Hello, And welcome to Issue Five of About Time, the new watches newsletter from Esquire.
This week I have mostly been inside an 810,000 sq ft exhibition hall attached to Geneva Airport, where some 45,000 guests wandered about gathering promotional tote bags, refuelling on complimentary Coke Zeros and comparing notes on the 54 top-tier watch brands, including Rolex, Cartier and Patek Philippe, that had unveiled their latest collections of watches.
It was at the 2024 Watches And Wonders trade fair. |
Crown colony: Rolex die-hards wait for the grand opening, 8.20am, on Day One of the fair |
Watches And Wonders is the biggest event in the watch world calendar and getting bigger every year, as Matthieu Humair, chief executive of the Watches And Wonders Geneva Foundation (ie: the boss) told me over strong coffee at 9am sharp on Wednesday morning.
Double the number of people were attending compared to 2022, with new watchmakers – including Bremont, Nomos Glashütte and H.Moser & Cie – plus a brand new annex to house them – being added for 2024. “It is a super-positive step for us, and for the city of Geneva,” Humair said, keen to stress how the audience for the fair was skewing younger than ever. “It is important that we reach the next generation of watch fans. It’s what we want and it’s what the masions want. We have already begun work on next year and we have more and more brands asking [to join] all the time. The key is making sure we maintain a high level of brand.”
That’s good news for the watch business. But it’s arguably even better news for the Watches And Wonders Geneva Foundation.
The marketing manager of one household-name brand exhibiting told me that the cost of renting floor space was CHF 1,250 (£1,100) per square meter. That put the rent for his stand alone at £1.75m. And that was before he'd screwed in a lightbulb or put up a single poster.
Screwing in lightbulbs and putting up posters are not really the Watches And Wonders vibe, though, as the luxury brands jostle to outdo each other with on-stand spectacles that this year included a volcano-like structure that belched smoke and fire high into the air (Jaeger-LeCoultre), a circular lake to honour a brand’s foundation on the banks of the Rhine (IWC) and an entire Luna Rossa sailing boat suspended from the ceiling (Panerai). |
You're gonna need a bigger booth: Panerai at Watches And Wonders |
My marketing mole cheerfully admitted that the bill for his stand had come in at £4m. (TBF, he had gone quite big on some high-definition video screens.)
But he, and every other brand I chatted to, agreed it was money well spent.
According to my colleague and Wristwatch Yoda Robin Swithinbank writing earlier this week in the New York Times, last year’s fair had a global reach of 700 million people – and if that doesn't shift you some watches, nothing will. |
On the trail of Piaget, the world's hottest watch brand |
Sotheby's Geneva auction: off-roading from the crowd |
As soon as I landed in Geneva, I hotfooted it straight over to Sotheby’s.
The auction house was staging a watch sale that really was unlike anything else any other similar institution had ever put on before (its representatives seemed both simultaneously proud of this, and a bit nervous it might have gone too far). The show was called Rough Diamonds.
It was presented – in its logo, and in the t-shirts and posters it was selling – in the spirit of a 1990s dance band knowingly referencing the 1970s – Daft Punk, say, or Phoenix. It was a collaboration between Sotheby’s and the youthful French watch media provocateurs Heist-Out, memorably described by one newspaper as ‘le punk plus de l’horologie’. The idea, lest it not already be obvious, was to kick the stuffy auction world up the derriére and see if they couldn’t present a watch sale in a slightly more exciting way.
(You can read About Time's earlier interview with all the parties concerned in staging the sale here.) |
Underground assets: inside the Rough Diamonds show |
But it wasn’t just the graphics – the exhibition preceding the sale was held underground, in a wine cellar. Then there were the exhibits themselves – sparkling watches-cum-jewellery pieces from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
They included a yellow gold and diamond-set Vacheron Constantin bracelet watch with a trapezoidal dial and a design inspired by the sun’s rays. A dinky Audemars Piguet in the shape of a little car, made from emeralds and diamonds, something the Sultan of Brunei had commissioned for his children. |
Piaget's sparkly ref. 12773 A18, circa 1975, on display in Geneva |
There was also a fabulously sparkly coral-dial Piaget number, diamond-set and crafted in yellow gold under the expertise of renowned designer Jean-Claude Gueit. Its diamonds were said to be reminiscent of the starry sky over St. Barts. Its textured gold bracelet was ‘emblematic of the era of the 1970s’ in exactly the way you'd imagine a textured gold bracelet ‘emblematic of the era of the 1970s’ would be. The whole experience was fantastic, and it was easy to imagine it being something that would be referenced for years to come – a Ground Zero for the time auction houses learned to loosen their ties and pour themselves a White Russian or two. On Friday, Sotheby's announced the Rough Diamond's sale's record results: all 24 lots had sold in under an hour, achieving almost double the event's high estimate, and bringing in more than CHF 1.15m (£1.03m).
