Monday, 28 July 2025
Sunday, 27 July 2025
‘Generations of women have been disfigured’: Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery, power, and Hollywood’s age problem
Interview
‘Generations
of women have been disfigured’: Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery,
power, and Hollywood’s age problem
Emma Brockes
The actor
explains how she is fighting back against the ‘cosmeceutical industrial
complex’ and why she has finally found freedom at 66 years old
Emma Brockes
Sat 26 Jul
2025 06.00 BST
I’m
scheduled to speak to Jamie Lee Curtis at 2pm UK time, and a few minutes before
the allotted slot I dial in via video link, to be met with a vision of the
66-year-old actor sitting alone in a darkened room, staring impassively into
the camera. “Morning,” she says, with comic flatness, as I make a sound of
surprise that is definitely not a little scream.
Oh, hi!! I
say, Are you early or am I late?
“I’m always
early,” says the actor, deadpan. “Or as my elder daughter refers to me,
‘aggressively early’.”
Curtis is in
a plain black top, heavy black-framed glasses and – importantly for this
conversation – little or no makeup, while behind her in the gloom, a dog sleeps
in a basket. She won’t say what part of the US she’s in beyond the fact it’s a
“witness protection cabin in the woods” where “I’m trying to have privacy” – an
arch way, I assume, of saying she’s not in LA – and immediately starts
itemising other situations in which she has been known to be early: Hollywood
premieres (“They tell me I can’t go to the red carpet yet because it’s not open
and so my driver, Cal, and I drive around and park in the shade”);
early-morning text messages (“I wake people up”); even her work schedule: “I
show up, do the work, and then I get the fuck out.”
This is the
short version; in full, the opening minutes of our conversation involve Curtis
free-associating through references to the memory of her mother and stepfather
missing her performance in a school musical in Connecticut; the negotiating
aims of the makeup artists’ union; the nickname by which she would like to be
known if she ever becomes a grandmother (“Fifo” – short for “first in first
out”); and what, exactly, her earliness is about. Not, as you might imagine,
anxiety, but: “You know, honestly, I’ve done enough analysis of all this – it’s
control.” Curtis knows her early arrivals strike some people as rude. “My
daughter Annie says: ‘People aren’t ready for you.’ And I basically say: ‘Well,
that’s their problem. They should be ready.’”
“That’s
their problem” is, along with, “I don’t give a shit any more” a classic Curtis
expression that goes a long way towards explaining why so many people love her
– and they really do love her – a woman who on top of charming us for decades
in a clutch of iconic roles, has crossed over, lately, into that paradoxical
territory in which she is loved precisely because she’s done worrying about
what others think of her. Specifically, she doesn’t care about the orthodoxies
of an industry in which women are shamed into having cosmetic surgery before
they hit 30. Curtis has spoken of having a procedure herself at 25, following a
comment made on the set of a film that her eyes were “baggy”. Regretting it,
she has in the years since made the genuinely outlandish and inspiring decision
to wear her hair grey and eschew surgical tweaks. That Curtis is the child of
two Hollywood icons, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and thus an insider since
birth, either makes this more surprising or else explains it entirely, but either
way, she has become someone who appears to operate outside the usual Hollywood
rules. “I have become quite brusque,” says Curtis, of people making demands on
her time when she’s not open for business. “And I have no problem saying: ‘Back
the fuck off.’”
Portrait of
Jamie Lee Curtis lying on her back on a leopardpring chaise longue, wearing all
leopardprint clothes and Dr Marten boots and kicking her leg in the air
I can
believe it. During the course of our conversation, Curtis’s attitude – which is
broadly charming, occasionally hectoring and appears to be driven by a general
and sardonic belligerence – is that of someone pushing back against a lifetime
of misconceptions, from which, four months shy of her 67th birthday, she
finally feels herself to be free. Curtis is in a glorious phase of her career,
one that, despite starring in huge hits – from the Halloween franchise and A
Fish Called Wanda (1988) to Trading Places (1983), True Lies (1994) and the
superlative Knives Out (2019) – has always eluded her. The fact is, celebrity
aside, Curtis has never been considered a particularly heavyweight actor or
been A-list in the conventional way. At its most trivial, this has required her
to weather small slights, such as being ignored by the Women In Film community,
with its tedious schedule of panels and events. (“I still exist outside of
Women In Film,” she snaps. “They’re not asking me to their lunch.”) And, more
broadly, has seen Curtis completely overlooked by the Oscars since she shot
Halloween, her first movie, at the age of 19.
