Tudor turns 100 this year, and the brand is marking the celebratory occasion with an entirely new watch family.
Enter Monarch: a 39mm steel piece with a dark champagne dial that sits outside every existing line in the catalog and looks like nothing Tudor has released in recent memory. Still, long-time Tudor collectors might pause and think, This name sounds familiar.
That’s because it has surfaced before. In the early 1990s, Tudor positioned the original Monarch as a sporty, everyday piece. That version was largely forgotten, eclipsed by the Black Bay—the brand’s defining product line—and quietly retired by the turn of the century. The new Monarch shares the name, but little else.
In the new introduction, the case takes on a highly faceted form, far more angular than Tudor’s typical design language. At 39mm in diameter, the proportions are comfortable, broadly wearable, with a subtle vintage lean. Where the Black Bay rounds its edges into something nautical and purpose-built, the Monarch is sharper—its transitions between polished and brushed surfaces lending a quieter, more architectural elegance. From the side it reads as sporty, head-on it leans dress, and ultimately achieves what the brand was hoping to accomplish when the model was first introduced.
The dial is where the Monarch earns its keep. Tudor calls it an “error-proof” design, pairing Roman numerals on the upper half and Arabic numerals below. This quirky style is better known as a “California dial”—a funny name that has nothing to do with California at all. The layout traces back to a Rolex patent filed in 1941, rooted in the idea that mixing two numeral styles made a dial easier to read at a quick glance, and avoids confusion no matter the angle.
Whether that logic is enough to fully convince you is beside the point, because the result is, above all, a beautiful watch with incredible visual texture. At first look, the rich, honeyed tone offers a warmth and sophistication—and with a more critical eye through a loupe, the vertically-brushed finish evokes almost a papyrus-like grain giving the watch an added layer of depth.
Inside, the manufacture Calibre MT5662-2U is both COSC and METAs certified for precision and performance, with a 65-hour power reserve, and an 18-karat gold inlay on the rotor. At $5,875, it’s a strong technical proposition.
The brand could have commemorated a centenary with a limited Black Bay in a special colorway with subtle updates and called it a day. After all, they rarely choose to be rebellious because they don’t have to be. Instead, the milestone inaugurates something far more ambitious – not a diver, not a field watch, not a simple heritage reissue. A dormant name, reimagined, now confidently anchors a new product family while staying true to the Tudor DNA.