(To underline its novelty, as well as to completely miss the point, some media immediately reported this as 'the auction house's first gender-free watch auction' 🤷♂️.) But the yellow gold, coral and diamond Piaget on display was emblematic of something else, too. By general agreement within the watch cognoscenti vintage Piaget is having A Moment. Who can say why, exactly? For one thing fashion’s fickle wheel has spun away from boring classic steel sports watches that have dominated the market for the last decade or so.
The man who runs eBay’s watches and luxury division told me at Watches And Wonders that the most-searched-for dial colour for men on the site right now is pink. Pink! Second, the watch community has simply decided that 1960s-1980s Piaget is where it is at right now. And so it has come to pass. |
A Piaget Protocle ref. 90154 |
Piaget put out its first watches with dials made of precious stones – lapis lazuli, turquoise, onyx, tiger’s eye – in 1964. Soon after, it launched its first ‘cuff watch’, a showy-offy wrist accessory that also happened to tell the time. Cushion-shaped cases, integrated bracelets and applied-hour markers with thick geometric angles were calling cards, too. Andy Warhol, Miles Davis and Elvis Presley were all Piaget fans.
Today on Instagram you can take your pick from popular accounts bigging up Piaget’s blingiest era – Protocole watches with glossy black dials and artfully ornate 18k yellow-gold cases over at @craftedandtailored. The 'Beta 21' with its oddly stepped vertical case on @morillo55. Lapis lazuli dials at @the_keystone.
Writing on Wind Vintage last year, watch specialist Charlie Dunne nailed vintage Piaget's appeal better than anyone. 'These watches are audacious and loud,' he said. 'Yet they don't give off a distasteful impression... when you see someone confidently rocking a vintage Piaget, it's quite apparent that they have a different perspective and appreciation for timepieces than most.'
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Piaget: reassuringly expensive |
In 1979 Piaget launched a jet-set all-gold number that was unambiguously not for the hoi polloi, the Piaget Polo. While other brands marketed timepieces that were tough enough to be worn whilst playing polo, Piaget’s Polo was intended for people who preferred to stand around watching the polo. “The entire Polo philosophy can be summed up in one sentence,” chairman Yves G Piaget said at the time. “It’s a watch bracelet rather than a mere wristwatch.” “The concept was: ‘The most expensive watch in the world’,” Jean-Bernard Forot, Piaget’s current head of patrimony told me recently.
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This year's relaunched Polo 79 |
Piaget relaunched a replica Polo – the Polo 79 – this February.
Made of solid gold it came with an appropriately solid price: £69,000. It caused quite a stir. Publications variously described it is ‘the comeback of the year’, ‘the return of an icon’ and ‘the hottest release of 2024’. This year marks Piaget's 150th anniversary and you could see the stars in that starry sky over St. Barts aligning. “Piaget is a jeweller, and as they celebrate their 150th they must pay homage to the achieve,” Brynn Wallner, founder of watch platform Dimepiece and the millennial New Yorker described as ‘the woman behind the world’s hottest Instagram account’, told me. “And the 1970s are back in fashion. We’ve seen all the Gucci stuff, all the old-school look coming back and I think that the jewellery-house watchmakers tend to be a little more on-trend with what’s going on in fashion. And [Piaget] has taken notice of this. We’ve seen the hype on social media. And with social media bringing more opinions to the forefront, I think we’re seeing a lot of brands responding more to trends. It's exciting."
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1980s Piaget with a lapis lazuli dial |
“When Timothée Chalamet started wearing that tiny little Cartier Tank Panthère [a more typically feminine dress watch, and a style worn by the actor in 2023], it started to feel like it was following through to Piaget,” says Christy Davis, founder of UK-based preowned watch specialists Subdial. “Their stone dials feel like the next trend. They’re a super-interesting brand because they were always unashamedly, unapologetically for the elite. It tended to be royalty, celebrities and a lot of South American customers. They really spoke of 1980s luxury and were so flashy that they fell out of fashion – but that fashion is back.”
