Experience
My Son’s Reverso
Bought in 2017, engraved with his own initials in 2023 — a year before his son was born. He has sometimes wished he had waited. Then he thought again.
Reverso, black dial · 2017
I bought my black-dial Reverso in 2017 from an authorized dealer outside London. It wasn’t particularly easy to find at the time because relatively few had been made, so when I managed to get one, I was simply happy to have the watch. There was no larger story attached to it yet. Until 2023, several years after buying it, when I took the Reverso to the Jaeger-LeCoultre boutique in London and decided to personalize the reverse with my initials.
At the time, it seemed like the natural engraving to choose. Then my son was born in 2024, and honestly, I have occasionally wished that I had waited another year. Had I known, perhaps I would have put his name on the back instead, just as I had done with the Reverso I ordered after my daughter’s birth. The two watches would then have made a perfect pair, one carrying each child’s name.
But the more I think about it, the less I mind. This Reverso will eventually belong to my son anyway, and when I pass it on to him, the initials on the back won’t simply be somebody’s initials, they will be his father’s. One day, I hope he will look at those initials and cherish them for precisely that reason.
About Farhan Hussain
Farhan Hussain collects from London, where two Reversos in his collection have become tied to his two children — one ordered a week after his daughter was born and personalised with her name, the other bought years earlier and engraved before his son arrived.