The Cartier Love Ring is one of the most popular rings in the world: its sweet and moving backstory coupled with its sleek, ultra-wearable design make it a veritable fan favorite. However, many of those who want to pick up a piece for themselves can often get confused by Cartier’s ring sizing system, which is quite different from that of other jewelry companies. We’re here to answer your questions and help you find your correctly sized Cartier Love Ring.

Why is Cartier’s sizing system so different from everybody else’s?
Cartier’s sizing system for rings follows that of France, the maison’s home country, as well as Austria, Germany, Belgium, and Scandinavia. This system is the simplest, as it is based on the circumference of your finger in millimeters. In fact, this system follows the recommendations for ring sizing by the International Standardization Organization. Cartier’s sizing system is ideal in its simplicity and ease of use.

Can I use a ring I already own to find my Cartier ring size?
Of course! Cartier’s website actually has a full document, accessible through this link, that you can use to find your Cartier ring size in several different ways. One of the first ways to do so is to print out the document, making sure everything is exactly to scale as they say to do in the instructions, and find the circle that perfectly aligns to the inner circumference of your ring. The circle that fits will indicate what size you are.

I know my U.S. ring size. How can I find out what that translates to in Cartier’s sizing system?
The simplest way to convert your U.S. ring size to Cartier’s ring size is to use the chart that they supply in their sizing guide document, which we linked to above. The chart goes from U.S. size 3 to U.S. size 13 and ¼.

If you feel like doing a little math, you can also use this equation to find your Cartier size using your U.S. size: Cartier Size = (2.55 x U.S. Size) + 36.5. If the answer is a decimal, round up to the next whole number.

If you’re interested in finding your U.S. ring size, we’ve put together this chart to help you measure your fingers correctly or use rings you already have to find your size!

Ernst Benz watches are distinguished for their creative and unique designs. The brand has been known to partner with people from a wide variety of métiers to add their own individual spin to Ernst Benz’s large dial. Here we look at four of Ernst Benz’s most prominent celebrity collaborations and fans.

John Varvatos

Fashion designer John Varvatos has been a close collaborator of Ernst Benz for years. The first limited-edition Ernst Benz John Varvatos Chronoscope watch debuted in 2010 when Ernst Benz was still a small watch brand. Varvatos elected to produce co-branded watches with Ernst Benz to sell in his namesake boutiques.

For their debut watch, Varvatos and Ernst Benz president and creative director Leonid Khankin designed a timepiece that taps into World War II-era watch styles, further dramatized by a large 47mm case size and long hour and minute hands. The original Chronoscope was limited to 250 pieces and marked the start of a fruitful partnership. John Varvatos stores, in addition to carrying the designer’s high-fashion, rock’n’roll wares, are now official Ernst Benz retailers.

Dan Marino

In 2013, Ernst Benz partnered with football Hall of Famer Dan Marino on a special edition watch that benefited the former Miami Dolphins quarterback’s foundation. The 13 limited edition ChronoSport watches prominently feature Dan Marino’s autograph along the dial, re-done in the Miami Dolphins’ signature aqua green and orange colors. And, in honor of Marino, the traditional 12 o’clock hour marker was replaced with a 13 (as a playful nod to Marino’s jersey number).

The watches were auctioned off with 100% of the proceeds benefiting the Dan Marino Foundation, an organization that offers college-level educational programs and virtual job-seeking workshops for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Anthony Liggins

After meeting at Art Basel Miami in 2015, Ernst Benz’s Leonid Khankin and contemporary artist Anthony Liggins partnered on a series of three limited-edition ChronoSport models. The collection was to be largely inspired by Liggins’s mixed medium artwork (think paintings with Plexiglass, stones, and metal) that prominently features brilliant and layered colors.

The challenge to Ernst Benz watchmakers was how to recreate Liggins’s signature layered art as a watch dial. Ultimately, the Ernst Benz team had to develop wholly new production techniques to achieve their desired look.