“It’s a backlash against the high-tech, sports watch thing,” one senior watches and jewellery PR believes. “People are looking for more authentic stories and less commercial-slash-designed-by-committee models. Something that isn’t available in every high street and shopping mall. Then combine that with people like Tyler, the Creator and Timothée Chalamet in Cartier, and Michael B Jordan wearing vintage Polo, too. “Plus, they bring a spirit of joy and exuberance that is needed when the world is having such a shit time. Watches like that can bring you joy.” |
So, one might have expected the product development team at Piaget Towers to have dusted off 12-months’ worth of TV-shaped stone dial watches, lapis lazuli rings and gold cuffs from its archives and booked the rest of 2024 off. Expect Piaget is also expert in another watchmaking niche that may at first seem like the polar opposite of all this brash and bold retro stuff. That niche is utterly modern, ultra-thin watchmaking.
Six years ago, Piaget came out with its Altiplano Ultimate Concept, a watch that measured a mere 2mm thick – the same as two sheets of A4 – something that necessitated a radical reengineering of the entire product and was achieved by fusing the case, the bezel and the movement’s main plate into one single component. (It also required five separate patents.) But Piaget had competition. The Swiss-Italian watchmaker Bulgari has also made a name for itself in perusing insanely skinny mechanical watches, and in March 2022 released the Octo Finissimo Ultra, a watch that measured just 1.8mm – securing its eighth world-record in the speciality of thin watches.
And then, just four months after that, in July 2022, Richard Mille, the French watchmaker known for its singular pursuit of high-performance materials and avant-garde designs, partnered with Ferrari to slip out the RM UP-01 Ferrari. This one clocked in at 1.75mm, shaving 0.05mm off the world record – and making it the thinnest mechanical watch ever made. All this microscopic engineering takes years of R&D and does not come cheap – the Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept cost around £350,000, the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Ultra would set you back something in the region of £440,000 while the Richard Mille UP-01 Ferrari retails for £1.4m – or about £1,000 per micron. (At that price, it should come with its own Ferrari – ha ha.) The other thing is, these are not the most practical of watches.
By removing such bothersome elements as the crown and the crystal, the Richard Mille watch looks a piece of machined metal that’s been steamrollered and squashed flat. It wears on the wrist like something someone might have used to contact the Liberator in Blakes 7.
All three watches require a tiny Allen-key like device – or ‘winding tool’ – to make them run. Probably best to find a safe place to keep that. |
Bulgari's Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC: 1.7mm is now the size to beat |
Not to be outdone in this (small) dick-swinging competition, on Monday Bulgari reclaimed its paper-thin crown by announcing the Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC, with a thickness of just 1.7mm. Which, for anyone still keeping up, took another 0.05mm away from Richard Mille – roughly the breadth of a human hair. |
What's the skinny? Three views of the 2mm Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon |
It was hard not to see Bulgari’s timing as a spoiler for our friends over at Piaget, whose big reveal for Watches And Wonders this year – just 24-hours later – was the announcement of the Altipino Ultimate Concept Tourbillon. At 2mm it equalled its 2018 best.
It could, however, claim one record its rivals could not. The Altipino Ultimate Concept Tourbillon was the world’s thinnest watch to include a tourbillon, the constantly spinning ball-shaped complication beloved of high-end horology that rotates the inner mechanics of watch, apparently to counteract any meddlesome effects of gravity, but also because tourbillons tend to look cool. |
'Do better than is necessary': the dial of Piaget's latest extremely thin watch |
To fit a tourbillon inside a watch and keep everything at 2mm was no easy feat – the new Altiplano may look somewhat similar to previous versions, but it required 90 percent of its components to be redesigned.
Piaget, then, arrives at its 150th year with joint reasons to celebrate. Cutting-edge 21st Century ultra-thin watchmaking. And so-hot-right-now 20th Century jewellery-adjacent retro pieces that have swung back into vogue. Perhaps these seem contradictory? Au contraire, Piaget’s Jean-Bernard Forot told me when we spoke over Teams before the Watches And Wonders fair. Both ideas are part and parcel of his brand's DNA.
“The fact there this is an alignment with our 150th anniversary [for these two elements] shows that we are a maison which is very focused on distinction,” he said.
