Time + Tide Has Its New Shield
A three-month rehearsal for the future of watch culture
Time+Tide has landed in London with a three-month Discovery Studio residency — and the co-star is Tudor. Not a conventional shopfit or brand corner, this is a testbed for what watch retail could be when you give curiosity a couch, history a microphone, and collectors an open door.
Andrew McUtchen, Time+Tide’s founder, has been building to this. When the first Discovery Studio opened in Australia, it rallied a cohort of sharp, independent names and gave them a stage. The US “frontier” took that idea on the road. London is the bigger dream: the concept expanded to its full potential, with Tudor as the headline act. As McUtchen puts it, the goal is an “all-singing, all-dancing hub of watch culture”, a place you visit not only to buy, but to belong.
What makes Tudor the right foil for Time+Tide? Two things, says McUtchen: a “fanatical community” and the ability to fight “pound for pound” on value. In a landscape where luxury often asks customers to suspend disbelief, Tudor’s appeal is reassuringly grounded: no-nonsense design, robust materials, and prices that feel “fair and reasonable” for something built to last decades, not algorithmic hype cycles.
There’s also that familiar glow from across the family fence. Tudor gives enthusiasts adjacency to the biggest name in the room without wearing a lightning rod. It’s aspirational, but still a daily driver, the brand you can “beat the hell out of” and love more for the scars.
Is this just another brand install? Not remotely. Time+Tide’s trick isn’t to add brands for novelty’s sake; it’s to frame them differently. Here, the “Tudor Library & Lounge” does exactly that.
Picture a delineated lounge: couches and brass lamps, a quiet hum rather than sales patter. On one side, looping video and interviews unpacking design codes and backstories. On the other, vintage Tudor pieces placed beside their modern descendants, so you can trace the line from mid-century tool watch to Black Bay 54 without squinting. Read, watch, handle, compare, and crucially, linger. You won’t be nudged along.
Modern retail often worships the new and forgets everything else. Time+Tide wants the opposite: to “put a hundred years of stories back on the table,” from expeditions and military chapters to today’s ambassadors. It’s not sepia-tinted nostalgia; it’s context that makes the latest release land with more weight.
Will there be rarities? Yes, in limited numbers (how could they not be?). What there won’t be: opaque lists or hierarchies. Time+Tide is sticking to its principles. Access is about fairness and timing, not spend history. Some visitors will walk in and hit the jackpot, and that’s the point. Keep it simple, keep it fun, keep it surprising.
Expect the calendar to match the hardware. Live podcast recordings with Tudor-obsessed hosts (That Watch Podcast), Q&As, collector nights, and at least one big launch party that tests the venue’s decibel limit. Not everything will be turned up to eleven, though. Some evenings will be “living-room quiet,” built for deep dives and long questions. Different gears, same mission.
Why debut this chapter in London when Melbourne and New York are on the whiteboard? Because London is woven through Tudor’s story. The city has an unusually dense Tudor collector base, the world’s leading Tudor scholar (Ross Povey) on home soil, and a certain David Beckham as the brand’s modern face. The British flavour is strong; the timing stronger still, with Tudor’s centenary rolling in. Serendipity? Maybe. Good planning? Also yes.
There’s a neat Australian thread, too: the first Tudor ever sold, a double-signed piece with Kattanar’s Jewellers, was in Australia. McUtchen enjoys the symmetry even if, as he jokes, he wasn’t around in 1926.
The hard part wasn’t vision — it was patience
New ideas rarely come with templates. Getting a heavyweight brand to try something genuinely different takes time. McUtchen credits his general manager, Tim Philp, “infinite patience, tenacity, fortitude”, with guiding the process step by step and keeping the founder-energy dog from dragging the lead. Inside the studio, the team reaction was pure enthusiasm. They trained, studied, and traded stories until everyone could talk Tudor fluently. It’s no coincidence a few of them are now “micro-celebrities” among returning visitors.
Time+Tide’s floor still champions punchy independents, brands that challenge the classic luxury paradigm. Bringing Tudor into that mix isn’t a contradiction; it’s the interesting fight card. Different pedigrees, budgets, and lineages sharing the stage, judged not by mythology alone, but by design, value, and how well they fit real life. In that company, Tudor more than holds its own.
Will this concept tour to Melbourne or New York? If the energy’s there, McUtchen is game. But the metric he cares about most is perception. If people stop pigeonholing Time+Tide as “those microbrand guys” and start seeing it as the horological equivalent of Dover Street Market, a curated, ever-changing cultural hub, that’s the win. Commercial success matters (no point pretending otherwise), but the north star is becoming “the home of watch culture.”
What visitors can expect
A welcoming lounge where you can read, watch, and handle pieces without pressure.
Vintage and modern Tudor displayed side by side, so the Black Bay you try on makes historical sense.
Occasional lightning-in-a-bottle moments: a tough-to-find reference available with no strings attached.
An events programme that swings from rowdy launch nights to intimate nerd sessions.
Staff who are enthusiasts first, salespeople a distant second.
The next four months will be busy, a new cliental, new watches, and a centenary to usher in. McUtchen is trying to savour it, not sprint past it. If the residency does what it’s designed to do, Time+Tide won’t just sell more Tudors; it’ll give the brand, and the community, a better frame.
Tudor takes up residence at the Watch Discovery Studio from 26 November 2025, with the Library & Lounge running for at least four months (think into late March 2026). If you’re eyeing a Tudor for Christmas, swing by the Lounge, soak up the archives, and, if luck’s on your side, walk out with something extra on the wrist.
And if you find yourself already halfway down Great Portland Street, mulling a Tudor? You’ll get more than a purchase. You’ll get a story, and a seat.