If you’ve been following the G-Shock space for any amount of time, you know collabs are nothing new. But every once in a while, one lands that genuinely makes you stop mid-scroll. The G-SHOCK x Joshua Vides drop is one of those. Two limited edition models — the DW5600JV-7 and the DW6900JV-1 — both priced at $180, and both doing something visually that I haven’t seen pulled off this cleanly on a watch before.
Who Is Joshua Vides?
Fair question if you’re coming from the watch side rather than the art and streetwear world. Joshua Vides is an LA-based contemporary artist who launched his “Reality to Idea” concept in January 2018. The idea is exactly what it sounds like — taking three-dimensional real-world objects and rendering them as though they’ve been hand-drawn in bold black-and-white, like a two-dimensional sketch that forgot to stay flat. He’s applied this to cars, sneakers, rooms, sculptures. His work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and his brand collaborations include Fendi, Nike, and BMW. He’s not a watch person who stumbled into art. He’s an artist who’s built a very specific visual language across a decade, and this G-Shock drop is the first time that language has landed on a wristwatch.
Per Vides himself: “Almost two years in the works” — so this isn’t a quick licensing deal. Both sides clearly cared about getting the execution right.
The Two Watches
DW5600JV-7 — The 5600 silhouette needs no introduction. It’s the square case that started everything, directly descended in spirit from the original 1983 G-Shock. Here it arrives in a crisp gloss white with bold black marker-like strokes across the band, case, and dial. The effect is striking — it genuinely looks like someone drew on the watch by hand with a thick marker. Bold, loud, and deliberately so.
DW6900JV-1 — The 6900 is the round one, the “Three Eyes” model named for its distinctive triple-dial face. This one flips the colour scheme entirely: matte black finish with stark white contour lines tracing the watch’s edges and surfaces. Where the DW5600JV-7 is loud, this one is more considered — the white linework against matte black reads less like a drawing and more like architectural highlighting. If I had to pick one, it’s this.
What ties them together beyond colour is the execution. Casio used multi-angle printing techniques so the hand-drawn illusion holds from different viewing angles, not just straight-on. Both dials carry handwritten function labels in Vides’ distinct lettering — gone is the standard G-Shock typography. And activating the LED backlight reveals a hidden graphic of Vides’ signature traffic cone motif, which is a genuinely nice Easter egg for anyone who knows his work. The caseback on each carries a custom engraving with his signature. They arrive in co-branded packaging.
The Specs Underneath
Because this is still G-Shock, none of the art compromises the function. Both models carry the full standard spec: shock-resistant construction, 200-metre water resistance, 1/100-second stopwatch, countdown timer, and multi-function alarm. The wearable art framing is real, but so is the toughness underneath it. That’s the whole point of using the 5600 and 6900 as the canvas — these aren’t decorative objects dressed up as watches. They’re G-Shocks first.
How to Get One
The collection debuted at the G-SHOCK x Joshua Vides Pop-Up in Los Angeles on March 14–15 at 2272 Venice Boulevard. Online access via joshuavides.com opened March 16. The nationwide launch via gshock.com, the G-SHOCK Soho Store, and select retailers follows on March 23, 2026. Both models are priced at $180 — which, for a limited-edition collaboration of this profile, is genuinely reasonable.
Worth It?
I’m not usually one to get excited about collab drops. Too many of them are surface-level branding exercises — slap a name on an existing product and call it art. This one is different. The “Reality to Idea” concept isn’t just applied to the watch, it transforms the watch. The multi-angle printing, the hidden backlight graphic, the handwritten labels — these are design decisions that required real consideration of the object. For collectors sitting at the intersection of streetwear culture and watches, or anyone who’s watched Vides’ work develop over the years, this is a legitimate pickup. At $180, the barrier is low. The question is just which colorway — and I’d give the edge to the black DW6900JV-1, but you can’t really go wrong either way. — Ethan
One dial at a time, one read at a time — watchesfanboy
