch reinterprets Zenith's legendary El Primero through a restrained, graphic aesthetic that blends Japanese minimalism with subtle vintage-inspired details.
- At its heart beats the automatic El Primero caliber 400B, a direct descendant of the groundbreaking high-frequency chronograph movement first introduced in 1969.
- Produced in limited quantities and distributed exclusively through Dover Street Market boutiques in London, New York, Singapore, and Tokyo, the model was never part of Zenith's regular production, enhancing its exclusivity and appeal among collectors of contemporary collaborative timepieces.
Zenith
Swiss | 1865Since Zenith's beginnings, founder George Favre-Jacot sought to manufacture precision timepieces, realizing quality control was best maintained when production was housed under one roof. Zenith remains one of the few Swiss manufacturers to produce their own in-house movements to this day.
Today, the brand is best known for the "El Primero," the firm's most successful automatic chronograph movement. In an interesting twist of fate, the company that owned Zenith during the 1970s decided to move on to quartz movements and therefore sought to destroy the parts and tools necessary to make mechanical movements. One watchmaker realized this folly and hid the tools and parts before they were destroyed. In 1984, he returned them to Zenith so they could once again make the El Primero movement.