Page 112 - OVATION Magazine (Issue 1)

THE WATCHMAKER
“Let’s see...we’ve got the 5395, the 7337, and the 5527,” says Hodge, rattling off the reference numbers for each watch by memory. It’s the kind of obsessive knowledge you’d expect from any well-heeled collector, but it was a long road to connoisseurship for the North Carolina native. Raised along with his two siblings by a single mother, he knows what it means to struggle to get by. Even in those early days, howev- er, he always had an affinity for the finer details. “I was always scientifically and mechanically inclined,” he says. “As a child, I wanted to be an engineer and a designer.When I was 19, I got into watch design because it was something that I could take with me while I was pursuing my acting career, which I’d already been in for quite some time. I chose watches because it encompasses all of my loves—art, architecture, engineering, and balance.”
When Hodge whips out his portfolio of hand-sketched watch designs, it’s not hyperbole to say they rival concepts you’d see from some of the greatest watchmakers of Switzer- land.And the actor knows it—he’s already begun laying the groundwork for his own eponymous watch company. The dials will be branded A. Hodge and engraved with various personal mottos, such as “The wealth of every nation is found in the heart of its foundation.” Of course, unlike every other watchmaker in the centuries-long history of horology, Hodge will have plenty of name recognition before he even sells his first piece. But that’s beside the point.“I honestly don’t care
if I don’t sell a watch,” he says. “I just need to make it.” Still, when he takes out his laptop to show off the artificial-reality technology he has developed to help his future customers
“The thing that I love
most about this watch
is it shows off Breguet’s signatures—the casework, the pleating on the side, and the complexity of
the dial. . . . You can spot it from yards away and automatically know it’s a Breguet.”
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Breguet (breguet.com) Marine Chronographe 5527 in titanium ($24,100).
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