Geneva Watch Days has a habit of surfacing quiet threads running beneath the noise of a busy week. Several maisons unveiled watches built from their past, a complication dropped from the catalogue, a brand gone quiet for years, an object that had never been a wristwatch to begin with. Each one, a genuine act of resurrection.
DE BETHUNE DEB25 DIGITALE
DeBethune’s DB25 Digitale is a brand complication with a specific, dateable absence. The jump hour first appeared on the 2006 DBD, then returned in 2014 on the DB28 Digitale, paired for the first time with the brand’s spherical moonphase. It was not made again for 12 years. The new DB25 Digitale drops hands and hour markers entirely: a jumping-hour window at 12, a rotating minute ring at six, and De Bethune’s signature spherical moon, accurate to within one lunar day every 1,112 years, in palladium and flame-blued steel at the centre. The display is framed by a starred, deep-blue “random” guilloché dial. It also runs on the proprietary DB2144V3 calibre.
De Bethune DB25 Digitale combines jumping hours, rotating minutes and De Bethune’s spherical moonphase, while its movement
carries the same deep-blue ‘random’ guilloché finish.
CORUM ADMIRAL 39
Corum returned to Swiss ownership only last year, through a management buyout led by sales director Haso Mehmedovic. Mehmedovic has led a major creative and strategic turnaround for the brand. The launch of their revamped, upscale Admiral collection – featuring proprietary movements developed in partnership with Concepto – have firmly put Corum back in the spotlight for collectors.
The Admiral line, with its 12 sided case and flag-topped hour markers first appeared in 1960 and has never fully left the catalogue. What has been out of circulation for decades, is the return to the design that made the Admiral’s Cup the darling of the 1980s jet-set. The new itiretions for Geneva Watch Days translates that gold-and-glamour moment into three distinctive executions: one in blue ceramic with titanium elements, the second in blue ceramice with 5N gold inserts and a third that pairs a dark anthracite ceramic case with an openworked dial revealing the automatic CO232 movement inside. evidence that Corum returned to Swiss ownership only last year, through a management buyout led by sales director Haso Mehmedovic, that it is again riding the crest of the wave.
L-R: New Corum Admiral 39 in blue ceramic and titanium; blue ceramic with 5N rose-gold inserts and in anthracite with skeletonised dial.
DANIEL ROTH EXTRA PLAT ROSE GOLD GILT
The brand that built its name in the 1990s around a distinctive double-ellipse case went quiet for years before the current revival which kicked off in 2023 spearheaded by Jean Arnault and incubated at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton under the guidance of master watchmakers Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini
The new Extra Plat Rose Gold Gilt uses the proprietary case but with a dial built through guilloché engraving, pad transfer and gilt numerals. A galvanic gold-plating technique last used widely by the likes of Patek Philippe and Rolex in the middle of the 20th century, phased out industry-wide because it was too labour-intensive to survive mass production. Reviving both the case and a discontinued dial technique in the same watch is about as complete a resurrection as you can get. Powered by the in-house manual-wind DR002 calibre.
The dial of the new Daniel Roth Extra Plat Rose Gold Gilt (right) revives a labour-intensive galvanic gilding technique largely abandoned
by the industry in the mid-20th century; the completed 2026 watch (left).
GERALD GENTA GENEVA
Gerald Genta took a different route into dormancy and back out again, naming its new collection simply “Geneva,” after the city where the brand began in 1969, having produced nothing under its own name for a considerable stretch before the relaunch a couple of years back. The watch is a 40mm cushion-cased minute repeater in yellow gold, chosen partly for its acoustic properties, with a dial cut from golden obsidian, a naturally formed volcanic glass whose warm shimmer comes from mineral inclusions occurring only in certain volcanic regions, and hence, making each dial genuinely unique. Gerald Genta himself had a well-documented penchant for hardstone dials, which makes the choice feel like continuity with a period the brand had not touched in years.
The new Gérald Genta Geneva (left) continues the founder’s historic taste for hardstone dials with golden obsidian, while its
minute-repeater gongs are fitted to the movement (right).
L. LEROY VOX TEMPORIS
L. Leroy’s Vox Temporis is the most genuine horological comeback in this feature, because the timepiece being revived was never even a wristwatch in the first place. It takes its cue from a vintage 1810 Leroy tact watch, now held in the Patek Philippe Museum, designed so its owner could know the time by touch alone, without taking it from the pocket or opening the case. The new version keeps the same quiet discretion, a single arrow-shaped hand and a rotating dial, adding in a minute repeater that only reveals the hours and minutes when a slide on the left of the case is operated. Only 15 pieces will be made, in red gold, platinum, or titanium, each finished with a radial guilloché pattern that catches the light beautifully.
The L. Leroy Vox Temporis in titanium, red gold and platinum alongside the 1810 tact watch that inspired it, now in the Patek Philippe Museum.
The difference between reinvention and resurrection is absence. These watches are not simply new interpretations of familiar house icons. Each brings back something that had slipped out of view: a complication, a technique, a design language or, in some cases, an entire maison. This gap gives each return a clear before and after.
Author: Dr Andrew Hildreth
You can read the best of Geneva Watch Days 2026 according to I-M Inquisitive Minds in our interview with Vanguart’s Axel Leuenberger on AI; our selection of the Best Affordable Luxury Watches at the fair, our take on Reinventing the House Icon and outstanding Independent Mechanical Engineering timepieces.
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