Anthony Bourdain

The late chef Anthony Bourdain was a watch lover and his brand of choice was Ernst Benz. On his food and travel program Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and later Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Bourdain regularly wore an Ernst Benz ChronoFlite World Timer watch.

Bourdain was a towering 6’4” and, in turn, the large 47mm Ernst Benz ChronoFlite perfectly suited his frame and travel-heavy schedule. The ChronoFlite has a Swiss mechanical GMT Movement and world timer complication to make it easy to keep track of the local time.

As with many other “firsts” in the world of horology, details about who exactly developed the first chronograph watch have been lost in the mists of time, but one thing is for sure: Swiss watch manufacturer Zenith beat everyone else to the punch when it came to making the first fully integrated automatic chronograph. The movement, dubbed El Primero, debuted in 1969 and, to this day, remains the most precise series-made chronograph in the world. We’re taking you inside this iconic caliber, from its illustrious history to its first-class technological specs.

The Story

The El Primero took a total of seven years to develop from drawing board to final product. It was originally conceived in 1962 and was intended to launch on the 100th anniversary of the Zenith company in 1965. It was to be the world’s first integrated automatic chronograph as well as the world’s most accurate one. To make matters more difficult, this movement was to be miniaturized to fit a date complication.

Zenith’s engineers and watchmakers accepted the challenge head-on. Albeit finally releasing the watch four years after its original intended launch date, the team managed to create a groundbreaking caliber that was so finely honed that its core design would never have to be upgraded, even almost 50 years later.

The 1970s saw the watchmaking industry buckle under the weight of the Quartz Crisis, and it was then that the El Primero movement was briefly retired so that the brand could move into producing quartz watches and compete with the rest of the market. Thanks to watchmaker Charles Vermot, who kept the original plans and tools needed to produce Zenith’s mechanical calibers, El Primero was resurrected in 1984, once the crisis settled and interest in mechanical watches bloomed once more.

In 1988, Rolex tapped the El Primero movement for use in the collector favorite Daytona chronograph. El Primero continued to power Rolex Daytonas until 2000.

The El Primero caliber has since earned its own collection within the Zenith Manufacture family. Each watch features different complications like a minute repeater or a gyroscope module but never compromises on the precise composition and accuracy of the original El Primero movement.

The Technology

The El Primero caliber did not earn its title as the world’s most precise series-made chronograph for nothing. In the seven years that Zenith’s teams took to develop the movement, they managed to create a design that pairs a special cadence of 36,000 vibrations per hour with seconds and chronograph hands that move 10 times per second: these features afford the chronograph the accuracy to measure time down to 1/10th of a second.

Despite the integration of that high vibration frequency, which normally cuts down a watch’s power reserve considerably, Zenith succeeded in preserving the power reserve of the El Primero caliber. This watch runs for 50 hours without being wound.

Each El Primero watch takes nine months to produce. A series of 2,500 operations are performed by 300 expert pairs of hands and 18 different metals are used to put the timepieces together, and in total, 23 different models carry the El Primero caliber.

This movement is unlike any in the world: its accuracy, efficiency, and prestige are sought after by the most elite watchmakers, and its designs inspired countless others from different manufactures all over the world. The Zenith El Primero is truly one of a kind.

To learn more about the history of the Zenith brand, visit this post on our blog, the Loupe!

Switzerland is heralded as the premier exporter of luxury watches. However, Glashütte, Germany, is another key epicenter of fine watch design and production, and the Saxon region has been regaining impressive momentum in recent years.

Here we give a brief history of how watchmaking came to Glashütte and eventually blossomed into the region’s most lucrative and renowned export.

Glashütte: From 15th Century Farming Village to Boom Town
Through the 15th century, Glashütte was a sleepy farming village on Germany’s western border near the Czech Republic. But, when an ore mine was discovered in the early 1500s, Glashütte underwent an incredible boom as miners flocked to the town’s rich ore deposits. This population and economic growth came to an abrupt halt when the ore mines were exhausted in the early 19th century. The Glashütte unemployment rate spiked and the town floundered.

