Introducing the Bamford × Revolution GMT Joe Cool
The Rake's founder reveals our latest exclusive timepiece designed in collaboration with one of the most disruptive creatives in the industry.
On my Mount Rushmore of Cool, no, wait, make that seated in my Halls of Valhalla of Cool, presided over by the unassailable king, one Terrence Stephen McQueen, would be, in no particular order, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, James Byron Dean, Bob Marley, Bob Mitchum, Bruce Lee and a beagle that so embodied the ineffable quality that unites the cinematic legends and musical giants that, from time to time, they would whisper amongst themselves, “Goddamn, that dog is just so cool.”
I speak, of course, of Snoopy in his alter ego Joe Cool. One of the most fascinating dimensions to Snoopy has always been his multiple personalities, which he so totally embodies that he would make a Stella Adler master class in method acting stand and applaud. Of these alter egos, his most notable are the World War I Flying Ace, the World Famous Author and, of course, the irrefutable master of laconic élan, Joe Cool.
Joe Cool first made his debut in the Peanuts comic strip in 1971 and was ostensibly styled after jazz-crazy beatnik college students. In order to transform into Joe Cool, Snoopy dons a pair of dark sunglasses, slips on his red sweater emblazoned with the words “Joe Cool” and adopts a pose of ultimate equanimity by leaning against the wall. And just like that, he is transformed. Because Joe Cool is cool, I mean, really cool. Like Fonzie jumping the shark on water skis wearing his leather jacket kind of cool. Which resonates with me because ever since I was a boy, I was inexorably drawn to coolness like a moth to a flame.
Indeed, my favourite line from my favourite film focuses purely on coolness as an expression of love. It is written by Quentin Tarantino and goes, “Amid the chaos of that day when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool.” Maybe it is because as a boy, it was a quality I so lacked that I find myself admiring it so much in others predisposed to it. But when I watch James Dean slouch and mumble in that beautiful way, see Bruce Lee sneer in the face of innumerable foes, hear Chet Baker play “Rondette” or Bob Marley recite the opening words to his paean for social justice, “War”, I find myself almost in tears because of the sheer coolness of these individuals.
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So when the opportunity arose to collaborate with one of my favourite people in the watch industry, George Bamford, and we started brainstorming over ideas for a watch, it dawned on both of us that we already knew what we wanted. We had to make a watch featuring Joe Cool. Since he came out with it in 2019, George’s Bamford GMT watch has been one of my favourite timepieces because it is the perfect essential, accessibly priced execution of this complication. Says George, “I was travelling very consistently and, like everyone who does, started to have a kind of fog over the time zones I was in. I thought to myself, what would be the perfect GMT watch to accompany me on my trips? I wanted to incorporate all my favourite design elements into a watch that was also incredibly easy to read and use. It’s funny but sometimes, by aspiring to be different, watch brands end up making multiple time zone watches that actually become confusing to read and complex to operate.
"I wanted the watch to be totally intuitive. So the first thing I decided on was to modify an element that I have always loved in dive watches. That is, the internal rotating bezel that is controlled with a crown at the left of the watch. It had to be bi-directional, of course, so you could rapidly adjust to GMT plus or minus. For the dial, I wanted a real purity of form with rectangular indexes and also unusual but extremely legible rectangular hands. To add a touch of excitement, I created a sort of racing track seconds markers, which were inspired by some of my favourite vintage stopwatches from the ’60s and ’70s.”