Haute Time Lunches With Jorn Werdelin at Cipriani Miami Downtown

One of the nice things about being in Miami during the slow season is that a lot of CEOs come and go through the Magic City. Yesterday Jorn Werdelin, one half of the watch brand Linde Werdelin, was in town. Jorn was coming from a big watch show in Mexico, and was in Miami for a couple of days, where he just set up a new distributor – a store called Toys for Boys Miami.

Haute Time had lunch with Jorn, Toys for Boys owner Rafael Gill, and Alexis Sarkissian, CEO of Linde Werdelin distributor Totally Worth It. We all went to Cipriani Miami Downtown, which is currently one of my favorite lunch spots in Miami.

It is always great to see what the CEOs of the watch brands are wearing when they’re not at shows or in press meetings. The day of our lunch, Jorn had on one of the brand’s most popular watches, the Oktopus II Titanium Yellow. I’m not personally a big fan of yellow, but I am a fan of the arch, along with the Gadget Jorn had – The Reef. What is it?

On their website, Linde Werdelin says, “Developed in conjunction with professional divers, the reef is designed to provide constant guidance to scuba divers, tracking critical information with the use of intelligent software”.

Basically, you put The Reef on top of your Linde Werdelin watch (it slides on very easily) when you are going diving, and it feeds you the information that is crucial to staying safe while scuba diving.

The next watch that got my attention, that I really liked was the SpidoSpeed in Rose Gold. According to Linde Werdelin this piece weighs 1/8 of a kilo of 18 karat rose gold, and boy is this watch heavy. Limited to only 100 pieces in the world, this watch was my favorite. It is not cheap – retailing for around US$41,000, this is a great quality watch that is a great piece for a watch collector. The watch came with a calfskin strap, but Alexis had a briefcase with over 50 other straps for the watch, as it takes less than 1 minute to switch.

It was great to meet with Jorn outside of the context of Basel, and hear his philosophy for the brand. Linde Werdelin is one brand we are cheering on, and looking to watch them grow and have continued success in the watch world.

Photos and video by Seth Semilof.

Seth Semilof

Co-Founder & COO · Haute Time

Seth Semilof co-founded Haute Living and, with business partner Kamal Hotchandani, launched Haute Time, the brands' luxury timepiece site, to educate buyers about the best watches in the world and to showcase the passion of collectors and the CEOs who lead the great maisons. His love of watches began early: a TAG Heuer at 13, an Omega at 16, and his first Rolex at 20. Through Haute Time he has been honored to visit the greatest watch manufactures in the world and meet the master watchmakers behind them. He has also personally featured private collections exclusive to Haute Time, taking readers inside the watch boxes of Kevin Hart, Carmelo Anthony, Tony Robbins and Swizz Beatz.