Description
SKAGEN vintage quartz watch
DANISH DESIGN
Skagen takes its name from Denmark’s northernmost fishing village, perched at the very tip of the Jutland peninsula — the place where the North Sea and the Baltic meet. The brand’s double-chevron logo evokes that meeting point: two seas, two currents, converging at one narrow spit of sand.
The company behind the name was founded in 1989 by Henrik and Charlotte Jorst, a Danish couple who had moved to New York three years earlier. What started as a side project — clean, Danish-designed watches debuted at a New York gift fair in 1991 — grew quickly into Skagen Denmark, a brand built on a simple promise: genuine Scandinavian minimalism, ultra-slim profiles, and honest materials at a price ordinary people could afford.
Through the 1990s and 2000s, Skagen became one of the most recognizable faces of Danish design on the wrist — proof that “designed in Denmark” could mean restraint, lightness, and clarity rather than luxury pricing.
About the Klassik Line
🕰️ Alongside its featherweight titanium pieces, Skagen built its reputation on a second, equally Danish idea: the ultra-slim steel dress watch that costs a fraction of what its looks suggest.
The Klassik steel line — the “355” family and its siblings — took the same design language as the titanium models (a monochrome dial, applied slim indexes, a discreet date window) and rendered it in polished and brushed stainless steel on a slim leather strap. Where the titanium models chased absolute lightness, the steel Klassik chased everyday elegance: a clean round case, a mineral crystal domed just enough to catch the light, and a profile thin enough to slip under a shirt cuff.
Inside sits the same pragmatic choice the founders made across the range — a dependable Japanese quartz caliber, here from Miyota, that keeps excellent time and asks for nothing but the occasional battery. It is Danish design at its most literal: restraint, clarity, and honest materials, offered at a price ordinary people could actually pay.
Pieces from the pre-Fossil era carry “Skagen Designs, Ltd” on the case-back, the marking used while the founding couple still owned the company.
About This Watch
This is a Skagen Klassik, reference 355SSLW — one of the slim, steel-cased dress watches that defined the brand’s classic look in its pre-Fossil years. The case-back is engraved “Skagen Designs, Ltd,” placing it in the era when the founding couple still ran the company, before the 2012 sale to Fossil.
Everything about it is quietly deliberate. The round stainless-steel case is strikingly thin, with a slim polished bezel framing a clean white-silver dial. The hours are marked only by small applied polished dots; the Skagen double-chevron logo and “DENMARK” sit beneath twelve, and a small date window is tucked in at six, just above the word “STEEL.” Slim dark hands complete the minimalist picture — nothing on the dial that doesn’t need to be there.
Behind the snap case-back sits a Japanese Miyota GL10 quartz caliber, stamped MIYOTA CO. · GL10 · JAPAN · NO JEWELS and running on a single LR626 (SR626SW) cell — the same kind of dependable, low-maintenance movement Skagen used across its classic range. The watch comes on its slim black leather strap, exactly as this model was meant to be worn.
Technical Specifications
- Brand: Skagen (Denmark)
- Line: Klassik (slim steel dress line)
- Reference Number: 355SSLW
- Era: Pre-Fossil “Skagen Designs, Ltd” era (2000s)
- Movement: Miyota GL10 Japanese quartz, no jewels, three hands with date, LR626 (SR626SW) battery
- Case Material: Stainless steel
- Case Diameter: Approx. 26 mm excl. crown
- Dial: White/silver with applied polished dot indexes; date at 6
- Crystal: Super-hardened mineral crystal
- Case-back: Stainless steel, snap-on; engraved “Skagen Designs, Ltd · 355SSLW”
- Water Resistance: 30 m (3 ATM), splash resistant
- Bracelet/Strap: Original black leather strap with Skagen-signed steel buckle; the leather is worn and faded, with the brown lining showing through along both edges
Condition Report
Excellent vintage condition. The white-silver dial is clean and bright with no staining or blemishes, and all applied dot markers are intact. The stainless-steel case shows only light surface marks from normal wear, and the mineral crystal is clear with no significant scratches. The watch comes on a black leather strap that shows honest, wearable patina, with an intact steel buckle. A discreet, elegant everyday piece, ready to wear.
This watch has recently been serviced by a professional watchmaker and keeps good time.
Comes complete with a slim black leather strap.
This watch ships from 🇺🇦 Ukraine with tracking number
Why Collectors Want This Watch Today
Pre-Fossil Skagen — the watches made while founders Henrik and Charlotte Jorst still ran “Skagen Designs, Ltd” — is the period most associated with the brand’s original Danish design. This slim steel Klassik is that idea at its plainest: no ornament, no numerals, a clean white dial and a case thin enough to disappear under a cuff. Skagen made these in volume and they were never expensive watches; it is an easy everyday dress watch, not a collector’s rarity.
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About the watch factory
Skagen Designs, Ltd. was founded in 1989 by Henrik and Charlotte Jorst, Danish expatriates living in New York, and grew through the 1990s into one of the world’s best-known Danish design brands. The watches were designed around the principles of Danish functionalism — slim profiles, clean typography, muted colors, and an absolute refusal of ornament for ornament’s sake.
Rather than building factories, Skagen did what most design-led watch brands of its era did: it paired Danish design direction with established manufacturing partners in Asia and dependable Japanese quartz movements, keeping the watches accessible without compromising on materials — titanium, steel mesh, and mineral crystals were standard even at modest prices.
In 2012 the founders sold Skagen Designs to the Fossil Group for approximately US$237 million. The brand continues today under Fossil ownership, but collectors of Danish design tend to seek out the earlier, pre-2012 “Skagen Designs, Ltd” pieces — the watches made while the founding couple still ran the company — as the definitive expression of the brand.
