JDM FASHION RETAILER WATCHES: SHIPS
🚢 A primer on the watches and watch collabs of Japanese fashion retailer SHIPS
I believe one of the last areas of arbitrage of information for our relentless consumerism is stuff locked behind languages that aren’t English. In terms of watches I think we’re locked out of certain portions of the watchiverse based on what language we speak. I know the Italians are hiding some primo shit. Chinese-speaking collectors have access to an entire parallel watchiverse. Vietnam and Thailand house some of the coolest and deepest Seiko references out. The letters, ‘JDM’ or ‘Japanese Domestic Market’ light a fire in me that most other things don’t - because I can (somewhat) navigate the Japanese watchiverse, I have access to some stuff.
JAPANESE RETAILERS
In The W. David Marx Interview with Throwing Fits seminal fashion author W. David Marx touches upon the importance of physical stores to the Japanese fashion landscape. Think of these stores as a physical representation of a vibe of sorts. Now know that even in just Tokyo there are hundreds of them. They cater to their chosen idea of clientele extremely well. Through careful curation over many many years a lot of these stores become fixtures for certain aesthetics that become codified. Let’s call these physical stores the somewhat redundant term, ‘JDM Fashion Retailers’.
Turns out these stores in Japan regularly partner up with your well known watchiverse staples and produce watches specific to them! Turns out alot of these stores have their own little watch lines — super cool!
I have this sort of loose M.O. to only write about stuff that I think other people in the watchiverse won’t ever get around to covering (purple cow, be the only et al). JDM Fashion Retailer Watches is absolutely an arbitrary category I just made up — but it’s a category I think exists?! So hopefully this kicks off a little series where I document at least a few. I reckon these are a great modern version of say, a Türler or other retailer-signed watch — with the bonus of integrating the soul of the actual retailer into the watch and making it an actual collaboration rather than a dingy tiny piece of text.
This concept just happens to work with Japanese retailers as they often have an identity past being just a shop or brand. However the recent NOAH NYC x Timex collab (which I’ve ordered and am very happy exists!) proves that Western retailers are starting to get on board too! Of course the KITH x TAG is included which has been written about ad nauseam.1
SHIPS LTD
I initially discovered SHIPS while I was trying to track down a pair of pants and I ended up buying a few of their in-house staple pieces as a tack-on to my order. SHIPS’ in-house label nail the price point with a lot of stuff. There are a number of slightly wider ‘City Boy’-adjacent type staple silhouettes and more casual suit-y menswear that are made really accessible. Often these stores have a really good staff styling page you can check out. No nonsense, very solid ‘person walking around Tokyo’ styling for a very affordable price from their in-house while also stocking some more expensive brands like NOMA t.d and Engineered Garments to round out.
This will by no means be an exhaustive list of all of the SHIPS watches (or other retailer watches in the future) but I’ll try my best to dig up some of the cooler references! As always DYOD2 heavily encouraged.
SHIPS Timex Safari
What initially kicked off the idea for this article was running into the SHIPS version of the Timex Safari while on one of my patented random vintage Timex reference bingesâ„¢. The representative SHIPS color is navy which begets the solid basics thing, so most of the SHIPS watches upcoming will have a navy twist.
SHIPS Timex Camper
In 2016 they brought back the Timex Camper as a 36mm quartz watch in a navy case. Robust! There are few poorly documented SHIPS Timex references bandying about so it’s worth a dig deeper if you’re interested. I’m also a fan of this cool lil’ skin diver they did.
SHIPS Seiko GIUGIARO DESIGN Digital Watch
The most interesting of the current SHIPS offerings in my mind is this 500 piece limited "GIUGIARO DESIGN" digital watch by SEIKO. Big fan of more off the wall references being used as collab pieces. You can see the rest of their current collabs here. They currently have a Seiko 5 on offer as well and have done PROSPEX models in the past.
SHIPS Hamilton Khaki Field Officer 38/33
SHIPS are also a frequent Hamilton collaborator. My pick of the Hamilton lot is this pair of 2012 Hamilton Khaki Officers in navy in 38mm and 33mm cases housing ETA2801s. HAMILTON for SHIPS is printed on the caseback.
SHIPS SH-002
Now here’s where things get funky. SHIPS has occasionally dabbled into making their own watches. The best instance of this I’ve found is this quartz SHIPS SH-002 vintage-Omega-ass-looking thing that released in 2017 in a few different variations that sold for around $50-70(!!!). I’m a big advocate of this type of homage watch that makes expensive designs more accessible so it’s super fun to see a retailer taking a punt on making a few of these. Here's a definitely not a Tortue by SHIPS from the same year. There are a few of these ‘retailer white-labels’ that should be looked at a little closer as I’m sure that there are a few cool references to be uncovered like these.
MORE WATCHES FOR STORES LESS WATCHES FOR THE MARKET!
There’s a lot of merit for watches that are designed to fit in a certain style or universe like the above and Japanese retailers with their strong sense of aesthetic identity are prime real-estate for breeding (is that the phrase?!?) some cool watch collaborations. I’ll be digging up more of these JDM Fashion Retailer Watches in the future!
As I type this post I haven’t missed a single game of the 2024 Euros which come on in the depths of the Australian nighttime and am casually watching the 2024 Copa America during the day so I am but a shell of a human ⚽. It’s a bad time financially for both sneakers and watches right now — but I’ve found that times like these bring out the more creative product. When the mood strikes I’ll be tackling my longass, ‘Ideas for articles’ list of which this article was one so as always keep it locked in 🫡.
The only thing I’ll say about KITH x TAG is that it wasn’t a watch for watch people, it was a watch for KITH people that go to KITH. The NOAH x Timex is a watch for NOAH people that shop at NOAH. I’m waiting for the Aimé Leon Dore watch to complete a cursed NYC upscale street watch trio.
DO YOUR OWN DIGGING