Doo Sik Lew can be thought of as the youngest of the old guard in watch-collecting terms. Before this current batch of new collectors-cum-speculators entered the market, Lew was already establishing himself as a byword for taste and curation, seemingly only buying well and commissioning even better. He took notice of the small independents that were starting to gain momentum long before they were thought of as smart investments.

For many years he was only known in the watch community as @doobooloo – a colourful yet mysterious moniker under which he led the way with some of the best amateur watch photography in the early days of Instagram. However, describing anything Lew does as ‘amateur’ is slightly misleading: you won’t find every collector on Instagram talking about focal stacks.

He majored in engineering at college with the dream of becoming an architect (having always been fascinated by design), but ended up in finance, where he finds himself today. We caught up with Lew for a detailed discussion about his journey in watchmaking, from picking up his first Panerai on a whim, to amassing the ‘Impossible Collection of Journe’.

ACM: Let’s start in that clichéed way, and tell me about your first watch.

DSL: I remember I was walking around town in Manhattan with my wife, and we happened to be standing on Madison Avenue right by a Panerai boutique. I’ve always been fascinated by their design. This was at the time when I really didn’t know much about anything, only because I was too afraid to start delving into the intellectual assets of things, because then I felt like I’d be sucked into it. That day I walked out with a watch on my wrist; it was a 42mm titanium Radiomir. It was really surreal, I couldn’t sleep for like a week after that event. I felt so guilty for having spent $6,000 or $7,000 on a watch and I felt like I committed a real sin, you know? But that was the beginning of the end for me.

So you had this engineering background from your studies, yet you say it was the design of the Panerai that first drew you in. Would you describe yourself at the time as being a movement guy or a dial guy, and do you think that has changed over time?

You know, that’s a very fundamental question that tugs at the core of this hobby for me. Continually, I have to grasp why I am doing this. And I feel like I’ve been pulled both ways; there was a period where I cared about nothing but the movement, so I became a movement snob, in other words. Not that these watches were not beautiful watches, but there was a period where I was very much a snob about finishing, mechanics, and chronometry. For a large part of it, I brushed aside the aesthetics of a watch for the mechanical aspects. I went through that phase for a few years, and then I swung back to focusing on design, and looking at watches as a sculptural element, focusing on it as art on the wrist.

I think I’m at a point now where, having been a geek on both sides, I have come to realise that this life is not so one dimensional after all. My quest now is to understand what makes a watch truly desirable. A watch can have many desirable aspects to it: the movement, an amazing dial, a finely crafted case, high complications – it coul