Craft in the Fast Lane

By Joshua Matvichuk
Photos by Cedar Barnes

As the sun set on our stint at Dubai Watch Week, we met up with Damon Jones, the famed Porsche restorer and founder of LA-based Restomod powerhouse EBD. After meeting at our get-together with Toledano and Chan earlier in the week and bonding over some great coffee and design at Dubai cafe staple Koncrete, we were quickly invited to join Damon at the de facto pinnacle of Middle Eastern horsepower: Icons of Porsche. The annual celebration that attracts Porsche collectors from the world over. Against a backdrop of polished metal, warm engines, and exotica from the world over, our conversation drifted naturally toward a shared preoccupation: what real craft means in a world engineered for scale.

EBD sits at an interesting crossroads of that conversation. Based in Los Angeles but operating with a global clientele, the studio has built its reputation not on headline figures or extreme modification, but on sensitivity an almost editorial eye for proportion, tactility, and intent. Damon described EBD’s process as one of subtraction as much as addition: removing visual noise, refining tolerances, and obsessing over how a car feels at speed and at rest. Panels are finished to invite touch, interiors calibrated for long journeys rather than concours theatrics. Every decision is made with an understanding that a Porsche already carries history; EBD’s role is to converse with it, not overwrite it.

Much like EBD’s approach to Porsche, Dennison’s design language resists trend-driven embellishment in favour of proportion, material honesty, and restraint. Our photography for the brand mirrors this ethos. It’s less about spectacle than fidelity images that prioritise surface, light, and time over polish. We talked lenses and lighting, but also about knowing when to stop: the confidence to let steel remain steel, to allow a dial to breathe, to trust patina as narrative rather than flaw.

Dennison’s work, like EBD’s, is rooted in iteration rather than reinvention. Forms are refined, not reinvented; details are sharpened quietly until they reveal themselves only to those willing to look closely. Damon’s choice of the ALD Black Marble in steel with diamond bezel encapsulates this perfectly an object that doesn’t shout, but rewards attention. Take what’s already great, iterate carefully, and illuminate just enough.

Icons of Porsche provided the ideal theatre for this exchange. Dubai’s improbable skyline shimmered in the distance, yet the focus remained stubbornly analog, hands tracing body lines, eyes catching the way paint responds to dusk. It’s here, amid the crowd and the clatter, that the idea of craft feels most urgent. Not as an antidote to modernity, but as its conscience. We left the conversation reminded that true craft, whether automotive, horological, or photographic, doesn’t chase attention. It endures. And in the fast lane, that may be the rarest quality of all.