The government of Saxony urged companies to settle in the region to stimulate Glashütte’s economy and revive the struggling town. One of the businessmen tapped to open up shop in Glashütte was master watchmaker Ferdinand Adolph Lange, of future A. Lange and Sohne fame.

Ferdinand Adolph Lange Brings Watchmaking to Glashütte
Lange laid out a plan to establish a watch industry in Glashütte, largely based upon the Switzerland model that aimed to keep wealth within the region by pumping up the local production of fine watches and, in turn, scaling back on expensive watches that needed to be imported from Switzerland. In 1845, Lange was granted a government loan and tasked with training 15 local apprentices (keyword being local in the hopes that the future watchmakers would remain in Glashütte after completing their apprenticeship). And so, Lange set about turning former farmers into fine watchmakers.

But, even with the government grant, success did not come easy to Lange, who struggled to build a sustainable business. In addition to training his apprentices, Lange doggedly worked on designing the movement parts and precision machinery to create highly accurate pocket watches. He also developed a three-quarter plate, an improvement to the traditional rigid movement and has become a signature of watches hailing from the Glashütte region. On the brink of bankruptcy, Lange dumped his and his wife’s family fortune into the new venture.

Ultimately, Lange firmly established the Glashütte watch industry’s basic infrastructure; his apprentices went on to become watchmakers or movement and parts suppliers. In turn, watch brands settled in Glashütte and the foundation Lange laid out began to, finally, run on its own and brought jobs and wealth to the formerly desperate German town.

Glashütte’s Watch Industry Today
Glashütte had matured into a real watchmaking center and this burgeoning industry continued to thrive until World War II, when the city of Glashütte was bombed. The damaged and fraught city was then occupied by Soviet forces who quickly set about dismantling and moving Glashütte’s factories (including the watch shops that produced pilot’s watches) to the Soviet Union. Glashütte’s watch production largely stopped altogether.

However, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, Glashütte began rebuilding its watch industry to its former glory. German watch brands, including A. Lange & Sohne, Tutima, and Muhle-Glashütte, returned and revived their production in Glashütte to carry on the tradition of German watchmaking. In 1994, watch manufacturers were privatized again and luxury watches (under the name Glashütte Original) made their market debut.

Today, in order to receive the illustrious “Made in Glashütte/Sa” title, a watch is not only assembled in Glashütte; rather, these elite watches must have at least 50% of their value added to the movement locally. This mandate preserves the local tradition of fine watchmaking and bolsters the region’s economy, just as it had a century and a half before.

To learn more about how World War II affected the Glashütte watch brand Tutima, check out their history on TrueFacet Brand Boutique.

The German watch brand Tutima has endured some of history’s most disastrous events. In turn, Tutima tells its fraught history through its watch designs by commemorating its milestones with significant releases or by paying homage to its original collections with refreshed designs, complete with reverse-engineered movements.

Here, we explore the Glashütte watchmaker’s most historically significant watches, from their original designs through their modern iterations and contemporary homages.

Tutima Military Chronograph ref. 798 (1985)

In 1985, Tutima was contracted by the German army to develop a military watch. Tutima, in turn, developed the Military Chronograph Ref. 798. Unlike the pilot’s watch from 1941, the Tutima Chronograph 798 had to be updated and modernized to withstand jet speeds and an acceleration of 7 Gs. The chronograph was quickly adopted as the standard equipment for German pilots (German Bundeswehr), a designation the Ref. 798 has held ever since.

Hommage (2011)
In 1945, mere hours before the official end of World War II, Glashutte was bombed, and Tutima’s employees immediately fled to West Germany. Here, the displaced Tutima brand began laying roots and resumed production. But, on May 12, 2011, 22 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tutima finally returned to Glashütte.

To commemorate this historical moment, Tutima debuted the Hommage, the first minute repeater to be completely developed and produced in Glashütte. (The Hommage uses the German spelling of homage.) Given the celebratory mood, Tutima incorporated a “joyful” sounding chime into the Hommage’s design: activate the slide and the two gongs relay the precise time with this charming acoustic signal.