“If you can afford a Polo 79 or you can afford an Ultimate Tourbillion, then you are not only buying a product, but you are buying know-how and you are buying a story. That is key for us. For the way we think about our clientele. And, then, if the community of what I would call the ‘watchinistas’, the people who are really fans, who are really digging behind the scenes and are discovering models that were designed in the past for us, it’s great – because it is elevating the [whole] momentum of Piaget. It means Piaget is in the ‘now’. So, it’s important for us to have both.”
Anyway, Forot says, the high-tech Altiplano and the pieces from 50 years ago have more in common than it might appear. Piaget was the original ultra-thin brand – specialising in the art of miniaturisation from the early 20th century.
Like a reverse TARDIS its watches might have been big on the outside, but inside it was a different story. In 1957 it came up with a hand-wound movement that was just 2mm thick. It followed that up with a 2.3mm self-winding mechanical movement three years later. The aforementioned cushion-shaped Beta 21 was developed from a consortium of Swiss brands that in 1966 created revolutionary quartz technology. As Charlie Dunne writes, Piaget was among few manufacturers to have earned a reputation for its specialisation in coin watches – 'extremely rare and special creations that required the dissection of two coins, a master case maker to carve an area for the movement and to create a hinged component that lays perfectly within the two sides'. |
1956 advert featuring a ref. 99 Piaget coin watch with extra-thin movement |
“The philosophy of [the Piaget family] was always to ‘do better than is necessary’,” Forot says. “Piaget has always had this balance between aesthetics and technicality. We have never stopped trying and innovate, to reduce the thickness of every component. In our [old] advertising campaigns, it is [part of our DNA], almost like the advertising of Chanel of Hérmes. It’s continuity.”
(“I feel like Piaget is accustomed to playing in these different spaces,” says Brynn Wallner. “They have bought up a client base where one likes the more old-school stuff and the other one likes the more modern. But when I see that ultra-thin [Altiplano] I do see a very modern watch but I also see their expertise as a jeweller shining through because of the construction of it, and how elegant it is. It makes sense when you really consider it.”)
Of the upstarts over at Bulagri and Richard Millie, Forot is generous.
“There are two ways of thinking about the competition,” he says. “One is that they are challenging us. But they are also showing the strong importance of ultra-thin movements. And that’s a speciality for which Piaget has always remained true – for more than 67 years [when it made its first ultra-thin movement], or 150 years if we start from the escapement [when it developed its very first watch]. So, it brings attention to us, and hopefully captures a larger audience."
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Horse and art: your correspondent trying on the Richard Mille RM UP-01 Ferrari |
“Bulgari and Richard Mille are also able to create extraordinary objects. Of course you have competition in business, but you also have innovation and a spirit of confrere – community. So we are very interested to see what the others are doing.” It's perhaps also worth noting that Paiget’s Altiplano does actually look like a watch – all the dial parts are pleasingly symmetrical – which is not the case over at Richard Mille. “It’s an experiment, almost encapsulating a credit card,” Forot said of the Ferrari collab. “Maybe more like an object than a watch.” |
Chain reaction: more vintage Piaget promotion |
He is, of course, only too aware of the current frothy hype around Piaget’s 1960s, 1970s and 1980s jewellery-watches.
“We are pretty proud to see that,” he says. “There is a big community of fans, reinforcing the Piaget style.” That point in Piaget’s history was a time, he says, where anything went.
“The designers were focusing more on style, because the clientele of Piaget was jet-set, the new aristocracy. People were finally able to take advantage of the aristocratic style, without constraints. There was a new way of dressing and enjoying life, with less rules. It was very important to 'show your wealth on yourself’. With the Polo, Piaget was really able to capture that.”
The anniversary year is really only just getting started – and more Polo 79-style rereleases must surely be on the cards. “Of course,” Forot says. “You have to stay turned. It’s like a Netflix series! There will be more surprises than the Polo 79 to be discovered.
“And whatever we do, we will always continue in the true Piaget style and identity." We'd expect nothing less. |
Bremont's new CEO just exploded the company. Will his plan succeed? |
Bremont's stand at Watches And Wonders this week |
After everyone was done with discussing the watches Rolex had announced – it was with a sense of pride, as well as triumphant inevitability, that after asking 11 industry experts to come up with no fewer than 27 separate predictions for what The Crown would release in the last issue of About Time, not a single one turned out to be correct, Rolex’s position as an unknown fortress remaining unbreached, as is only right – talk turned to the other big news at Watches And Wonders.
