This Event Gives Real Watch Lovers Access to High-End Timepieces
The trouble with watches, if you’re a bit of a fan, is getting to see them in the flesh. Boutiques can be intimidating, and it’s all well and good reading about them online or licking pictures in magazines, but that’s not the same as handling-even wearing for a second-a rare-as-hen’s-teeth new Vacheron Constantin, Cartier, or Piaget. Normally you have to go all the way to Switzerland, to one of the big watch fairs, for that kind of thing. But that’s something only serious collectors, spending serious bucks, really get to do. How to get watches up close with real men is a question that has been puzzling watchmakers lately. Until now.
Founded last year with the very deliberate intention of allowing regular watch-loving men to get up close and personal (but without commitment) to the objects of their desires, Watches & Wonders in Miami’s Design District is something of an experiment that is, after just two editions, surprising everyone and seeing attention from both customers (which includes serious shoppers and one-day dreamers) and a growing roster of heavyweight watch brands eager to place their latest watches before the eyes of a cooing and appreciative public.
The event is spread over four days in February and, for gadget-heads, conveniently concurrent with the Miami Boat Show and the Miami Concours car show. It is centered in the burgeoning Miami Design District, a reinvented northern suburb of downtown Miami where watchmakers, fashion brands, and other luxury names have flocked to set up shop in the past two years. It’s a purpose-built zone where luxury, contemporary art-a one-of-a-kind, 24-foot Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome functions as the entrance to the underground parking garage-and some striking one-off architecture mix to create a very different kind of buzz from the usual Miami fare of art deco, sunblock, and hangovers. Which makes it a great place to hang out and visit those storied brands in an open-house atmosphere (but with security guards on hand in case you were getting retirement-funding ideas).
In just a year, the FHH, the Geneva based Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, which launched the event in 2018 to promote high-end watchmaking, has brought the number of signed-on brands to 30, including most of your favorites and quite a few that you may never have heard of-let alone seen.
That in itself makes Watches & Wonders potentially a great spot to catch up on industry gossip and spot a few new creations. But by a lucky and rather coincidental twist of scheduling, W&W could also grow significantly next year into a pivotal moment on the calendar for industry insiders. The two biggest watch fairs on Esquire’s normal beat are Geneva’s SIHH in January (also created by FHH, and encompassing mostly brands owned by Richemont and a handful of others) and Baselworld in March. Next year, they're joining forces in an effort to stabilize a market that is somewhat in flux. From 2020 onward, these will now take place in late April. Which means brands who want to show off new products earlier in the year-and those of us who wish to see them-now have an ideal place on which to do it early in the year. With palm trees. And sunshine.
Here’s my pick of the unusual, the beautiful, and the downright nuts from Watches & Wonders.
HYT
Rappel down the rabbit hole of high-end concept watches and soon enough you’ll get to HYT, a newish Swiss brand (founded in 2012) that prides itself on outside-the-box design and highly esoteric solutions to telling the time. HYT is a specialist, see, in the rare science of hydromechanical timekeeping. That means its fine in-house mechanical movements don’t drive hands but fluids. The dial of its “Time Is Fluid” watch (geddit?) features brightly colored liquids – in this case red and white, pumped in a tiny glass tube around the edge of dial by two tiny hydraulic syringes. The boundary between the colors denotes the hours. Every six hours the two plungers reverse mechanically, pushing the red liquid back into its reservoir and the process begins again. All of this magic comes in a highly unusual setting with a sapphire crystal that replaces much of the case and puts all of that head spinning ingenuity on show. Time is Fluid comes in yellow gold at $125,000 or Steel at $115,000.
H Moser
One of the most interesting of the smaller independent watchmakers, and one garnering - and deservedly so - increasing attention, H Moser and Cie was founded in Schaffhausen in 1845. Its beautiful, never obvious designs have pitched it into the curiosity market usually populated by much more expensive brands. The Pioneer range, including a new version with a blue dial shown in Miami, features rose gold and diamond-like carbon combined in a dressier than average case, offset with a sporty black silicone strap, priced at $19,900.
Bulgari
While much of high watchmaking would seem to be about creating mind-boggling concept pieces, a key part of what drives watchmakers at this lofty stratum is the constant search to do the impossible. In the case of Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, the supremely elegant head designer of Rome-based Bulgari, the obsession is to create ever thinner, ever lighter mechanical watches. The latest mile marker on that quest is the Octo Finissimo Carbon Automatic, a watch whose tourbillon-regulated automatic movement is just 1.95 mm thick. The watch – limited to 50 pieces - weighs in at just 48grammes and costs $129,000 dollars – which is just shy of 2700 dollars per gram.
Louis Vuitton
Louis Vuitton’s nearly twenty-year history in watch making has created a consistent canon of high design based on the Tambour style that appeals to customers of its storied fashion and leather goods. But that has not stopped the veteran luxury house from reaching higher in its designs, pushing the envelope into high watchmaking on a regular basis with concept watches that are in fact highly compelling. Ten years ago, it unveiled the Spin Time. Conveniently, “Louis Vuitton’ spelled out adds up to 12 letters – and in the Spin Time Air those 12 letters were translated into 12 rotating cubes that flip over (with one enameled red white and blue letter to denote the actual passing hour, while a conventional center hand displays the minutes. That approach has been reapplied for the tenth anniversary in the Spin Time Air a watch that is also see through, the movement suspended on the stem between two sheets of sapphire crystal. Clever. Also beautiful.
Ulysse Nardin
The deep connection between veteran Chronometer specialist Ulysse Nardin and the sea – during its long history it has supplied Marine Chronometers to many of the world’s navies including the US Navy – was further celebrated with the launch of The Marine Mega Yacht - a high-concept Grande Complication watch - where else? - but on a mega yacht from Italian yacht builder Baglietto at the Miami Boat Show. The Marine Mega Yacht looks unlike any watch you have ever seen. The UN-631 caliber in-house movement is regulated by a flying tourbillon at 6. It can monitor the tides and the moon phase with a three-dimensional rotating painted brass moon. At 12, a cutout in the shape of a yacht’s to reveals a tiny mechanical windlass connected to a tiny anchor which is actually the power reserve indicator. The mind boggles.
Marine Mega Yacht watch $310,000, limited to 30 pieces in Platinum www.ulyssenardin.com
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