For Vieren's founder Jess Chow, the watchmaking world is quite literally in her DNA. Chow's parents, a pair of watch entrepreneurs, met for the first time at the eponymous Baselworld trade fair, and the brand's founder was raised in a milieu steeped in haute horology and fine watchmaking. Given the context of her upbringing, it's apparent that utilizing her own unique experience and point of view to create a watch brand of her own was only a matter of time.

The culmination of a lifetime spent surrounded by watchmaking in the Swiss tradition and decades cutting her teeth in the business world as a managing consultant, Vieren made its official launch into the public sphere in 2020. This feat was largely made possible thanks to Chow's fateful meeting with esteemed fashion designer (and winner of Project Runway Canada, no less) Sunny Fong, who acts as the creative visionary behind the brand. Together, Chow and Fong make up a team working in total symbiosis, combining watch industry know-how and filtering it through the lens of fashion with a decidedly modernist edge.

Despite being relatively young in years, Vieren has crafted an impressively distinct and cohesive identity across its various collections. The brand's design language can be broken down into three key pillars: the architectural rectangular case shape that serves as its chosen canvas; the utilization of bespoke automatic Swiss-made movements; and a keen sense of storytelling that informs each piece in form and function.

As I first started doing a deep dive into the world of Vieren, I was struck by the pleasantly strange feeling that this brand had somehow peeked into my watchmaking fantasies. It was as if my cries for novelty, my pleas for funky designs that scratched the same itch as '70s cuff watches, and for watches with sophisticated movements that were not simply men's watches shrunk down in diameter by a few millimeters, were all heard, and realized without my conscious knowledge. I felt a complex swirling of thoughts along the lines of how did I not know about this and how great is it that this already exists.

Currently, the Vieren catalog is home to two distinct families – the "OG Automatic" and the "Stereo" collection (which I will touch on later in this article). As you might have already guessed from the name, the "OG Automatic" collection is representative of the brand's first take on watchmaking. An homage to Fong's love of modernist architecture, this family is defined by its interplay of subtlety and boldness, often playing with rich matte black and white monochrome shades, all encased in the thin rectangular case design which is the brand's bread and butter.

Each case is crafted to be oversized yet sleek, featuring a thin profile of 9.2mm and gently sloped lugs to ensure each piece sinks in nicely to wrists of all sizes. The gender neutrality aspect of Vieren watches isn't merely an afterthought or a marketing stint – it's been thoroughly baked into the brand's watchmaking ethos, highly considered before its first watches were even released. In my opinion, some of the most compelling iterations of this line are its edgy leather-on-leather "Croc" models, which notably feature a leather dial that flows seamlessly into the leather strap. This is the novelty I'm talking about, people! This is the stuff that makes watches fun for me!

Vieren operates on a quality-over-quantity model – a refreshing take that subverts the dominant mass-production standards so prevalent today (and I'm not just talking about the watch industry, either). All watches within the brand's lineup are technically limited editions – at most, each watch gets a production run of 100 numbered pieces. Often, that number is considerably less, with specialized designs usually hovering around just five units in total. Working in partnership with an independent manufacturer in La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, each of the movements within Vieren's watches are bespoke variations of automatic Swiss-made ETA movements, which are handcrafted, and take over six months to complete.

Now that I've made my best attempts at encapsulating the basics of Vieren as a brand, it's time to get into the fun stuff. Released today, the brand's latest 5-piece limited edition, Gold Waves, is representative of a philosophical summiting of the pinnacle of its Stereo collection inspired by the glitz and glamour of Studio 54 and the golden age of disco.

Gold Waves successfully pushes the Stereo Collection's connection to music and the rhythmic energy of the dance floor to its most extreme expression, capturing the essence of sound waves and translating them into watch form. Maintaining the collection's monochromatic case and bracelet (Gold PVD-coated stainless steel), the date ring surrounding the skeletonized bespoke movement (Swiss-made ETA-2671 Automatic) at the dial's center has been reimagined, paying homage to volume meters on Braun stereo systems released throughout the 1970s.

Arguably the most impressive detail that sets the Gold Waves apart from its siblings is the three-dimensional pattern on its dial that mimics the undulation of sound waves that radiates out from the center. Despite their smooth appearance, the edges of each radial ring are quite sharp, and the various polished surface angles dramatically reflect any light that falls on its surface. This thing quite literally shines like a gilded disco ball – which is, ultimately, very fitting. Additionally, this piece is equipped with a unique peek-a-boo detail that has become the brand's signature – an 18k gold rehaut ring tucked away into the side of the case, engraved with a minutes track.

During my time with Gold Waves, I was immediately impressed with the way the 41mm by 27mm case hugged the curvature of my wrist. It ascended to the Goldilocks tier of how I prefer watches to feel – not too heavy, not too light, not too puny, not too monstrously oversized – just right. This feeling is only further enhanced by the construction of the mesh bracelet itself. Each of the small links can be removed to create the wearer's desired fit. Free of any tapering, the bracelet makes a seamless transition from the case and achieves the cuff-like shape I find so appealing.

Gold Waves, and Vieren's watchmaking ethos writ large, seems to fill a void within the watchmaking world, bringing a sense of impassioned fun, conceptual design, and a willingness to experiment made possible by working on the micro brand scale. Each piece is free of the usual compromise that comes with fashion-oriented watches, where one often pays for a specific brand identity or logo by sacrificing a bit in terms of the movement within. Ultimately, this is a brand on the pulse of the next generation of watch wearers, and, maybe it's the one that will finally make my stone dial revival dreams (lapis lazuli, to be specific) come true.