Well, all
that has changed now. In 2023, Curtis won an Oscar for best supporting actress
for her role as Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the genre-bending movie Everything
Everywhere All at Once. That same year, she appeared in a single episode of the
multi-award-winning TV show The Bear as Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic mother of
a large Italian clan – she calls it “the most exhilarating creative experience
I will ever have”. Anyone who saw this extraordinary performance is still
talking about it, and it led to a larger role on the show. Doors that had
always been shut to Curtis flew open. For years, she had tried and failed to
get movie and TV projects off the ground. Now, she lists the forthcoming
projects she had a hand in bringing to the screen: “Freakier Friday, TV series
Scarpetta, survival movie The Lost Bus, four other TV shows and two other
movies.” She has become a “prolific producer”, she says, as well as a Hollywood
elder and role model. All of which makes Curtis laugh – the fact that, finally,
“at 66, I get to be a boss”. You’d better believe she’ll be making the most of
it.
The movie
Curtis and I are ostensibly here to talk about is Freakier Friday, the
follow-up to Freaky Friday, the monster Disney hit of 2003 in which Curtis and
Lindsay Lohan appeared as a mother and daughter who switch bodies with
hilarious consequences. I defy anyone who enjoyed the first film not to feel
both infinitely aged by revisiting the cast more than 20 years on, and also not
to find it a wildly enjoyable return. The teenage Lohan of the first movie is
now a 37-year-old mother of 15-year-old Harper, played by Julia Butters, while
the introduction of a second teenager – Harper’s mortal enemy Lily, played by
Sophia Hammons – allows for a four-way body swap in which Curtis-as-grandma is
inhabited by Hammons’ British wannabe influencer. If it lacks the simplicity of
the first movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to taking my
10-year-old girls when it opens next month.
I witnessed
my parents lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their life and
their livelihood, when the industry rejected them at a certain age
It is also a
movie that presented Curtis with an odd set of challenges. She has a problem
with “pretty”. When Curtis herself was a teenager, she says, she was “cute but
not pretty”. She watched both her parents’ careers atrophy after their youthful
good looks started to wane. Part of her shtick around earliness is an almost
existential refusal to live on Hollywood’s timeline, because, she says: “I
witnessed my parents lose the very thing that gave them their fame and their
life and their livelihood, when the industry rejected them at a certain age. I
watched them reach incredible success and then have it slowly erode to where it
was gone. And that’s very painful.”
As a result,
says Curtis: “I have been self-retiring for 30 years. I have been prepping to
get out, so that I don’t have to suffer the same as my family did. I want to
leave the party before I’m no longer invited.” In the movie, Curtis was allowed
to keep her grey hair (although it looks shot through with blond) but her
trademark pixie cut was replaced with something longer and softer. I take it
with a pinch when she says things such as, “I’m an old lady” and, “I’m going to
die soon” – even in age-hating Hollywood, this seems overegged – but one takes
the point that she found the conventional aesthetic demands of Freakier Friday,
in which she “had to look pretty, I had to pay attention to [flattering]
lighting, and clothes and hair and makeup and nails”, much harder than playing
a dishevelled alcoholic in The Bear.
On the other
hand, Curtis is a pro and, of course, gave Disney the full-throated,
zany-but-still-kinda-hot grandma they wanted. (There is a scene in which she
tries to explain various board games – Boggle, Parcheesi – to the owl-eyed
teens that reminds you just how fine a comic actor she is.) It’s the story of
how Freakier Friday came about, however, that really gives insight into who
Curtis is: an absolute, indefatigable and inveterate hustler. “I am owning my
hustle, now,” she says and is at her most impressive, her most charming and
energised when she is talking about the hustle.
To wit:
Curtis was on a world tour promoting the Halloween franchise that made her name
and that enjoyed a hugely successful reboot in 2018, when something about the
crowd response struck her. “In every single city I went to, the only movie they
asked me about besides Halloween was Freaky Friday – was there going to be a
sequel?” When she got back from the tour, she called Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO. “I
said: ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re planning on doing [a sequel], but Lindsay
is old enough to have a teenager now, and I’m telling you the market for that
movie exists.’”
