Panerai reduces the size of Radiomir in 2010
27.10.09 / Watch Industry News / Author: admin / Comments: (0)
Tags: Panerai watches
Last month, we have discussed the design trend about watch size, and implied that the watch size may be downsizing in the future. Now we have one example since the Italian watchmaker Panerai is going to release a new model of Radiomir watch in reduced size in 2010.
Panerai has a long tradition of making large watches for being the watch suppliers of the Italian Navy and some other Mediterranean Navies. Back to 1938, Panerai’s Radiomir watch already had a large diameter of 47 mm, while most of other men’s watches were only 35-mm wide or even smaller by that time.
However, the Italian watch company announced recently they would introduce a 42-mm wide Radiomir watch in January 2010 (see the left picture).
Radiomir is a time-honored watch line in Panerai’s catalog. The new cushion-shaped watch is in pink gold with a brown dial and a screw crown. It maintains substantially the 
aesthetic characteristics as their predecessors with a perpetually moving small seconds hand in the subdial at 9 o’clock. I think it can be regarded as a simplified and downsized version of the the Radiomir Tourbillon GMT model, which is released this year (see the right picture).
Will this be a signal that the big watchmakers start to reduce the size of their watches? More than 10 years ago, Panerai introduced their 44-mm wide Luminors to market and created the craze of oversized watches. It seems now Panerai is going to take the lead again.
