The Taste of Time: Studio Underd0g × Massena LAB 03SERIES “Champagne & Caviar”
“The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” — Horace Walpole
A watch born from irreverence and indulgence, where British wit meets collector gravitas—and together they toast to the absurdity of taking pleasure seriously.
Something is always fermenting at the playful end of contemporary watchmaking. It begins, as it often does, in an unassuming workshop—in this case, Maidenhead, England—where Studio Underd0g has been distilling its own eccentric idea of horological cool. Now it finds itself in partnership with William Massena, the industry’s perennial insider-outsider, to produce a limited chronograph so self-aware it feels like a parody of luxury turned sincere: the 03SERIES Champagne & Caviar.
At first glance, the name sounds like an over-served metaphor. Yet that, precisely, is the point. This watch is not about restraint. It is about tasting the high-low dialogue of modern collecting—how irony and indulgence can share a table and still find common appetite.
The Cultural Moment comes to us between bubbles of optimism and fatigue. The industry’s mainstream is exhausted from a decade of safe revivals and sterile minimalism. Against this backdrop, small studios such as Underd0g and labs like Massena’s have made irreverence respectable again. They operate like conversation pieces in a room of solemn faces, asking the question few heritage maisons dare: can fun still be intelligent? The answer, in this case, is yes—if your fun is executed with Sellita-powered precision and priced at a collector-friendly £1,750.
This release also lands at a delicate point in the culture of watch enthusiasm. The “independent spirit” has become an aesthetic commodity. Collaborations, once subversive, now form a predictable cycle of drops and hype. But the Champagne & Caviar is something different—it laughs with, not at, the system. It knows it is part of the game and refuses to pretend otherwise.
From a Brand Positioning perspective, the pairing is almost cinematic.
Massena LAB represents the intellectual old guard of collecting: deliberate, analytical, allergic to noise. Studio Underd0g is the spirited new wave: British, unpretentious, internet-native. Their intersection feels both improbable and inevitable—a brand collaboration that reads as commentary on collaboration itself.
Massena lends legitimacy, a sense of connoisseurship earned through decades of engagement with both vintage and independent watchmaking. Underd0g supplies narrative voltage—the visual audacity and cultural agility that luxury conglomerates cannot manufacture. Together, they produce a small-batch chronograph that functions as a cultural handshake between generations: Massena’s cultivated discernment and Richard Benc’s instinct for aesthetic mischief.
Then comes the Product Reality, which, ironically, is more serious than the metaphor it carries.
The 38.5 mm stainless-steel case houses a manually wound Sellita SW510 M monopusher with 63 hours of reserve—a movement chosen not for novelty but for reliability and serviceability. The double-domed sapphire crystal catches light like a coupe of chilled champagne; beneath it, a two-layer dial radiates from gold shimmer to the dark grain of caviar. At three o’clock, an oversized “big-eye” sub-dial forms the symbolic pot—textured, gleaming, and slightly absurd in its confidence. The chronograph hand begins with a discreet silhouette of a champagne bottle—Massena’s wink to those who notice details after the third glass.
Nothing revolutionary hides beneath the caseback, only a neatly finished ruthenium-anthracite bridge—custom, yes, but modestly so. The point here is not mechanical transcendence; it is coherence between theme and craft. The watch behaves like what it claims to be: an indulgence executed with discipline.
The Market & Collector Psychology behind such a piece is easy to misread. Superficially, it courts the collector who wants the next limited drop—200 pieces, first-come, first-served, free shipping worldwide. But beneath that, it appeals to a deeper temperament: the collector who has begun to tire of the moral seriousness of collecting. The kind who can own a Voutilainen and still laugh at the theatre of exclusivity. In an ecosystem obsessed with authenticity, Champagne & Caviar proposes a different virtue—self-awareness.
Massena has always understood this audience: educated, ironic, and emotionally fluent in the codes of both vintage nostalgia and internet humor. Underd0g extends the gesture to a broader crowd—those entering the hobby through design appreciation rather than heritage allegiance. The collaboration, then, is not about merging markets but reconciling psychologies: reverence meeting irreverence halfway.
From a Financial & Strategic Outlook, the watch is less about profit than about positioning. At £1,750, it sits at the intersection of premium microbrand and entry-independent—a zone that has quietly become the industry’s laboratory for experimentation. Massena LAB gains visibility among younger, meme-literate buyers; Studio Underd0g gains gravitas through association with a figure who shaped early digital watch discourse long before “hype” entered the lexicon.
Strategically, the move reinforces the legitimacy of playful British independents in a Swiss-dominated hierarchy. It signals that wit and craftsmanship need not be mutually exclusive commodities. If the market remains receptive, future collaborations may form a kind of informal guild of “serious fun”—microbrands that understand narrative as currency.
And so we reach the Philosophical Coda: the watch as metaphor for appetite itself.
Luxury has always walked the line between necessity and excess, but the Champagne & Caviar dares to dissolve that line entirely. It makes no moral defense for its own frivolity. It celebrates what it is—a beautifully made joke, told with the sincerity of artisanship. In a time when authenticity is endlessly postured, perhaps the truest act is to admit that we wear certain watches not to measure time, but to measure our own capacity for delight.
To look down and see that black-and-gold dial glimmering under café light is to remember that pleasure, like watchmaking, is most convincing when it’s unnecessary.
About the Author
Sergio Galanti is an independent brand strategist and writer in the luxury watch industry. He is the editor of WatchDossier, a publication devoted to the cultural and philosophical undercurrents of modern horology.
No compensation or brand affiliation influenced this essay. Opinions are the author’s own.
Further Reading
Subscribe watchdossier.ch to receive more insights on luxury, craftsmanship, and collecting.