As the
project came together, Curtis learned that Disney was planning to release
Freakier Friday straight to streaming. “And I called Bob Iger” – it’s at this
point you start to imagine Iger seeing Curtis’s name flash up on his phone and
experiencing a slight drop in spirits – “and I called David Greenbaum [Disney
Live Action president], and I called Asad Ayaz, who’s the head of marketing,
and I said: ‘Guys, I have one word for you: Barbie. If you don’t think the
audience that saw Barbie is going to be the audience that goes and sees
Freakier Friday, you’re wrong.’”
This is what
Curtis means when she refers to herself as “a marketing person”, or “a weapon
of mass promotion”, and she has done it for ever. It’s what she did in 2002
when she lobbied More magazine to let her pose in her underwear and no makeup –
“They didn’t come to me and say: ‘Hey Jamie, how about you take off your
clothes and show America that you’re chubby?’ The More magazine thing happened
because I said it should happen, and I even titled the piece: True Thighs.”
And it is
what she was doing a few weeks before our interview when she turned up to the
photoshoot in LA bearing a bunch of props she had ordered from Amazon,
including oversized plastic lips and a blond wig. Curtis says: “There are many,
many actresses who love the dress up, who love clothes, who love fashion, who
love being a model. I. Hate. It. I feel like I am having to wrestle with your
idea of me versus my idea of me. Because I’ve worked hard to establish who I
am, and I don’t want you to … I have struggled with it my whole life.”
Curtis is
emphatic that her ideas be accurately interpreted and, before our meeting, sent
an email via her publicist explaining her thinking behind the shoot. “The wax
lips is my statement against plastic surgery. I’ve been very vocal about the
genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex,
who’ve disfigured themselves. The wax lips really sends it home.”
Obviously,
the word “genocide” is very strong and risks causing offence, given its proper
meaning. To Curtis, however, it is accurate. “I’ve used that word for a long
time and I use it specifically because it’s a strong word. I believe that we
have wiped out a generation or two of natural human [appearance]. The concept
that you can alter the way you look through chemicals, surgical procedures,
fillers – there’s a disfigurement of generations of predominantly women who are
altering their appearances. And it is aided and abetted by AI, because now the
filter face is what people want. I’m not filtered right now. The minute I lay a
filter on and you see the before and after, it’s hard not to go: ‘Oh, well that
looks better.’ But what’s better? Better is fake. And there are too many
examples – I will not name them – but very recently we have had a big onslaught
through media, many of those people.”
Well, at the
risk of sounding harsh, one of the people implicated by Curtis’s criticism is
Lindsay Lohan, her Freakier Friday co-star and a woman in her late 30s who has
seemingly had a lot of cosmetic procedures at a startlingly young age (though
Lohan denies having had surgery). In terms of mentoring Lohan, with whom Curtis
remained friends after making the first film, she says: “I’m bossy, very bossy,
but I try to mind my own business. She doesn’t need my advice. She’s a fully
functioning, smart woman, creative person. Privately, she’s asked me questions,
but nothing that’s more than an older friend you might ask.”
But given
the stridency of Curtis’s position on cosmetic surgery, don’t younger women
feel judged in her presence? Isn’t it awkward? “No. No. Because I don’t care.
It doesn’t matter. I’m not proselytising to them. I would never say a word. I
would never say to someone: what have you done? All I know is that it is a
never-ending cycle. That, I know. Once you start, you can’t stop. But it’s not
my job to give my opinion; it’s none of my business.”
As for
Lohan, Curtis says: “I felt tremendous maternal care for Lindsay after the
first movie, and continued to feel that. When she’d come to LA, I would see
her. She and I have remained friends, and now we’re sort of colleagues. I feel
less maternal towards her because she’s a mommy now herself and doesn’t need my
maternal care, and has, obviously, a mom – Dina’s a terrific grandma.”
The general
point about the horror of trying to stay young via surgery is sensible and, of
course, I agree. At the back of my mind, however, I have a small, pinging
reservation that I can’t quite put my finger on. I suggest to Curtis that she
has natural advantages by virtue of being a movie star, which, on the one hand,
of course, makes her more vulnerable around issues of ageing, but on the other
hand, she’s naturally beautiful and everyone loves her, and most average women
who –
“I have
short grey hair!” she protests. “Other women can –”
They can, of
course! But you must have a physical confidence that falls outside the normal –
“No! No!”
