Leica's first watches are more than mere marketing

Germany’s Leica, a company that enjoys global renown for its high-quality cameras, is not shy about licensing its name out to lesser products As of today, you can buy Leica headphones, Leica bags, smartphones with dubious Leica co-engineering claims, and Panasonic cameras rebadged as Leicas But now Leica is getting into the watchmaking business, and it’s doing so by actually designing and engineering its own timepieces Announced this month, and covered in depth by Hodinkee, the Leica L1 and L2 watches have a stark and minimalist look, with black dials, contrasting white hands and indices, and subtle red rubies embedded in the crown.

It wouldn’t be a Leica without a red dot somewhere, of course Both watches have a manual-winding mechanical movement, which is being made by Lehmann Präzision GmbH, a fellow German company that collaborated closely with Leica on the project The L2 is the GMT model, which tracks a. Source