Having made their way from the other side on their global tour, the Devon team arrived in New York to launch their new brand with Tourneau at 5th Avenue. I had expected a small low key cheese and wine event but in New York, such things do not exist. An event clearly for the upper crust clientele of Tourneau - all dressed up in cocktail dresses and Armani suits - right in the middle of the week. Tourneau is a huge boutique of three floors that seems to carry almost all the known Swiss brands - including some lesser ones as well.

Devon brought along a Devon designed Ducatti that was displayed at the entrance of the retail store which seemed to be incomplete and clearly a raw looking beast - parked just outside its main doors. Intimidating yet clearly bespoke and thoroughly mean looking.

There were several variants of the Tread 1 on hand (essentially all steel, all black, ss lugs with black case and black lugs with steel case). The pair of fashion models each wore the standard pieces one with black coated case and the other the standard stainless steel version that has been shown on the web.

As I had expected the watch looked huge. Possibly the largest watch I have seen to date. But because of its new movement requiring large batteries to power the moving belts, one can almost forgive the need for such dimensions. The first piece I photographed belonged to the wrist of Scott Devon - who told me later that his was the first prototype which has all the wear and tear as well as the lack of finishing as one would expect of a luxury watch. Later on Ehren - one of the staffers at Devon lent me his piece with better finishing to photograph. The clues are shown in the emblem in the crown and the case back material and the relative case polish finishing as well.

Surprisingly despite its sheer size the watch wore comfortably on the wrist. However, due to its overall size it does appear to be at a higher risk of being hit by stationary objects. I found the seconds belt to be mesmerising which seems much more intriguing to the eye than watching the sweep of the traditional second hand.Fortunately for those who are endowed with smaller wrist, Scott mentioned that the Tread 2 will be a smaller watch. It will however do away with the seconds belt in order to lower its power demands to allow for a smaller case. No known date for that model is yet expected. In any case, this huge watch can be carried off by women with small wrists as well. It will work well for the woman who likes chunky wrist fashion items. (N.B. the images here were captured with Canon G9 using the EX480 strobe)