She won’t have it. “I feel like you’re trying to say: ‘You’re in some rarefied
air, Jamie.’” I’m not! She responds: “By the way, genetics – you can’t fuck
with genetics. You want to know where my genetics lie?” She lifts up an arm and
wobbles her bingo wings at me. “Are you kidding me? By the way, you’re not
going to see a picture of me in a tank top, ever.” This is Curtis’s red line.
“I wear long-sleeve shirts; that’s just common sense.” She gives me a beady
look. “I challenge you that I’m in some rarefied air.”
I think
about this afterwards to try and clarify my objection, which I guess is this:
that the main reason women in middle age dye their hair is to stave off
invisibility, which, with the greatest respect, is not among the veteran movie
star’s problems. But it’s a minor quibble given what I genuinely believe is
Curtis’s helpful and iconoclastic gesture.
And when she
talks about cosmetic surgery as addiction, she should know. Curtis was an
alcoholic until she got sober at 40 and is emphatic and impressive on this
subject, the current poster woman – literally: she’s on signs across LA for an
addiction charity with the tagline: “My bravest thing? Getting sober”. I’m
curious about how her intense need for control worked, in those years long ago,
alongside her addiction?
“I am a
controlled addict,” she says. “In recovery we talk about how, in order to start
recovering, you have to hit what you call a ‘bottom’. You have to crash and
burn, lose yourself and your family and your job and your resources in order to
know that the way you were living didn’t work. I refer to myself as an Everest
bottom; I am the highest bottom I know. When I acknowledged my lack of control,
I was in a very controlled state. I lost none of the external aspects of my
life. The only thing I had lost was my own sense of myself and self-esteem.”
Externally,
during those years of addiction, she seemed to be doing very well. Her career
boomed. She married Christopher Guest, the actor, screenwriter and director,
and they have two children and have stayed married for more than 40 years.
(There’s no miracle to this. As Curtis puts it, wryly: “It’s just that we have
chosen to stay married. And be married people. And we love each other. And I
believe we respect each other. And I’m sure there’s a little bit of hatred in
there, too.”) I wonder, then, whether Curtis’s success during those years
disguised how serious a situation she was in with her addiction?
“There’s no
one way to be an addict or an alcoholic. People hide things – I was lucky, and
I am ambitious, and so I never let that self-medication get in the way of my
ambition or work or creativity. It never bled through. No one would ever have
said that had been an issue for me.”
Where was
the cost?
“The
external costs are awful for people; but the internal costs are more sinister
and deadly, because to understand that you are powerless over something other
than your own mind and creativity is something. But that was a long time ago.
I’m an old lady now.”
She is doing
better than ever. With the Oscar under her belt, Curtis has just returned in
the new season of The Bear and has a slew of projects – many developed with
Jason Blum, the veteran horror producer with whom she has a development deal –
coming down the line. Watching her bravura performance as Donna Berzatto, I did
wonder if playing an alcoholic had been in any way traumatic. She flashes me a
look of pure vehemence. “Here’s what’s traumatic: not being able to express
your range as an artist. That’s traumatic. To spend your entire public life
holding back range. And depth. And complexity. And contradiction. And rage. And
pain. And sorrow.” She builds momentum: “And to have been limited to a much
smaller palette of creative, emotional work.
“For me, it
was an unleashing of 50 years of being a performer who was never considered to
have any range. And so the freedom, and the confidence, that I was given by
Chris [Storer, the show’s creator], and the writing, which leads you …
everywhere you need to go – it was exhilarating.” She continues: “It took no
toll. The toll has been 40 years of holding back something I know is here.”
Well, there
she is, the Curtis who thrills and inspires. Among the many new projects is The
Lost Bus, a survival disaster movie for AppleTV+ about a bus full of children
trying to escape wildfires. The idea came to Curtis while she was driving on
the freeway, listening to an NPR report on the deadly wildfires of 2018 in the
small town of Paradise, California. She pulled over and called Blum; the movie,
directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matthew McConaughey and America
Ferrera, drops later this year. For another project, she managed to persuade
Patricia Cornwell, the superstar thriller writer, to release the rights for her
Scarpetta series, which, as well as producing, Curtis will star in alongside
Nicole Kidman.
