“So, what have you seen?” was the stock-in-trade small talk, working the hallowed, beige-wash halls of Watches & Wonders (W&W). However, this year, it took less than a morning for, “I’ve only seen the massive queue” to become the stock-in-trade punchline.
Unpractised, post-pandemic hiccups in people-processing aside – and with full awareness of how ‘first-world problems’ this is – there was plenty to enthuse over, whenever a stool at the nearest Laurent Perrier bar lent itself for reflection. The queuing was somehow worth it. From Alpina to Zenith, 40-odd brands were exhibiting at Palexpo. It was a watch-lover Nirvana.
While the product of 2022 was far from subdued, pumped paradoxically by pre-pandemic confidence (watchmaking gestation is measured in years, not months), the Horological Class of 2023 feels informed by the ‘new’ normal, which reflects a shift in our spending habits towards higher-end, investment-minded, longer-lasting.
People are still delirious about being on the move again, so last year’s panoply of watches with time-zone and worldtime complications persists in highlights such as the Tudor’s opaline-dial GMT and the dual-hemisphere-display Montblanc Geosphere. But elsewhere, proceedings felt – much like the queues at Palexpo’s chilly entranceway – altogether slowed down and committed to the long haul. ‘Timelessness’ is one particularly self-regarding ‘watchword’, but see also ‘consolidation’, ‘core values’, and ‘sustainability’. The un-serviceable pantomime hyper-complications of 20 years ago are still to be found in pockets but retracing one’s thousands (and thousands…) of steps throughout W&W’s towering temples of luxury craftsmanship summons an altogether calmer outlook.
The new Tudor opaline dial GMT (left) and the Montblanc Geosphere (right).
If we had always paid attention to Rolex, Patek Philippe and Chanel, it needn’t have taken a devastating, global ‘ctrl-alt-del’ to snap us into this sensibility. This titanic axis of aspirational retail is driven by brand mythology that renders DNA as token sloganeering by anyone else’s standards. We’re talking blue-blooded totemic heritage, and this means evolution on a glacial timeframe, to keep things authentic and true.
Rolex presented a series of nipped-and-tucked Sky-Dweller annual calendars (a difficult curveball that sure enough has proved itself by committing to the long game), ceramic-bezel Yacht-Masters, everyone’s ‘grail’ Daytona in steel… and a silicon-pad-printed Oyster Perpetual Celebration Bubble model with balloons floating out of the dial like Emily Blunt and Ben Whishaw at the end of Mary Poppins Returns. A spectacle that had queues snaking around the Rolex pavilion when W&W opened to the public for the weekend.
Rolex Oyster Perpetual Celebration Bubble, available in three sizes: 31, 36 and 41mm.
But Rolex doesn’t need to explain itself, nor does Chanel when it decides to venture into Carroll-esque fantasy; viz 2023’s fabulous pin-cushion domed sapphire haute joaillerie pieces, wittily alluding to the wrists of the couturiers still toiling in Mademoiselle Gabrielle’s ateliers. However, we and Chanel all know that the evergreen bankability lies in the late, great Jacques Helleu’s 1999 masterstroke in ceramic, the J12, whose new eight-bit pixelated case proves that fashion can definitely do watchmaking – to the point of riffing on a singular form, excruciatingly wrought from zirconium oxide, sintered at 1,200°, occasionally rejected, finished and polished, until gleaming like the monochromatic patent quilts of a 2.55 purse.
Watchmaking in the new digital age as interpreted by Chanel: the J12 Cybernetic watch.
On a yet more painstaking level – no doubt buoyed by the ribbon-cutting on its PP6 production complex – there’s Patek Philippe and its infinitesimal increments in future-proof horological heritage. But then again, if you look at how Geneva’s favourite son is responding to the Gen-Z audience with something like the ref. 6007G in three jazzy colour ways, you’ll realise that Patek is as excited for the next wave of #watchnerds as Rolex is.
The three colour forms of the Patek Philippe Calatrava ref. 6007G in yellow, red, and blue.
Vacheron Constantin went back to what it does best with its new Patrimony Retrograde Day-Date in a dial of such sumptuous salmon that it should probably come garnished with a sprig of dill.
Which brings us to W&W’s recurring theme, which made every vitrine ‘pop!’ and wrote exuberance through the whole nine – rather nine hundred – yards like a stick of Brighton Rock: colour, not so plain, but oh! so simple: salmon, yes (even at Chopard’s stand, in Alpine Eagle XP guise) and blues by the skyful, as ever.
Chopard’s Alpine Eagle with salmon dial.
Swiss maestro Laurent Ferrier and its Classic MicroRotor), to emerald (Bell & Ross golden BR05), to… Kermit. I am not kiddin’. Oris and its best-in-show ProPilot X demonstrated Holstein’s full emergence from rather staid origins turning out democratic tool watches to a line in exciting and unpredictable, with a 39mm Kermit Edition©. All the while driven by five-day chronometer mechanics fully proprietary to the brand, steadily becoming well-and-truly road-proven. And if the first of every month is demarcated by the date window as a ‘Kermit day’, then who are we not to chuckle and demand to see the waiting list.
How green is my watch dial? From left to right, Oris ProPilot X Kermit, Bell&Ross Golden BR05, and Laurent Ferrier Classic Micro Rotor.
But if it ain’t easy being green, it’s even more difficult to ingratiate yourself with a friendly local authorised dealer for the above-mentioned Rolex Perpetual Celebration. Therefore, why not go unabashedly hot-pink, as professed by TAG Heuer’s rainbow of new Carrera Dates? Or, alternatively, choose from Hermès’ buoyant, sporty-luxe H08 range in four different colours as a heartening sign that the Swiss are peering beyond the crests of the Jura mountains and responding to the increasing fashionability of fine watches – a lesson you would think had been long-learned when the Swatch watch single-wristedly dug the firmament out of its hole back in the 1980s.
All the colours of the rainbow: the new Hermès H08 range and the new vibrant pink dial TAG Heuer Carrera.
But don’t get us wrong: the tweezer-wielding boffins are still proving to the world that hand-assembled, tortuously complication mechanical innovation still has room for evolution. As Hublot has proved, it needn’t be astronomically ‘POA’ either, with £137,000 affording you a bi-axial tourbillon of all things. Showcased in a miniature bell jar of its own, the MP-13’s balance carouses hypnotically within two spinning circles, like an Apollo astronaut in training for the disorienting effects of zero-gravity.
Lange & Söhne’s Odysseus Chronograph (left) and Hublot MP-13 Tourbillon Bi-Axis Retrograde (right).
Ever the quiet man of Saxon exactitude, A. Lange & Söhne almost nonchalantly unveiled its first-ever automatic chronograph, the Odysseus, making things forehead-slapping elegant in the process by moving both sweep-seconds and minutes-counting hands to the centre, allowing the latter to measure up to an hour rather than the usual 30-minute subdial, which should come with a magnifying glass.
The two sides of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso Tribute Duoface Tourbillon.
Admittedly, you do have to squint to truly appreciate our final star of the show, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso Tribute Duoface Tourbillon. A complication of the highest order, notable here for something it lacks: not one but two tourbillon bridges. From one side, the carriage flies proud off the baseplate, but being a Reverso, you want to admire things from both sides. And sure enough, JLC’s engineers have simply extended the balance spring into a sinuous ’S’, clamped to the balance wheel’s spoke imperceptibly.
Words: Alex Doak
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