Confessions of a newcomer, discovering the Geneva watch fair for the first time, venturing into its salons and making forays further afield. On the menu: women, transparency and slightly cold feet.

The first blow is half the battle, as they say. So I’ll lay my cards on the table: this is the first SIHH I’ve covered for Europa Star. So I’m uniquely qualified to give an impartial view of the tourbillons, the chandeliers and the diamonds, the miles of smartly dressed tables and the gallons of champagne. But let’s not get distracted...
Before giving a full account of my impressions of the actual visit, a quick summary is in order (busy readers, feel free to stop here).
At the close of Geneva Week 2015 I was left with the impression of three broad trends:

• Feminisation: whether expressed in ladies’ versions of historic watches such as the Royal Oak, or models specially designed with the fairer sex in mind, there is definitely a wind of change. Interest in complications for women is growing, and gem-setting is spreading to models hitherto considered exclusively masculine.
This evolution reflects the business reality: the promising new wave of female clients is also becoming more demanding.

• Transparency: as we announced in our French-language edition Première, 2015 is shaping up to be the year of the skeleton. Visible movements, and full or partial nudity have the wind in their sails. It’s the height of fashion to put the inner workings of your timepiece on display. Welcome to the era of transparency!

• Consolidation: this year there is no new crop of innovations, no one-upmanship in mechanical complications or the artistic crafts. What we have observed is a consolidation and development of existing collections, reflecting a somewhat more skittish market. The blue chips are all present and correct and, unlike what we have seen in recent years, there’s a distinct lack of daring.

Bearing in mind these indicators, we seem to be heading for a watchmaking world that is more feminine, more transparent, but also more conservative in 2015. So let’s get on with the tour.

At the Parmigiani Fleurier booth a ladies’ watch catches the eye: the Tonda 1950 Squelette. A superb watch, skeletonised but delicately veiled, sanded and sprinkled with a judicious dose of diamond dust – not too much, just enough to pique the desire! The frosted effect is very successful. Its men’s counterpart, with its 145 components, is a worthy companion. They are both hand decorated. This is the first time Parmigiani has produced a skeleton movement, a feat that takes its watchmakers at least a week to achieve. It also classifies as ultra-slim (2.6 mm thick). At CHF 40,000 it is undeniably good value, particularly when compared with the models on display just a few booths away...

Tonda 1950 Squelette by Parmigiani Fleurier

Parmigiani Fleurier is also unveiling three limited editions of the Bugatti timepiece to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their partnership. The brand has also built on the partnership cemented four years ago with French master glassmaker Lalique to create five new table clocks, with features such as the Earth goddess, Gaia, and snake motifs. These exclusive pieces each required 2,160 hours’ work. The price, accordingly, goes from CHF 350,000 to 1.2 million.

Bugatti Mythe by Parmigiani Fleurier

Clocks, movements and watches: a highly diverse offering in a small area. The visit left me with the impression that the Fleurier brand is consciously feminising its range. Of the 6,000 or so pieces it produces each year, 40% are ladies’ models. Their stated aim is absolute parity. Europe remains Parmigiani’s core market, absorbing half of its output. The brand has nevertheless just set up a distribution subsidiary in Japan. It has several own-brand boutiques, for example in London, Gstaad and, more recently, Miami.

Greubel Forsey is opting for a travel theme, with the GMT Black and its conspicuous globe, which could equally well be named the ‘blue planet’! The point of the watch is to be able to tell the time at any point on Earth at a glance.
Another strong theme is art, as seen in the Robert Filliou Art Piece. This watch, driven by the Fluxus movement, is a tribute to the eponymous designer, who died in 1987. The dial is decorated with Filliou’s ‘principle of equivalence’: “bien fait, mal fait, pas fait” (well made, badly made, not made). Who knows, perhaps this motto will help to rejuvenate the ‘Swiss made’ label, currently under attack from all quarters. When will we be able to focus on the more simple and universal, but equally explicit (though less Swiss) ‘well made’?

In association with Philippe Dufour, Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey have also decided to tackle the sensitive topic of the transfer of watchmaking expertise (and often, today, its loss) via the project Naissance d’une montre (Birth of a Watch). Through a mentoring scheme, watchmakers are introduced to new ideas, which they can then pass on to their own students (see sidebar). In short, it’s the snowball effect applied to watchmaking: a stand against the ravages of time, which all too often slips through one’s fingers. Moving on...

At the Van Cleef & Arpels booth they are pushing a “positive view of life, particularly in our current times” (a reaction to the strong franc, the Chinese slowdown or just a general, existential disillusionment with modern life? We didn’t feel able to ask...). Something to soothe the spirit, then, inspired by the constant renewal and enchantment of nature. On the menu are floral motifs, naturally, such as buttercups and crocuses, and poetic complications in the jewellery house’s purest tradition, personified in the Lady Arpels Coccinelles and the Oiseaux de Paradis.

Lady Arpels Oiseaux de Paradis by Van Cleef & Arpels

Inspired by nature, there is the richly decorated watch bracelet (not bracelet watch) Carpe Koï, set with more than 8,000 coloured gems (3,450 hours of work, one-of-a-kind model). A delicious irony: in French, carp are known for their inability to speak; here, its tongue tells the time.

The Parisian house has also brought back a 1930s watch, the Cadenas, so discreet that only the person wearing it can read the time. The original iteration of this avant-garde timepiece was inspired by the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson. Those readers who have seen “The King’s Speech” will know to whom I refer: a controversial figure who, although she would never bear the title of Queen, certainly earned the title ‘passionate’.

Piaget, meanwhile, continues its quest for the ultra-slim. A book recounts the history of this adventure, and that of a house that has brought out 37 calibres since 1957 from its two manufactures in La Côte-aux-Fées and Plan-les-Ouates.