M2 (2013)
Tutima’s M2 model is an impressive update to the German watchmaker’s 1984 NATO chronograph—which, as you might surmise, was commissioned by NATO with a lengthy list of required specs. The original Tutima NATO needed to be pressure resistant for up to 15,00 meters above sea level and withstand acceleration up to 7 Gs.

The modern M2 surpassed even that high-reaching criteria. Its case is made of a nickel-iron alloy that prevents magnetic field streams from ever reaching the sensitive movement (a Tutima 521 caliber) housed inside. For all its professional-grade precision and durability, the sporty and rugged Tutima M2 is an ideal watch for the active wearer.

Tempostopp Flyback Chronograph (2017)
Following the late World War II air raid on Glashütte in 1945, any remaining military factories (including Tutima’s factories, which produced pilot watches) were dismantled and brought to the Soviet Union. In this takeover, the blueprints for Tutima’s Caliber 59 were lost.

The Caliber 59 was specially designed for Tutima’s pilot’s chronograph, which featured a flyback (or tempostopp) function. It was also the first German chronograph with that flyback function and, at its time, was the most popular and famous watch to come from Glashutte.

Following Tutima’s long-awaited return to Glashütte from West Germany in 2011, Tutima’s watchmakers set about devotedly reverse-engineering the Caliber 59. Without any plans to reference, the watchmakers had to dissect an original watch and rebuild the movement—albeit with some thoughtful updates to improve durability and precision. (Get a closer look at the original and modern Tempostopp in this fascinating video on TrueFacet Brand Boutique.)

The Tutima Tempostopp is steeped in history and is a remarkable representation of Tutima’s past and future as a leading watchmaker.

Purchasing used engagement rings can seem somewhat taboo for a number of reasons: some think they carry bad energy or bad luck because of their previous owners; some think these rings are inherently subpar in quality; others simply think these rings are dated and tacky.

However, these misconceptions simply aren’t always true. We’re bringing you the facts of buying used engagement rings to dispel the myths that are associated with them and to encourage you to consider this affordable and environmentally friendly option.

Myth #1: All used engagement rings carry bad energy. Why would I invite that into my marriage?
Mythbuster: Not all used engagement rings come from people recovering from broken engagements or marriages. Many come from couples who are still together and just want a different ring. Some come from inherited family jewels. There are even some that could be new but were sold by retailers at a discount so they could get rid of stock!

While, certainly, a small number may come from failed relationships, they are in the minority. In reality, people often sell their engagement rings so they can use the money to upgrade to another ring with a bigger stone, or use the money for other things, like to put into a savings account or to pay for a dream vacation.

Myth #2: Used engagement rings have low-quality stones or metals, which is why their previous owners didn’t want them.
Mythbuster: First of all, if the rings were made of low-quality materials, they would not have been bought when they were new in the first place, right?

Secondly, like we said, people sell their rings for a variety of reasons, some of which are entirely financial. Though some do choose to use the money to upgrade to a different ring, that often just means they want a different ring style, stone cut, or carat weight.

Thirdly, one little-known fact about jewelry is that diamonds are often recycled. Though it could be in a used engagement ring now, that center stone could have been in a Cartier necklace or in Tiffany & Co. earrings years ago, and it could be recycled again into a new bracelet, years from now. Whether a diamond is fresh from the mines or has been part of generations’ worth of jewelry, its quality never fades; diamonds are forever, after all.

Myth #3: Used engagement rings have gaudy settings and dated, tacky stones. I want something fresh!
Mythbuster: Engagement rings are designed to last forever, which is why the most popular rings set the hardest stone on earth (diamond) into the most durable precious metal (platinum). When people design or buy rings with longevity in mind, they tend to go for classic settings like solitaire, which go with everything and never go out of style, and these are the ones that often get resold. Hardly any used rings incorporate weirdly-cut stones or awkward settings, and even if they do, the stones can always be re-cut and recycled into more contemporary settings! Either way, there’s no reason why a used engagement ring can’t find a home in your jewelry box.

