Whether or not you’re a severe collector or merely an aspiring one, it’s exhausting to not love a watch pageant—even when it’s comparatively small. This 12 months’s version of Geneva Watch Days, which first befell final August within the wake of Baselworld’s demise, didn’t disappoint. A bunch of 27 manufacturers debuted new wares for the event, which was held this week within the titular Swiss metropolis. And although everything of the world’s horological press corps didn’t get to see the entire new watches within the steel, because of ongoing pandemic-related journey constraints, there was nonetheless lots to love from afar. Under, a take a look at a few of the most inspiring new timepieces on the present.
Bulgari
Bulgari Gérald Genta Micket Mouse, Octo Roma Papillon Tourbillon and Octo Roma World Timer
Bulgari
Bulgari kicked off Geneva Watch Days with a slew of recent timepieces. The Italian maison went huge for the micro occasion with 9 new releases throughout 4 assortment ranges together with all the pieces from excessive problems and excessive jewellery items to sports activities watches and a shock look from one in every of Disney’s most recognizable characters.
The sturdy lineup features a new 41 mm Octo Roma Central Tourbillon Papillon ($129,000) which makes use of a sometimes female inspiration for one in every of its extra sophisticated items with a extra conceptual tackle the perennial motif that reimagines the best way we learn time.
The model didn’t forsake a give attention to its less-famous, however no much less distinctive, Octo Roma assortment. The gathering’s new WorldTimer ($8,350), launched at the moment on the Geneva Watch Days present, tells time around the globe the Bulgari approach. It comprises a brand new, built-in motion, the 261-component automated caliber BVL257.
As for the Disney partnership? Bulgari is bringing Mickey Mouse to one in every of its most iconic codecs—the chunky, spherical Gérald Genta Area case. The elite model has been making Mickey Mouse watches since lengthy earlier than Bulgari acquired it in 2000. They’ve grow to be coveted collectors’ objects, together with Genta’s excessive problems and iconic case designs. You possibly can study extra about all of these watches and the remainder of Bulgari’s new providing on the hyperlink beneath.
Ferdinand Berthoud
Ferdinand Berthoud FB 1.6-3
Ferdinand Berthoud
Identified for producing extraordinarily sophisticated watches in ultra-small portions, even Ferdinand Berthoud is getting in on the metal sports activities watch craze, albeit with a one-of-a-kind mannequin. This isn’t solely the primary all-black mannequin from the area of interest watchmaking home, however additionally it is its first metal mannequin. The alloy is sand-blasted and coated in a black DLC coating. Contrasts to its noir background embody components like a sandblasted hour and minute counter handled with a lighter matte materials with fingers product of gold, in addition to hour markers and a central seconds counter in pink, and an influence reserve aperture in gold with a pink arrow indicator.
On the flip aspect, the half bridges (made in sapphire crystal and due to this fact guaranteeing a fair heftier price ticket) are angled, engraved and coloured pink—enclosing the tourbillon carriage and central seconds hand. Additionally seen by means of the caseback, is the fusee-and-chain transmission, an ultra-complex and really hard-to-make resolution for offering a continuing power escapement that was widespread throughout this model’s namesake founder’s heyday. Berthoud himself might have by no means imagined one may exist in a blacked-out DLC coated metal timepiece bearing his title some two centuries later.
As you’ll be able to think about, this piece will belong to a rarefied collector. It can solely be obtainable on the Artwork in Time gallery in Monaco and a part of the proceeds will go to profit Prince Albert’s Basis within the French principality.
Ulysse Nardin
Ulysse Nardin Marine Torpilleur Watches
Ulysse Nardin
Ulysse Nardin is a founding accomplice of Geneva Watch Days and, whereas it solely targeted on one assortment, introduced 5 new fashions for its Marine Torpilleur assortment. All come outfitted with Silicium escapements (the corporate was among the many first to make use of the fabric in 2001 on its Freak mannequin) and are marked with the signature “Chronometry since 1846” to herald Ulysse Nardin’s a hundred and seventy fifth anniversary.
