Watch Paparazzi

Entrepreneur Alessandro Squarzi spotted wearing IWC

Alessandro Squarzi, the Bologna-based entrepreneur and Creative Director of Fortela, was recently photographed wearing a stainless steel IWC Ingénieur SL — a choice that signals serious horological literacy rather than casual brand recognition. For a man whose entire aesthetic philosophy revolves around utilitarian objects executed with uncompromising quality, the Ingénieur SL is an almost inevitable wrist companion.

The IWC Ingénieur SL, reference IW3506, represents the third generation of IWC's Ingénieur line, launched in 1976 at the height of the quartz crisis. IWC commissioned Gérald Genta — already celebrated for designing the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak in 1972 and the Patek Philippe Nautilus in 1976 — to radically reimagine the Ingénieur. Genta delivered a bold, integrated-bracelet sports watch with a characteristic porthole-style case, five-piece link bracelet, and prominent crown guards. Beneath the dial, a soft-iron inner cage provides protection against magnetic fields exceeding 80,000 A/m, a specification originally aimed at engineers working near heavy electrical equipment. The movement is the IWC calibre 8541, a robust automatic with a 42-hour power reserve.

Among collectors, the Ingénieur SL occupies a specific and increasingly contested niche: it is unmistakably a Genta design, yet it trades at a significant discount to its Royal Oak and Nautilus siblings. That gap has been narrowing. Original examples with intact dials, correct pushers, and matching bracelets have appreciated meaningfully over the past decade as the broader Genta canon attracts renewed scholarly attention. The ref. IW3506 in stainless steel with a dark dial is considered one of the cleaner executions of the design.

Squarzi's taste runs consistently toward objects with industrial heritage and design integrity — vintage Levi's, military footwear, Japanese selvedge denim. The Ingénieur SL slots naturally into that worldview: a watch conceived for professional use, shaped by one of the twentieth century's most consequential designers, and now reassessed by a new generation of collectors on its own considerable merits.

On the grey market, clean examples of the stainless steel IWC Ingénieur SL ref. IW3506 currently trade in the $3,000–$6,000 range depending on condition and bracelet completeness — still accessible by Genta standards, though that window may not remain open indefinitely.