FRED Gladiateur COLLECTOR

By TLex It's a pretty fine line, the line between men's jewelry and luxury dive watches. If we are honest about it, most of men's dive watches are worn as jewelry anyway. So perhaps it wasn't inconceivable that, FRED, a prestigious jewelry brand from Paris would create such a nice looking divers model. The brand was set up in the 1930s by Fred Samuel (a jeweler's name if ever there was one), who soon took the Fred brand to greatness.



The interestingly named 'Gladiateur Collector' is a name that no doubt embodies the spirit of the type of man, who would wear such a watch whilst wrestling giant squid! The collection consists of both men's and women's divers models, that have been constructed from either stainless steel or 18kt rose gold. The watch cases, which have a water-resistance of 200 meters measure 44mm for the men's XL models and 40mm for ladies models.



There are two dial colors: black or white. The textured rubber divers strap comes in three colors: black, white or a chocolate brown to compliment the rose gold versions. Something of a rarity and arguably the finest feature of the Gladiateur Collector line is its use of a C.O.S.C ZENITH El Primero caliber. However this is only for the solid 18kt rose gold version, which incidentally has a black carbon fiber dial for that extra sporty touch. I'm not sure what movements the other models are using; I would make a guess at ETA.



Aesthetically the watches are pretty clean and stylish. There's some really lovely work on the bezels and I quite like the clockwork toy-type crown winding set-up. I could well live without the Cartier style cabochon sapphire, which the crown has been set with. What did I expect, it's jewelry, right! Finally the obligatory diamond set, white dial / white strap combo for the discerning girl or that daring chap. Prices range from 2'700 - 28,600€.