Talking Watches With Alan Maleh

Today, we're back in New York for episode four of Talking Watches. Today, we'll be speaking with a man that might not be known to many of you, but he's behind one of the most culturally influential and innovative magazines of today. The magazine is called Man of the World, and it documents travel, art, and lifestyle from a totally new perspective. His name is Alan Mella, and today, we're talking watches. Alan, good to see you. Good to see you, Ben. I invited you here today because I think of all the serious collectors that I know, your collection is probably the most varied. It goes from things like 6241 Paul Newman all the way down to some watches that probably most people have never heard of and cost you less than $1,000. You wear it all, and that's the thing, and it all kind of works with you. What was your first vintage watch, first great vintage watch? My first great vintage watch was this Rolex Pre-Daytona. I picked it up from a walk-in when I was in the retail business. I was maybe 22, 23 years old, and I didn't know much about watches. I didn't know Pre-Daytona from Daytona, but it had such a minimal and unique dial with these little red, white, and blue instrumentation on an antiqued white background. This is kind of the foundation of your collection. I see that the Daytona plays a big part. I see three or four of them right here. Paul Newman is probably one of my favorite iconic actors. Everything from his humble approach and personality to his swagger, to his acting, to the way he dressed, everything about him was spectacular. Maybe that's the connection I have. His name is synonymous with it. This one, which is a 6263, has the tropical ore rusted subs. The brown contrasted with the black bezel is just amazing. This is the watch you wear every day? I wear that every day lately, yes. Each one sort of has its rhyme and reason where and why I wear it. When I wear browns, I love to accent it with these tropical dial ore subs. This is also when I'm dressed very tailored, very conservative, very minimal. I wear the steel Pre-Daytona. This little Rolex bubble back with the rose gold hoods, this is sort of my preppy watch when I'm wearing maybe a purple sweater, white shirt, army green pants. While we're on Rolex, an early GMT, no Crown Guard GMT, you wear this one often? I love to wear this one with a NATO strap, like a navy blue NATO or a colored NATO. The bezel on this is just insane, it's really remarkable. This being a red and royal blue to turn to a sky blue and magenta like that, I mean what a color combo. As I said before, one of the most impressive things about your collection to me is just the range. We talk about a 6241 Paul Newman, a $100,000 watch we'll say, and then you go down here and we've got vintage Heuer and vintage Omega and vintage Longines and things like that. What is this guy over here? This is a Heuer Skipper. This red, white and blue little sub-dial and just the chunkiness of the watch and the bezel to me is like the quintessential weekend beach watch, yachting watch, vacation watch. This is one of my key summer watches. It's actually a relatively rare version of the Octavia, the Skipper is something that people really look for. And this is also another kind of yachting watch. This one I just recently got. The large case, the black dial with these little colorful instrumentations, even this neon orange little detail and the red blue that's asymmetrical. Just something, a conversation piece, something special about it. I'm purely aesthetically driven. It's the beauty of these things and that's why I have some watches in here that are under $1,000. Style has nothing to do with how much money you have. You can have style under $1,000. On that note, so what here out of this collection is under $1,000? So this watch is a cool watch. The balance of color in the dial coupled with this dual colored enamel bezel is one of my favorite weekend watches and this was $650. And these also were under $1,000? Yes. This I bought in Spittlefield Market in Shortage, London and I love to wear this as my tuxedo watch or my evening wear, a dinner jacket watch. It's a Swiss sterling silver watch. The mystery of it being a covered dial I think just makes it so mysterious and James Bond-ish. And then this one is also under $1,000. This is a haste. Just the colors around the inside of the dial are just so unique and the rectangular outer case with the circular inner dial, I mean, to me it doesn't get better than that. And then finally this one is the Sertina, an amazing integrated bracelet and real 1970s kind of look to it. Exactly. I would call this my Greg Brady. I think that it's just so groovy and really offers uniqueness, beautiful colors on the dial and, you know, a conversation piece. So there's so much about Man of the World and your lifestyle is about kind of aesthetics and collecting and, you know, everything kind of representing a lifestyle. So what is it about all the watches that you own that represents kind of your lifestyle and the Man of the World kind of lifestyle? I think there's a lot of different people inside of all of us and the four that come to mind to me most comfortably and easily are the gentleman, which is the suited guy, conservative, impeccable, the pre-Daytona guy. And then there's the sportsman, which is Steve McQueen, Paul Newman guy who's wearing these sports chronographs. Maybe he races cars or horseback riding or a competitive skier. Then I think there's two other archetypes. One is the bohemian, which I think could relate to this beautiful Waltham pocket watch recase. What better conversation piece than this with a nice army jacket and a denim shirt or something? And then the last guy is the outdoorsman. That guy's all about function over fashion. And that's where some watches like this Tudor Monte Carlo or this Roulette Wheel Omega are probably durable enough that they can take a little bit of a beating and still hold up. And obviously this Patek Aquanaut is another one of my summer watches. The rubber strap and the details on the bezel. Another one that I think is probably on the other side of things from some of the more casual watches is this. This is a really early A. Lange & Sohn Lange 1. So you bought this in the early days of Lange in the 90s. So how was it that you found these guys? Why did you decide to go for something so kind of haute horology when it seems like most watches buy a very sport oriented? I felt that it was the time when Lange, Breguet, Blancpain and all these beautiful high-end Swiss watches were coming onto themselves. The shape, it's the sleekness of it. And the dial looks like some kind of a chamber instrumentation. And then with the date off-centered like that, to me it's artistic. It's just beautiful and just represents everything that Man of the World represents. Less is more, minimalism, but timelessness and things that are beautiful. And what watch are you wearing today? Today I'm wearing a Heuer Manza. It's a PVD watch from the 70s. And it's all black and it's got the original sticker on it. It's got the original strap on it. Look at this. It's a work of art. I have a personal rhyme and reason and a personal connection to each and every one of these pieces. I change a watch, I would say, every few weeks. I get in the mood to shift gears. Or if I'm in a really important occasion, I may pull out a special particular watch that relates to the outfit I'm wearing. It's not like collectible cars. You don't have to spend $300 to $500 a month to keep them. You can buy a watch, you can tuck it into your safe, and there's no real expense, pure enjoyment. So that's what makes it fun. I tell my friends all the time, the stock market's great, but you want to buy safer, buy vintage watches properly and they'll go up equivalently to the market. And they're a lot more fun. And a lot more fun.