A reworking of the Altiplano adds another brick to the wall (and a new world record): this time, Piaget has pulled out all the stops to shave its manual chronograph flyback movement down to 4.65 mm. Some of its 240 components are thinner than a hair, measuring just 0.06 mm. It’s a little like some Olympic disciplines, the 100 metres, for instance; year after year, the pundits wonder whether the new record will ever be beaten; in other words, if one day we will hit some kind of insurmountable ceiling on performance.

Altiplano chronograph by Piaget

The house is also following its predilection for skeletons, widely shared this year, with a new model, the Emperador Tourbillon Skeleton. For aficionados of Jackie Kennedy or Andy Warhol, it is a reinvention of the elegant and/or ‘pop art’ watches that were the height of fashion in the 1960s.

Let us leave the ultra-slim classic and move onto a completely different style, with Richard Mille. “Nothing much new to see at the SIHH,” we are warned. “They’ll come out later in the year.”
Nevertheless, there was enough to satisfy the brand’s devoted followers: a 30-unit limited edition of the RM 51-02 with ‘extreme’ decoration to its tourbillon carriage, and, most eagerly received, a flying tourbillon embedded in a magnolia flower – the RM 19-02, also limited to 30 pieces.
The mechanical flower opens and closes at regular intervals. Van Cleef & Arpels certainly doesn’t have the monopoly on floral motifs at this salon... But Richard Mille was not the most obvious candidate to join them!

RM 19-02 by Richard Mille

Although some observers found this SIHH to be short of new ideas overall, a visit to the Cartier booth, Richemont’s flagship, might have changed their minds. There were no fewer than 110 new models, variations and reworkings! Four clear trends were apparent: the skeletonised Haute Horlogerie grand complications; the launch of the Clé collection with a new calibre; new versions of métiers d’art models, and finally, the secret watches.

The Haute Horlogerie sector features around fifteen new departures, the three main ones being: the Astrotourbillon Squelette; the Grande Complication with flying tourbillon, minute repeater and perpetual calendar (Cartier’s most complicated watch to date, with 578 components and the Geneva Hallmark), produced in a limited edition of 50; and the Crash Squelette (more proof, if any were needed, that 2015 is the year of the skeleton) which reprises the deformed case of the original 1967 watch while baring its insides. These models attest to Cartier’s desire to be considered a full member of the club of creators of grand complications (see box below).

Clé by Cartier

The Clé collection, which goes on sale in April, nevertheless remains the company’s most important new departure, from the point of view of both sales and strategy. Its name is derived from the crown, which turns like a key. The perfectly round watch is available in three sizes, in yellow, white or rose gold.

At its heart beats a new 100% manufacture movement. Prices are around the CHF 17,500 mark. With this new model the company, which employs around 1,600 people in Switzerland, hopes to seduce consumers and, perhaps, lift the short-time working arrangements imposed last year in the face of oversupply combined with a slowdown in the market.

“If Steve Jobs were here, he’d say: one more thing...” No long keynote speeches at Montblanc, just a presentation of the first “bridge between luxury and new technology”: the TimeWalker Urban Speed e-Strap. Currently at the prototype stage, this watch strap aims to offer the “best of both worlds”, in the words of the brand itself. Due for launch in June 2015, it will perform three tasks on the wrist, thanks to its Android and iOS-compatible Bluetooth connectivity: SMS messages and alerts; music and camera remote control; and an activity tracker, which will be welcomed by fitness fans and runners.

Montblanc has entered into exclusive, albeit time-limited contracts with external partners to develop the product, which will eventually be sold separately from the watch, as an accessory. Although on the wrist the strap feels quite comfortable, the legibility of the screen remains to be evaluated. Only an extended period of wear will show whether it is sufficiently user-friendly or not. Nevertheless, Montblanc certainly deserves points for initiative.

Tourbillon Cylindrique Géosphères by Montblanc

On the traditional watch front, the brand also has some new offerings, taking us on a journey not to Silicon Valley but back to the time of the Great Explorers: a number of models in the Héritage Chronométrie range pay tribute to Vasco da Gama. One of them features a moon phase display representing the sky of the southern hemisphere, a nod to the stars that helped the Portuguese navigator find his way to the Indies. It reproduces the same constellations that were visible in November 1497, when Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope.

Engravings of his flagship, the São Gabriel, also adorn a number of the timepieces. New versions of the Héritage Chronométrie range also include a Dual Time, a complete calendar, an annual calendar and an ExoTourbillon Chronograph. The star of the show is the Tourbillon Cylindrique Géosphères, immediately recognisable by its two hand-painted half globes illustrating the northern and southern hemispheres.

Audemars Piguet is following two main axes of development. First, it wants to bring minute repeaters and chimes “into line with 21st century expectations.” Around eight years’ work, in collaboration with the EPFL, were required to design the Royal Oak Concept RD#1.
Although currently just a prototype, it is already possible to hear the power, intensity, purity and clarity of the gong, installed in a specially-designed resonance chamber. By analysing several of its old chiming watches, Audemars Piguet designed a model that, through the power of complex algorithms, can cut through ambient sound, resonating even more clearly some distance away, just like a cricket. This tour de force involved identifying just those frequencies that are most perceptible to the human ear.

The other axis is... women! With men currently representing three-quarters of its clientele, Audemars Piguet is hoping to make its collections more appealing to women, and has accordingly unveiled a number of new ladies’ models with mechanical complications. These include the new gem-set Millenary models, designed to meet the expectations of a female clientele while exploring new horizons.

Source: Europa Star February-March 2015 Magazine Issue