This burst
of activity is something Curtis ascribes to the “freedom” she derived from
losing “all vanity”, and over the course of our conversation “freedom” is the
word she most frequently uses to describe what she values in life. Freedom is a
particularly loaded and precious concept for those on the other side of
addiction and, says Curtis, “I have dead relatives; I have parents who both had
issues with drinking and drugs. I have a dead sibling. I have numerous friends
who never found the freedom, which is really the goal – right? Freedom.”
It’s a
principle that also extends to her family. Curtis’s daughter Ruby, 29, is
trans, and I ask how insulated they are from Donald Trump’s aggressively
anti-trans policies. “I want to be careful because I protect my family,” says
Curtis. “I’m an outspoken advocate for the right of human beings to be who they
are. And if a governmental organisation tries to claim they’re not allowed to
be who they are, I will fight against that. I’m a John Steinbeck student – he’s
my favourite writer – and there’s a beautiful piece of writing from East of
Eden about the freedom of people to be who they are. Any government, religion,
institution trying to limit that freedom is what I need to fight against.”
There are
many, many other subjects to cycle through, including Curtis’s friendship with
Mariska Hargitay, whose new documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, hit
Curtis particularly hard, not least because “Jayne’s house was next to Tony
Curtis’s house – that big pink house on Carolwood Drive that Tony Curtis lived
in and Sonny and Cher owned prior to him.” (I don’t know if referring to her
dad as “Tony Curtis,” is intended to charm, but it does.) There’s also a school
reunion she went to over a decade ago; the feeling she has of being “a
14-year-old energy bunny”; the fact we’ve been pronouncing “Everest” wrong all
this time; the role played by lyrics from Justin Timberlake’s Like I Love You
in her friendship with Lindsay Lohan; and the “Gordian knot” of what happens
when not being a brand becomes your brand.
Curtis
could, one suspects, summon an infinite stream of enthusiasms and – perhaps no
better advertisement for ageing, this – share urgent thoughts about every last
one of them. In an industry in which people weigh their words, veil their
opinions and pander to every passing ideal, she has gone in a different
direction, one unrestrained by the usual timidities. Or as she puts it with her
typical take-it-or-leave-it flatness, “the freedom to have my own mind,
wherever it’s going to take me. I’m comfortable with that journey and reject
the rest.”
Freakier Friday is in Australian cinemas from
7 August and from 8 August in the UK and US
Saturday, 26 July 2025
Friday, 25 July 2025
Where Elon Musk buys his suits on Savile Row
Where
Elon Musk buys his suits on Savile Row (and so does Daniel Craig)
With the
Tesla CEO’s preference for sharp tailoring, is the era of the T-shirt clad tech
bro coming to an end?
Claudia
Cockerell
20
November 2024
Tech bros
are not famed for their fashion sense. Mark Zuckerberg wore a plain grey
T-shirt every day for years on the grounds that it reduced his “decision
fatigue” and streamlined his pathway to world dominance, or as he put it: “I
really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions
as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.” Meanwhile,
Jeff Bezos favours a sleeveless gilet over a polo shirt, and OpenAI founder Sam
Altman is partial to a pale turquoise fitted long sleeve which looks like the
hottest item sold in Topman circa 2009.
However,
king of the brogrammers Elon Musk has done away with the cotton loungewear
convention and is rarely seen out of a suit. And not just any old thing – the
SpaceX and Tesla founder is partial to bespoke suits from London’s golden mile
of tailoring, Savile Row. They are secretive about their clients, but we can
reveal Musk has his suits made by Henry Poole, the oldest and most prestigious
tailor on the street.
Henry
Poole set up shop on Savile Row in 1846 and has been dressing the noble and the
notable ever since. They are famed for inventing the dinner jacket in 1865 for
the future King Edward VII. Before that, men wore longer tailcoats in the
evening, but Queen Victoria’s wayward son wanted something shorter and less
formal to mince around Sandringham in. Poole made him a midnight blue silk
dinner jacket and the trend quickly made its way to a gentlemen’s club called
the Tuxedo in New York, via an English lord. The Tuxedo’s members began asking
for similar jackets to be made, giving the dinner jacket its American name.
Over the
last three centuries Poole has had some notable customers, including Winston
Churchill, J.P Morgan, Charles Dickens and Napoleon. A typical Poole suit is
“timeless”, according to the tailor’s current owner Simon Cundey. “We disregard
fashion and let ourselves be led by the client’s physique,” he told the FT in
September.
