When we build a post on the Worn & Wound website, there’s a box you can check to indicate what type of watch we’re writing about. The options are what you expect: diver, dress, casual, pilot, sport. The list is pretty full. At the bottom, though, sits my favorite option: unique. A watch that doesn’t easily fit into a category, laughs at being lumped together with anything generic. If something is likely to fall in that “unique” category, I’m going to be a lot more interested in writing about it, because it’s almost certainly going to be quite a bit more interesting to discuss than the average new release.
That’s certainly the vibe I get from Prevail, a new brand founded by Hassan Madras, a United States Air Force Reserve staff judge advocate for over a decade. His goal with Prevail in part to change how we talk about military veterans in the watch community, and in part to redefine what a military watch can be. To look at these watches, you might not immediately identify them as linked to the military at all, but that’s kind of the point. Prevail greatly expands the definition of a “military watch” based on how these watches are really used, and integrating a modern aesthetic and design language.
That design language comes to us courtesy of one of our favorite people in the watch community, Matt Smith-Johnson, who is perhaps better known via his Instagram handle, @teenage.grandpa. Matt has had a hand in some of our favorite watches over the last few years, and has a really distinct perspective on watches and the watch industry, so it’s interesting to see him take a stab at creating a modern military watch. He brings many of his design hallmarks to the table with the Prevail, including a liberal use of color (often in unexpected ways), and playing with geometric shapes.
The Onward series, Prevail’s first collection, can be thought of as an ultra-robust, maximalist take on the traditional field watch. It communicates a certain durability through the appearance of its chunky, all brushed stainless steel case, which is backed up by the spec sheet. Every Prevail Onward is 200 meters water resistant, and features fixed lugs for durability – it’s one less failure point, after all. The Onward is available in both a “Tactical” and “Explorer” configuration, with the latter featuring Arabic numerals at the cardinal positions, and the former differentiating itself through a bezel with raised ridges that are designed to offer some extra protection to the crystal. The Onward Tactical also forgoes the Arabic numerals in favor of hour markers that resemble loomed hooks, for a clean look that evokes classic dive watches as much as field or traditional military timepieces.
The Prevail Onward is available in three colorways at launch: Standard Black, Shovelhead (a brownish/red tone), and Compass Green. Each ships with a fabric pass through strap in a complementary color. These watches run on quartz movements (a Ronda Calibre 513) and measure in at 42mm in diameter, 11mm thick, and 47.5mm from lug to lug. The retail price is $275, with 10% of all profit donated to veterans’ health programs.
This is an interesting project that we’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on. Any watch brand or designer that seeks to recontextualize something traditional into something new is always going to grab our attention, and frankly the very idea of a military watch is a category that makes a lot of sense to rethink. In the press material provided by Prevail, Madras is quoted as saying that the brand is here for “people who want a resilient, military-style watch that avoids tired clichés” It’s hard to know exactly what Madras is getting at with that last point with only one collection under his belt, but this is a genre of watch that’s certainly littered with clichés, so a new approach is more than welcome. Prevail
