Hands-On The Serica Parade Is Tougher Than It Looks

If you aren’t yet across Serica, then let me acquaint you. The Parisian brand was formed in 2019, originally making some very solid, very milspec-inspired field watches. The military influence was the building block from which Serica developed its own design language and now has multiple lines of exceptional tool watches. The Parade is the odd watch out, launched in late 2024 as the brand's first piece that doesn’t draw inspiration from vintage military watches. It’s Serica’s first truly original design. They drew on their experience making tool watches when they approached the design of the Parade, conscious that they never wanted owners to feel like they needed to baby a delicate watch or take it off for fear of damage, so they built a dress watch using tool watch technology.

To make the Parade water-resistant, the caseback is held in place with a screw at each corner that threads all the way through the case middle and into the underside of the flat, vertically brushed bezel. This sandwich construction clamps the case together onto the O-rings, and it even makes do with a push-pull crown for ease of wear. That clever case construction also allowed them to keep the Parade thin - it’s just 8.6mm tall.

Inside the Parade is the Soprod M100 automatic calibre that’s used in many of Serica’s watches. It’s a reliable, robust everyday movement, and I’m glad Serica opted to go mechanical over quartz, especially since the watch has no seconds hand, so you aren’t being reminded of the movement by its tick or sweep.

The case is oval-shaped with a 36mm diameter and a 41mm lug-to-lug, though without conventional lugs and a strap that subducts under the case, it wears quite delicately on the wrist, accentuating its understated charm. The case design itself recalls the avant-garde cases of 70s Piagets, Pateks, Audemars Piguets and Omegas that were created in response to the quartz revolution as their designers cut loose and experimented. The Parade’s case draws inspiration from this era of watch design, but it isn’t a homage to any specific design and still feels original. With such a strong case shape, it certainly doesn’t feel like your classically round dress watch.

Serica makes four dial variants of the Parade, and this particular reference has a sunray-finished brass dial with an S-curve guilloche pattern cut into it. At first glance, the pattern looks purely decorative, but it’s also functional, with sixty lines engraved on the dial and a marked-out minute track at the edge of the dial. There’s a Parisian industrialness to the brass dial paired with the curved steel case that I really like, and Serica’s mixing of materials relaxes the design a lot, introducing more colour without feeling like a two-tone watch. The dial is nearly unsigned too, featuring a tiny ‘Serica Swiss’ signature below the minute track at 6. I love that Serica continues to keep their dial text sparse, showing real confidence in the design to speak for itself.

The Parade comes on a brown grained calfskin strap with an oval steel buckle that’s a mirror of the bezel shape - a really nice touch. Obviously, if you were to swim with the Parade, you’ll need to take it off the leather, though I bet it would look brilliant on a Forstner straight-endlink 9-row beads-of-rice bracelet or a Hirsch Pure smooth black rubber strap, both entirely suited for the water.

I believe that categorising watches as ‘dress’ or ‘sports’ is outdated, so when I’m using these terms, they're used as shorthand to describe a watch's design and style, not its prescribed habitat. Watch enthusiasts no longer subscribe to the antiquated idea that a “dress” watch (typically a subdued, precious metal, two-handed watch on a leather strap) is only worn under a suit cuff during the 9-to-5, or that a “sports” watch (generally a rugged and technically capable steel watch on a bracelet) is exclusively worn with a t-shirt and jeans. 

After all, we’ve been mixing and matching watch dress codes for more than half a century. Sean Connery’s James Bond wore a Rolex Submariner on a NATO strap with a white dinner tux in Goldfinger 61 years ago. We’re fascinated by mixing the high and low, yet because formal watches typically aren’t built tough or water-resistant, you might be able to wear a Submariner with a bow tie, but your Patek Philippe Ellipse won’t survive a dip into the sand and surf at Bondi Beach.

While the above generally holds true, the idea of mixing formal watches with sports activities also isn’t a new one. In the early 1930s, the Pasha of Marrakesh asked Cartier to make him a water-resistant Tank he could swim with, and the French-founded firm obliged by creating the Tank Étanche (French for ‘waterproof’). He could have settled for a Rolex Oyster, but he still wanted a classically-proportioned watch like the Tank that could join him on his active, aquatic life.

I can sympathise with him, because some days I don’t want to wear a 40mm diver. Sometimes I too want to wear a subdued and understated watch for a day at the beach, end up at a coastal bar and go straight to dinner, all whilst wearing that same watch without the worry of drowning it. This is why I find the Serica Parade so interesting, because it lets you mix a sculptural ‘dress’ watch with sand, salt water, and a linen shirt. I think there’s an effortless, undeniably cool nonchalance to stretching out on the sand with a Serica Parade on your wrist, and there’s a self-assuredness to it, because if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t really need a dive bezel and 300m of water resistance for a relaxed day at the beach.

So if money were no object, which sculptural, understated, classically-proportioned watches could you actually jump in the water with? Cartier Tank? Don’t even think about it. Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso? Your watchmaker is already crying. Despite being billed as a sportswatch, even the new Vacheron Constantin Historiques 222 isn’t rated for swimming. 

The closest I can think of is the contemporary Cartier Santos Medium, which is also rated to 100m (the Santos Small is 30m), though I wouldn’t class the Santos alongside the Serica given its sporty design and history. Other options include several references from Seiko’s Presage collection, the Tissot Gentleman range, Nomos' Club Campus line-up, and Baltic's Hermétique, but none of them arrives with the kind of bold, sculptural form that makes the Parade so compelling. 

As a durable and understated, water-resistant, shaped watch, the Serica Parade is in a class of one, and that’s a fascinating thing. Catch me at the beach this summer with a Parade-shaped watch tan. 

All four Serica Parade references are priced at A$2,459. Find out more here.