More
recent customers have included actors Daniel Craig and Jason Momoa, and model
David Gandy. The suits usually take around 10 to 12 weeks to make, with a
consultation and two fittings. They don’t come cheap, with a two-piece starting
at over £6,000.
The hefty
price tag is pennies for Musk though, whose net worth is estimated to be around
$300 billion. Plus, the tech mogul is more sartorially minded than his
counterparts. “I love fashion. I do, actually,” he said at the Met Gala in
2022. “I think beauty is very important, and style and things that move the
heart.”
Silicon
Valley’s laidback uniform dates back to Steve Jobs, a real life Homer Simpson
who had hundreds of the same black polo neck from Issey Miyake, blue Levis and
New Balance sneakers in his wardrobe. But perhaps a sea change is coming, where
tech bros start dressing to reflect their net worth. Even styleless Zuckerberg
had a glow-up over summer, growing out his hair into cherubic ringlets, wearing
baggier, skater boy tees and throwing on a Connell from Normal People style
chain.
Admittedly,
Musk is still often seen in some questionable looks, teaming up blazers with a
MAGA hat and a slogan T-shirt that will say something like “occupy Mars”. But
he has started looking snappier in the last year and is more often than not
seen in a suit. Will his predilection for Savile Row usher in a new era of
sharp tailoring for the denizens of Silicon Valley?
Thursday, 24 July 2025
Wednesday, 23 July 2025
The german ww2 Luftwaffe pilot Watches / The Hanhart 417 ES Reissue Pilot’s Chronograph
Introducing The Hanhart 417 ES Reissue Pilot’s Chronograph
(Live Pics & Price)
The first
pilot’s chronograph for the German armed forces, now re-edited.
23/10/2020
|
By Brice
Goulard
|
https://monochrome-watches.com/hanhart-417-es-reissue-pilot-chronograph-review-price/
The original Hanhart 417 ES, a watch measuring
39mm in diameter, had all the classic attributes of Flieger chronographs and
Hanhart stopwatches, with the signature continuously rotatable fluted bezel
with a red marking.
Hanhart
417 ES Reissue Pilot Chronograph
When
discussing pilot chronographs, one can’t overlook German manufactures,
especially Hanhart, which has specialised in this field for several decades.
Among the multiple timepieces created by the brand, such as the TachyTele
Pilot’s Chronograph, one holds a special place in the brand’s portfolio, for
two reasons. One, it was the first pilot’s chronograph for the German armed
forces. This watch is the Hanhart 417 ES, and today, it’s back in a slightly
modernized, ultra-cool re-edition with an accessible price.
Hanhart
417 ES Reissue Pilot Chronograph
A
Chronograph for the German armed forces
Although
manufacturing takes place in Germany, Hanhart was initially founded in
Diessenhofen, Switzerland by watchmaker Johann A. Hanhart in 1882. The
manufactory relocated to Schwenningen in southern Germany in 1902 and in 1924
Hanhart introduced its first stopwatch. The brand quickly specialised in this
field, and by the time Europe entered the war, Hanhart started to deliver
purpose-built wrist chronographs for military forces. The first Hanhart
chronograph launched in 1938 and was powered by the company’s in-house,
single-pusher calibre 40. The model quickly became popular with both German
pilots and naval officers during the war. A year later, the TachyTele pilot’s
chronograph launched with the new calibre 41, a double-pusher flyback movement.
In the
mid-1950s, Hanhart built the first pilot’s chronograph for the German armed
forces based on three criteria: robustness, reliability and readability. The
result of these requirements gave birth to the watch known as the 417,
available in chrome-plated brass (417) and stainless steel (417 ES, for
Edelstahl, German for stainless steel). Hanhart supplied the German armed
forces with this chronograph – so-called Bundeswehrchronograph – for almost ten
years until the brand concentrated on building hand stopwatches in 1963.
The
original Hanhart 417 ES, a watch measuring 39mm in diameter, had all the
classic attributes of Flieger chronographs and Hanhart stopwatches, with the
signature continuously rotatable fluted bezel with a red marking. A noticeable
evolution compared to the WWII-era timepieces is that the 417 ES was equipped
with pencil-shaped hands in place of cathedral hands. These were powered by the
brand’s in-house calibre 42, a hand-wound flyback column-wheel, two-pusher
chronograph movement with 17 jewels. It is believed that around 1,000 examples
were made, with only half of them being ES models.