Parmigiani
Parmigiani Tonda PF Annual Calendar
Parmigiani
Parmigiani is getting a little bit of a makeover below the path of the model’s newly appointed CEO, Guido Terreni, who took over the helm in January of this 12 months. The primary fruits of his labor have been revealed at Geneva Watch Days. The brand new look is cleaner and extra directional with a give attention to the Tonda assortment, which has a brand new chronograph, annual calendar and split-seconds mannequin. The brand new lineup is dubbed the “Tonda PF” in reference to the brand new branding, which removes the Parmigiani Fleurier title in favor of a easy PF brand at 12 o’clock. And whereas that’s no small change, Parmigiani’s fan base will seemingly approve—many collectors through the years have grumbled or joked in regards to the model title’s similarity, in each pronunciation and spelling, to Italy’s most pervasive cheese, parmesan.
The brand new 42 mm Tonda PF Annual Calendar exemplifies these adjustments: It comes with retrograde date, day, month indications, in addition to a 122-year moonphase aperture that shows the cycle in each hemispheres. However its appears to be like are cleaner and extra minimal, a positive signal that change is afoot. You possibly can see the remainder of the brand new watches on the hyperlink beneath.
Girard-Perregaux
Girard-Perregaux’s new Tourbillion with Three Flying Bridges was created to rejoice the corporate’s 230th anniversary, and is the primary on this line to forged all three bridges in 18 karat pink gold. Together with supporting the geartrain, barrel and tourbillion the bridges additionally act because the mainplate, they usually function a black PVD coating that turns their luster into one thing of a wearer’s secret. Every flying bridge is painstakingly reduce by hand utilizing a small piece of boxwood, requiring expert artisans a full day to realize its end. Following the discharge of the Perregaux Free Bridge mannequin in 2020, the brand new watch would be the ultimate reference to hitch the producer’s Bridges collection.
Moser
H. Moser & Cie Streamliner Perpetual Calendar
H. Moser & Cie
An off-the-cuff look at H. Moser & Cie’s new Streamliner Perpetual Calendar may depart you with the impression of an exquisitely completed watch with a easy date complication. Look slightly nearer, and the fourth central hand on its elegant fumé dial invitations the query, What’s that for?
The watch, a seamless marriage of Moser’s Perpetual 1 and its widespread Streamliner collection, makes use of that fourth hand to point the months: January when it’s pointing at 1 o’clock, and so forth. The Flash Calendar instantaneous date-change mechanism that figures into the HMC 341 caliber means the date routinely adjustments at midnight. The hand-wound motion is powerful sufficient to realize 168 hours of energy reserve, and there’s a useful indicator at 10 o’clock.
The 42.3 mm cushion case, like its sinuous built-in bracelet, has alternating brushed and polished finishes. It’ll set you again $54,900—a small value to pay for one of the stunning methods to know the date.
Greubel Forsey
Greubel Forsey GMT Earth
Alex Teuscher/Greubel Forsey
They are saying the third time’s the appeal, and Greubel Forsey’s GMT Earth may simply show it. The mannequin, which debuted in 2011 and acquired a second model in 2018, is now in its third and ultimate iteration—and the watchmaker is sending it out with a bang. This 12 months’s model, created in a really restricted version of 11 items, contains a light-weight titanium case and a primarily black and metallic end that enhances the watch’s urbane aesthetic.
Mannequin three preserves the sapphire crystal alcove that enables the wearer to see its spinning globe from all angles, together with on the equator, that Greubel Forsey integrated into the 2018 version. It additionally preserves the unique’s clear and readable show: There’s an off-center hours and minutes show with a small sub-seconds dial, an influence reserve indicator, and a GMT indicator with a pink hand that helps it stand out in opposition to the black gold, lacquer-filled disk.
The spinning globe, which takes up essentially the most actual property on the dial, completes one revolution each 24 hours. You possibly can watch it spin by means of the sapphire crystal or by means of the caseback, the place the world time indicator exhibits you the UTC, or Coordinated Common Time, of 24 main cities representing each time zone. It’s the last word journey watch—but when you end up grounded, it’s a visit the world over you’ll be able to put on in your wrist.