If you still need more convincing, check out this post for reasons why you should buy pre-owned!

Eager to take advantage of the long summer days, we all want to zip from the office and meet up with friends for a cocktail or catch that outdoor concert in the park.

When you’re pressed for time but still want to give your nighttime look a little more oomph, here are three quick and easy ways to re-style your daytime jewelry to pump up your evening look!

1. Switch around your necklace and accentuate a low-backed dress or jumpsuit.
Back-drop necklaces are a hot fashion trend and perfect for summer. Flip around your lariat or drop pendant necklace to hang down your back for a daring and subtly sexy evening look.

2. Swap out one of your stud earrings for a dramatic chandelier earring.
We love the fashion-forward asymmetrical look of a stud earring worn opposite a statement earring and this daring look is perfect for summer nights. To still keep the contrasting look cohesive, pick earrings with the same metal color.

3. Stack up delicate rings to create your own statement cocktail ring.
If you typically wear thin bands across multiple fingers, pile them onto one finger to make a unique evening ring.

Zenith watches are remarkable for their creatively bold design and extraordinary precision. Here we take a look at the Swiss watchmaker’s history and its biggest breakthroughs, including Zenith’s signature El Primero, the world’s first automatic chronograph movement with an accuracy of 1/10th of a second.

The Beginning of Zenith Watches
In 1865, Georges Favre-Jacout, a 22-year-old watch apprentice, founded his own watch company in Le Locle, Switzerland. Although it would not earn the official brand name Zenith until 1911, from the onset, Favre-Jacout’s watch company was a very different type of watch brand.

At the time, watch artisans worked from different spaces and factories throughout the city. Watch components were then transported from their respective locations to a master watchmaker for final assembly. But Favre-Jacout consolidated Zenith’s watchmakers under one roof and, in turn, created the very first modern Manufacture. This fateful decision would facilitate and hasten Zenith’s technology research and development in its endeavors to produce some of the world’s most precise timepieces.

Zenith debuted its first pocket chronograph in 1899 and soon after, founder Favre-Jacot won the gold medal at the Paris Universal exhibition in 1990. Throughout the early 20th century, Zenith’s manufacturing plant steadily grew. In 1948, Zenith broke out with its Calibre 135, a chronometer movement with a small seconds hand, which ultimately received 235 watchmaking awards and prizes.

The Introduction of El Primero
In the 1960s, Zenith demonstrated its incredible precision engineering: first by introducing the Calibre 5011K which offered record-breaking precision and was used to power marine chronometers, table clocks and pocket watches. Then, in 1969, Zenith debuted El Primero, the very first ever integrated automatic chronograph movement. Today, El Primero remains the world’s most precise series-made caliber and is the only caliber that can measure short times down to the tenth of a second.

However, when the Quartz Crisis rattled the Swiss watch industry throughout the 1970s, Zenith’s parent company decreed the watchmaker would produce exclusively quartz watches to remain competitive. One audacious watchmaker, Charles Vermot, fearing they would be destroyed in the wake of the company’s mandate, hid away the crucial plans and tools needed to produce Zenith’s mechanical calibres.

Vermot kept these documents and materials under wraps until 1984. With the Quartz Crisis largely behind the industry and a nice uptick in commercial interest in mechanical watches, Vermot revealed his secret and Zenith began producing its signature El Primero caliber again.

In 1988, the El Primero movement was first used in Rolex’s wildly popular Daytona chronograph and remained the Rolex’s selection to power the Daytona until 2000.

Zenith Today
In 2000, Zenith was purchased by the LVMH group. Zenith remains one of the few Swiss watch manufacturers to produce its movements in-house, the most notable of which being El Primero, which remains in production today.

Throughout its long history, Zenith has developed 600 movement variations and filed 300 patents for its engineering marvels. In turn, the watchmaker has received 2,333 timekeeping precision awards since 1903, more any other watchmaker.