The
Hanhart 417 ES Reissue
Fast-forward
to 2020. Hanhart is still operating and still produces watches that perfectly
match the original brand concepts of reliability, durability and heavy
pilot-watch inspiration. Hanhart has several collections in its range, from
very cool dashboard counters for racing and classic cars to bold and
instrumental aviation watches – like the Primus. Still, the most emblematic
collection remains the Pioneer, watches that pay tribute to military pilot’s
watches of the mid-20th century, mostly with traditional chronographs designed
for seasoned collectors.
And this
is the airspace of the Hanhart 417 ES Reissue. The idea behind this watch was
to bring back the legendary bi-compax chronograph of the German armed forces in
a slightly modernized version, at a relatively accessible price so that
enthusiasts could enjoy it.
Starting
with the case and the design, the watch looks and feels almost identical to the
original 417 ES, of course without the patina and the signs of time. The case
is made of stainless steel and has grown to a 42mm diameter – instead of the
39mm of the original watch. The height of the watch remains under control,
however, with a 13.3mm thickness that includes a thick, domed sapphire crystal.
The latter offers nice reflections and a cool retro vibe to this
vintage-oriented chronograph. Another positive feature is that the lugs are
rather short and well designed, so the watch appears quite compact on the
wrist.
On the
matter of finishing and quality, I was impressed by the solidity and precision
of the assembly of the case. All the parts feel perfectly aligned and neatly
assembled, with a pleasant feeling of robustness. The case is also nicely
executed, with polished and brushed surfaces, including a nice polished bevel
on the sides of the lugs. The transition between the different surfaces is also
precise and neatly executed.
Just like
the original, the Hanhart 417 ES Reissue is a two-pusher chronograph, equipped
with the signature fluted bezel with the red marking. The bezel rotates
continuously, in both directions, without clicks. It is smooth to operate and
firm enough at the same time, so no risk of accidentally changing the position
of the bezel when wearing it. The caseback is solid stainless steel and
engraved with the brand’s historic logo. The watch is water-resistant to 100m,
a very comfortable rating for a pilot’s chronograph.
To keep
the look as close to the historical model as possible, the 417 ES Reissue is
worn on a black calfskin strap (21mm between lugs) with an additional leather
underlay, a style that is known as a “Bund” strap. While this certainly adds to
the thickness of the watch and its presence on the wrist, it really contributes
to the overall coolness of this piece, and I wouldn’t wear it any differently –
even though you can, of course, remove the lower leather piece and wear it on a
classic 2-piece strap. The strap features Alcantara on the inside surface,
making it very soft on the skin. It is closed by a steel pin buckle.
Moving on
to the dial, Hanhart has also paid great attention to the details and has tried
to bring back most of the original spirit in a modernized package. First, the
417 ES Reissue Pilot’s Chronograph retains the classic bi-compax (and no-date)
layout of the original watch. Then, all the elements, including the logo, the
Arabic numerals, the different tracks – whether on the dial itself or the
sub-counters – the numbers of jewels or the shockproof mention have been
reproduced in a faithful way, giving this model its own identity in the
collection.
While the
position of the sub-dials has evolved – due to the contemporary movement and
the slightly larger diameter – their new position feels actually more balanced.
Hanhart has also maintained the typical pencil-shaped hands as well as the
arrow hand of the 30-minute counter. The dial is treated in matte black with a
fine-grained texture, avoiding undesired reflections. The Arabic hour numerals
and the three central hands are filled with beige Super-LumiNova – it’s worth
pointing out that the colour hasn’t been exaggerated and it has enough charm
without falling into a vintage gimmick. Altogether, the dial is spot-on –
faithful, warm, relevant, full of charm and very neatly executed… Special
mention for the minute hand, bent at the tip to follow the curvature of the
crystal.
The main
evolution concerns the movement. Of course, the calibre 42 isn’t produced
anymore and we don’t expect it to be back. Considering the usual price range of
Hanhart, this wouldn’t make sense. Thus, in order to keep this 417 ES Reissue
within a reasonable price range, Hanhart relies on Sellita and its SW 510 (a
movement based on the Valjoux architecture), here used in a hand-wound version,
for both historical relevance and thinness. This movement is known to be
reliable and precise, and both the crown and pushers operate smoothly. The
power reserve of this 4Hz cam-lever movement is also comfortable, with a
minimum of 58 hours when fully wound.
