did not inspire the collecting mania it does today. Most makers who identified with the independent label toiled in the shadows, far from the klieg lights that shone on their name-brand competitors. That was when Chris Daaboul, a relative newcomer to the watch industry who’d emigrated to the United States from Lebanon in 1997 at age 10, discovered the indie watch scene.
On a recent video call, Daaboul, who wore a De Bethune DB28 on his wrist, told us about the moment he discoveredI got into watches in 2011 with my dad. He’d been in the industry on and off for about 30 years. He started overseas in Lebanon. And then unfortunately, with everything that happened with the civil war, my parents had to restart from zero in Boston. It’s your typical American dream story of rebuilding. Then after a few years, they opened a little Lebanese restaurant.
I walk out of Hall 1 and there’s this big white standalone circus-like structure called The Palace. And I walk into it. And that’s when the light just went on. That’s where I discovered MB&F. At the time, there was De Bethune and MCT and HYT. Philippe Dufour at one point had a display there. And then there were all these other incredible brands. And I dug a little deeper. Across the way, on the rooftop of the Ramada Hotel, there was Swiss Creative Lab, and the Urwerk guys were there.