Urwerk
Urwerk UR-100 Electrum
Diode SA – Denis Hayoun
Revisiting the three-satellite time show of the UR-100 model, launched in 2019, Urwerk’s futuristic watchmakers Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner got here full circle with a brand new sort of alloy—impressed by the fabric utilized in Greek cash from antiquity—to create the newest Electrum model. Though it seems gold within the picture, Frei and Baumgartner say it really offers off a greenish-gold hue IRL. The duo approached two completely different firms to attempt to recreate this explicit coloring utilized in historic foreign money with no luck. The actual technique is well being hazardous in at the moment’s occasions. As an alternative, they sourced from an organization that provided a kind of gold with related impact, utilizing a mix of gold and palladium, to Rolex within the ’60s and ’70s and requested them to breed it for simply 25 items of the Electrum.
The concentric rings on the steel, in the meantime, took inspiration from each trendy and historic magnificence. Their design board included all the pieces from a runway costume from avant-garde Dutch designer, Iris van Herpen, to the tiered seating of an historic Greek theater.
For his or her subsequent mission, the watchmakers teased they’ve one thing else up their sleeve—a wild new motion impressed by the automotive trade might be revealed within the coming months.
Breitling
Breitling Prime Time Basic Automobiles Watch Assortment
franz j. venzin
Breitling took the approach to life route with a rollout of three new timepieces impressed by 60s-era automobiles just like the Chevrolet Corvette, Ford Mustang and Shelby Cobra. All three chronographs within the Prime Time Basic Automobiles Capsule Assortment ($5,500) take their hue cues from every sports activities automobile. The Prime Time Chevrolet Corvette mannequin (pictured middle) has a pink dial and black subcounters based mostly on the physique of the Corvette C2 or “Sting Ray” from the mid-60s. (Coincidentally, founder Louis Chevrolet was a race automobile driver born in Switzerland’s watchmaking mecca of La Chaux-de-Fonds.) The inexperienced dial with black subdials, our private favourite, relies on the primary Ford Mustang from 1964 and the blue-and-white iteration matches the racing stripes of the Shelby Cobra, created by race automobile driver and producer, Carroll Shelby, within the Sixties for competitions.
Chevrolet Corvette, Shelby Cobra and Ford Mustang
Breitling
The Prime Time watches might be a should for collectors with any of those automobiles of their classic fleet. Each the Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Mustang fashions are available 42 mm with the Breitling Caliber 25 as their engine—a self-winding 1/eighth of a second chronograph motion with 42 hours of energy reserve. The logos of the automobiles that motivated their manufacturing are situated at 12 o’clock. The Prime Time Shelby Cobra is barely smaller at 40 mm and homes the caliber 41, a 1/4th of a second self-winding chronograph motion with 42 hours of energy reserve. Its automobile brand is positioned at 6 o’clock. Whether or not you begin with the automobile or the watch, this launch will encourage you to accumulate each. The automobiles, nonetheless, will burn a gap in your pocket.
MB&F x L’Epée
MB&F x L’Epée Orb
MB&F
The continued collaboration between MB&F and L’Epée by no means ceases to disappoint. The partnership brings collectively Max Büsser of MB&F’s wildly artistic concepts realized within the type of desk clocks with L’Epée’s experience within the ornamental objets. For the duo’s 14th mission collectively, Büsser enlisted a 3rd collaborator, Maximillian Mærtens of Studio Mærtens, a Berlin-based interdisciplinary industrial design studio, to conceive the Orb. Impressed by a watch, the iris is the clock itself within the middle surrounded by curved lacquered white (or black in case you desire) buildings that open up in 4 sections like a flower to show its internal working components and perch on its petals in your desk as a substitute show. The petals additionally swivel so you’ll be able to play with the place. It’s nearly as if the “eye” pops out of its socket to look at you out of your desk high—a humorous reminder that point is ticking.
The clock comes with 8 days of energy reserve and is provided with a mechanism based mostly on L’Epée’s historic 1839 carriage clocks, often called “officer’s clocks.” The curved aluminum dial sports activities a domed mineral glass with a gap within the middle to set the time with a key. It has two barrels: one for the time and one for the hanging hours, that are every wound individually. It is available in palladium-plated brass and chrome steel and retails for $32,000. Accessible in white or black, they’re restricted to 50 items every. Though, essentially the most literal interpretation of theme, in white, is our favourite. The corporate says these might be delivered to retailer within the subsequent two weeks, however can be found for pre-order now. Regardless, these are a must-see IRL.