Thoughts
As you
might have guessed from this article, I’ve been genuinely impressed and pleased
by the Hanhart 417 ES Reissue. First of all, if not 100% accurate, the
re-edition is very close to the original, and the charm of the vintage model is
undeniably present. The watch is full of nice details, such as the fonts,
numerals and historical logos, and everything is well dosed, not overly done as
is sometimes the case of vintage re-editions.
Also, the
overall quality is pretty impressive regarding the price. The watch feels solid
as a rock and refined at the same time.
Coming in at under EUR 2K, the price is more than justified for a
hand-wound chronograph. This might not be very objective, but yes, I have a
crush on this watch…
Availability
& Price
The
Hanhart 417 ES Reissue Pilot’s Chronograph will be released as part of the
permanent collection and won’t be limited in production. It will be priced at
EUR 1,744.87 (with 16% German VAT). The coming year, after the adjustment to
19% value-added tax, the price will be EUR 1,790.
In both
cases, a fair price for what is an iconic German watch, with great built
quality, history and style. It is now available for orders at www.hanhart.com.
Technical
specifications – Hanhart 417 ES Reissue
Case:
42mm diameter x 13.3mm height - stainless steel case, brushed and polished -
fluted rotating bezel, continuously rotatable (no clicks), with red marking -
domed sapphire glass - screw-down stainless steel caseback - 100m
water-resistant
Dial:
matte black dial, painted luminous hour markers - beige Super-LumiNova C3 -
painted white hands with beige Super-LumiNova C - historical Hanhart logo
Movement:
Sellita SW-510 M - hand-wound chronograph, cam-lever architecture - 23 jewels -
28,800 vibrations/hour - 58h power reserve - hours, minutes, small seconds
(with hacking function), chronograph with 30-minute register
Strap:
21mm black calfskin "Bund" strap with white stitching and Alcantara
on the inside - steel pin-buckle with historical logo
Availability:
not limited in production
Price:
EUR 1,744.87 (with 16% German VAT)
EUR 1,790
(as of 2021 with 19% German VAT)
Monday, 21 July 2025
DREAM COME TRUE | HENLEY ROYAL REGATTA | Temple Island
Temple
Island is an eyot (being a small riverine island) in the River Thames in
England just north (upstream) of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. The island is
on the reach above Hambleden Lock between the Buckinghamshire and Berkshire
banks, and is part of Remenham in Berkshire. The main significance of the
island is that it lies at the start of the course for Henley Royal Regatta.
The island
includes an elegant ornamental temple (a folly) designed by the 18th century
English architect James Wyatt and constructed in 1771. It was designed as a
fishing lodge for Fawley Court, a nearby historic house that Wyatt also
remodelled in the 1770s on the commission of its owner, Sambrooke Freeman.
Wyatt designed both the structure of the building and its interior decoration;
it is likely that he also provided designs for the original furniture. The wall
paintings in the principal room are thought to be the earliest surviving
example of the Etruscan style in Great Britain, predating more famous examples
such as the Etruscan Dressing Room at Osterley Park by Robert Adam.
In the 19th
century, the island's ownership passed, with Fawley Court, from the Freeman
family to the Mackenzie family. In 1952, upon the death of Roderick Mackenzie,
Henley Royal Regatta asked his daughter Margaret for 'first refusal' should she
ever decide to sell the island. It is not clear whether an understanding was
reached. By the early 1980s, the advent of corporate entertaining greatly
increased the potential value of the island. In 1983 the Stewards of the
Regatta again began making overtures to Margaret Mackenzie but in 1986 the
island was placed on the open market.
Supported by
a gift of £515,000 from Alan Burrough (a Steward of the Regatta) and his wife
Rosie, in December 1987 the Regatta was able to purchase a 999-year lease of
the island and the temple. Following the purchase, the Stewards of the Regatta
undertook restoration works to the island and the temple. The downstream
portion of the island was retained as a nature reserve and was extensively
replanted with trees.
The
Victorian balcony which had decayed was replaced. The wall paintings, which had
deteriorated and had been badly over-painted, were repaired and brought back to
the colours originally intended by Wyatt. A statue of a nymph, in keeping with
the style and age of the Temple, was placed under the cupola.
.webp)
