One of the most buzzed about releases from Watches & Wonders 2024 was the Cartier Santos-Dumont Rewind watch. Personally one of my favorite watch releases from the brand in recent memory, the Rewind is a classic Santos-Dumont with the whimsical twist of telling the time counterclockwise. Just as languages that are read from right-to-left and top-to-bottom can be disorienting for someone used to left-to-right languages (English, Spanish, French, etc?), the Rewind is universally disorienting in a world where clockwise is the Way Things Are Done. 

At first glance, the Rewind appeared to be another lovely Santos Dumont, but a few seconds of studying the gorgeous carnelian dial brought the reversed Roman numeral hour markers into focus. There are a few examples of watches that tell time counterclockwise, the first being the Beuchat ?Envers? from 1987, which used a mechanical Ebauches movement and went so far as to not have hour numerals on the dial. There is also the Raketa Russian Code 0216 watch from 2021, which tells the time counterclockwise because of the fact that the planets in our solar system revolve around the sun in this direction. So, while Cartier isn?t the first here, it is certainly the most high profile watchmaker to do a counterclockwise dial. 
Done in the large case size, it measures 31.5mm wide and 7.3mm thick with a lug-to-lug height of 43.5mm (30 m of water resistance). The size may sound small on paper but the square shape and broad lugs make for a ...