While the world takes a moment to rest and celebrate with friends and family this holiday season, there’s no better time to reflect on the past year and all the experiences it’s brought. 2023 has been an exciting year of change for watch enthusiasts and industry professionals alike, and these shifting times have brought opportunities to wear some truly stellar timepieces. Our aBlogtoWatch team has gathered a collection of some of the watches we personally wore most in 2023, and helped to define our year. Feel free to share your own most-worn watches in the comments, and we here at aBlogtoWatch sincerely wish you all a very happy holiday season. – Sean Lorentzen
Zodiac Super Sea Wolf Pineapple Dream
2023 was another very busy year for my wrist, and I was lucky enough to wear everything from beautiful sports watches to complicated ultra-luxury timepieces. What I ended up wearing the most during the year was a watch I designed in collaboration with Zodiac — the Super Sea Wolf Pineapple Dream inspired by tropical foliage. Was my goal to show it off? Perhaps there was a little bit of that, but more importantly, I was evaluating my creation. Most of my experience with the watch before receiving the final production model was with digital artwork. It wasn’t until I got to wear the final timepiece that I was able to develop a personal relationship with it. The organic-looking, bright green/yellow colors, and fun palm leaves strap (that comes with it in addition to the metal bracelet) made this otherwise practical sports watch a real hit in my opinion. My mind is racing with new design ideas for the future, all to make beautiful watches for others to enjoy. – Ariel Adams
Hublot MDM Elegant Chronograph
2023 has been a year of major shakeups and slimming down for my own personal watch collection, but amid all the fresh faces in the lineup one watch consistently stood out on my wrist — the Hublot MDM Elegant Chronograph. It was a real joy to add my first Hublot to the stable in 2023, and I couldn’t help but love the mix of refinement, sporty capability, and the right amount of defiant punch to tweak the sensibilities of more pearl-clutching members of the watch community. This was a staple on my wrist from April onward while timing races, savoring some of the city’s best bars and restaurants, and traveling all over the United States. It’s difficult to imagine a design this compact and reserved in the current maximalist, shock-and-awe post-Biver era of Hublot, but this circa 2000 model has only grown better with age. – Sean Lorentzen
Bulgari Octo Finissimo Skeleton 8 Days
Watches came and went but one that stuck around for longer than expected was the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Skeleton 8 Days. A dream watch for many and for obvious reasons, I felt lucky to have this ultra-thin, ultra-impressive piece of proper in-house watchmaking on my wrist for several months this year. Thin, yet full of fascinating, fun, and thoughtful details, the Octo Finissimo is instantly recognizable as a Bulgari watch, which has slowly but surely become very much its own thing over the last ten or so years. 40mm wide and just 5.95mm thick, this skeletonized Octo Finissimo with an 8-day movement, wrapped in titanium, costs €23,360. – David Bredan
Seiko Kinetic SKA381
This past year, one of the watches I found myself wearing the most was my Seiko Kinetic SKA381. I’ve had this watch since 2010, and it has survived numerous events that would have (more than likely) destroyed a watch with a traditional mechanical movement. I’ve had to replace the crystal after the original was broken when I got hit by a car while skateboarding in New York City, and while this same incident also broke one of the feet on the dial, the watch continues to run and keep proper time. Back when I first purchased my Seiko SKA381, I specifically chose this model over one of the more familiar automatic offerings such as the SKX007 because I liked the concept of its kinetic movement, which offered the accuracy of quartz and could run for up to six months at a time when fully charged. Now, more than a decade later, I’m lucky to even get six days of autonomy before the seconds hand starts ticking in two-second intervals to notify me that the power is low, and this is ultimately a big part of the reason why my Seiko SKA381 received so much wrist time in 2023. Rather than just swapping out the rechargeable power cell, which would almost certainly remedy the issue, I now find myself frequently wearing the Seiko Kinetic SKA381 to ensure that it stays running; however, I also enjoy wearing this watch simply because it reminds me of a time when I was living in a different city with many of my closest friends, and everything I owned could fit inside two suitcases. – Ripley Sellers
When it comes to my watch-wearing habits, I’m typically a new day, new watch kind of guy. After all, what’s the point of having a collection if you’re not rotating through it on a regular basis? So, imagine my genuine surprise when I picked up a Tudor Black Bay Pro in June and found it glued to my wrist for nearly all of the next six months. Granted, I traveled quite a bit during that stretch, so the watch’s true GMT functionality came in handy often, as did its T-Fit micro adjust bracelet. To me, the Black Bay Pro is a near-perfect combination of style, comfort, and tool watch toughness that makes me think my earlier rhetorical question should have been, “What’s the point of having a collection?” – Ed Rhee
Rado Captain Cook X Cameron Norrie Limited Edition
I don’t care about tennis and I still hardly know who Cam Norrie is, so when 2023 started, I couldn’t have foreseen the Rado Captain Cook X Cameron Norrie LE being my most worn watch for the year. Yet it dominated my wrist from August to October and has gotten regular wear since then. Two or three months at the top of the Wristtime Leaderboard may seem like a short period, but with a number of review pieces always in rotation and trying to get time in with my own watches, it’s uncommon for a watch to get more than a few days per month. In part or in whole, the Rado got a few days per week. The watch is a bit thicker than I typically go for, but the coloring of the dial and the rich green of the bezel, paired with the quick-release bracelet and a handful of extra straps I got for the watch (white, orange, maroon, and neon green), made this an easy go-to in the summer and early fall. Plus, the 80-hour power reserve means I can give it a rest and then pick it back up a few days later (which happened more than once). – Mike Razak
IWC Mark XVIII
There is something incredibly satisfying about grabbing the same watch day after day knowing it’s the right choice. The silver dial IWC Mark XVIII made its way, (unexpectedly) into my possession earlier this year when I decided to slim down my watch collection. Little did I know it would quickly become the watch I reached for every day. Highly legible, slim, and unobtrusive, it has been a perfect companion whether I am at my desk, swimming in the lake, photographing weddings, or spending time with friends and family. It is a no-fuss tool watch that came with some character in the form of dings and scratches. Despite the addition of my own scratches, it still keeps excellent time and makes me appreciate it more. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty dang close to perfect for me these days and was by far my most worn watch of 2023. – Jake Witkin