Why Praesidus Made a Dress Watch

September 2, 1945. The guns had fallen silent. In cities and small towns alike, strangers embraced in the streets, flags waved from every window, and the air was thick with relief. For those stepping off troopships and trains, uniforms would soon be traded for pressed suits, and the weight of war replaced by the quiet dignity of peace.

At Praesidus, our craft has always been rooted in honoring the moments that shaped history. From the A-11 Tom Rice, created with a D-Day veteran, to the Rec Spec of the Vietnam era, we’ve revived the watches worn in service and sacrifice. But Victory Day demanded something different. It was not a day of orders and missions - it was a day of exhalation, of looking forward.

We asked ourselves: if the A-11 was the watch of the battlefield, what was the watch of peace? The answer lay not in another Mil-Spec tool, but in its opposite - a dress watch. 

A dress watch belongs to a different world than a Mil-Spec tool. It’s built for formal occasions, where refinement matters more than ruggedness, and subtle design takes precedence over battlefield utility - a shift in priorities only possible in peaceful times.

In 1945, that shift in priorities was possible again.

As the war ended and soldiers returned home, the A-11s they had worn in service were set aside. Civilian life resumed, and with it came the quiet symbols of stability and prosperity - among them, the dress watch.

For many families, the watches worn in service didn’t just mark the hours of war - they became heirlooms. Carried home, kept safe, and eventually passed from one generation to the next, they told stories long after their owners were gone. The Victory Day Collection is designed in that same spirit: a piece built to outlast its first wearer, carrying with it the history of both the war and the peace that followed.

The Victory Day Collection follows that same transition. It retains the precision and reliability we’ve built into every Praesidus watch, but in a form that reflects the peacetime values of 1945. For collectors, it offers a direct link to the moment the world moved from war to peace, told through the watch that came to define the era.