The relaunch of Bremont.
Should the fancy take you, you can read 4,000+ words on the recent changes at the British watchmaker, where it came from and where its new CEO hopes to take it, in a story Esquire published last October.
But none of us are getting any younger, so the short version goes like this: Bremont was founded in by two brothers, Nick and Giles English. They loved classic Boy’s Own stuff – collecting first-edition Bond novels, racing vintage cars, crashing vintage planes, and so on. From the outset (2002), the Englishes vowed to bring British watchmaking back to Britain. As in many other industries, where we once ruled the waves in watch manufacturing, our Made In Britain output had dwindled to, effectively, zero.
With some fanfare Bremont opened a £20m state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Henley-on-Thames, known as The Wing. It spent a few more million on equipment that would make and assemble watches and watch parts here on British shores.
It had even got some way to creating its own movement – the cogs, gears and levers that make a mechanical watch run – a fiendishly difficult undertaking that had alluded anyone at scale for at least half-a-century.
In 2023 it raised $59m (£48.4m) in funding from a billionaire hedge funder and its existing investor, and appointed a new CEO, the energetic industry veteran Davide Cerrato, a dapper Italian who had enjoyed enormous success steering Rolex’s younger brother Tudor towards its smash-hit signature product, the Black Bay.
Cerrato promised Watches And Wonders would represent a reboot for Bremont, with an emphasis on amping up its commercial prospects, sensing great opportunity in America.
Bremont watches were always ambitiously priced and while most other luxury brands, including Omega and Rolex, were busy putting their prices up, Cerrato vowed to take his new brand the other way. Notably, by introducing an entry-level Black Bay-style hero product. |
"We are shifting to Chapter Two": Davide Cerrato |
I had become slightly obsessed by what this new watch might be, for reasons I can’t really explain – perhaps because Cerrato had been endearingly unable to stop talking about it. While the Swiss watch business tends to operate under military-grade secrecy, Cerrato seemed to delight in doing the opposite. In his very first interview after taking the job, he told the Financial Times of his intention to make Bremont “the champion of tools watches and own… exploration and adventure” by producing an “iconic product” that would be own version of Tudor’s Black Bay.
Not long after that he told a watch blog of “a completely new line to be unveiled at Watches And Wonders… it is really strong, inspired by British military watches”. Cerrato went further still when I spoke to him for our annual publication The Big Watch Book last summer, describing this iconic product as “the big relaunch of the brand”.
It was to be a sub-£3,000 watch, he said, cheaper than anything Bremont currently sold. “It’s a super-competitive market segment. But it’s the entry segment where new customers get into mechanical watchmaking. We absolutely need to position ourselves in that arena to give us chances in the US, which is our next big market.” Then he excitedly pointed to a bookshelf behind him where, he explained, the designs for this new watch sat in a folder. His enthusiasm was infectious.
The last remaining puzzle-piece fell into place over Christmas, when Cerrato was a guest on the excellent Australian watch podcast OT: The Podcast.
“In April we are going to launch a full new range about land exploration… field watches inspired by the British military,” he informed the hosts. “I went to many, many war watches books – incredible,” Cerrato told OT. “I found two of them that are gigantic. One is about British military watches and one is Germany military watches.”
It was odds-on that the books Cerrato was talking about were Konrad Knirim’s pair of peerless 800-page reference textbooks Military Timepieces, out-of-print since 2009 and weighing about the same as two WWI hessian sandbags.
I didn’t have much on over Christmas – and, frankly, there were times when I welcomed an excuse to leave the family home – so I went and tracked these books down. |
In the trenches: the source material for Bremont's Terra Nova watch |
Assuming Cerrato had chosen to reference a British field watch and not a German one – that really would be leftfield – could the inspiration for his hero product be found on page 964 of Military Timepieces, a British Army ‘for general service’ ref no. W10/6645-99-961-4045 watch, in 35mm with a black tritium dial?
It certainly bore some Cerrato–adjacent flourishes – simple, strong hands and highly legible numerals. The handsome timepiece was supplied to and issued by the British Army by Smiths watches – the now-defunct Cheltenham-based company often referred to as the last great British large-scale British watchmaker… before Bremont. In fact, a small shrine to Smiths is erected in the corner of Bremont’s Henley-on-Thames HQ. (“We always saw ourselves as revitalising Smiths,” Bremont’s co-founder Giles English once told me. “Carrying on where they left off.”) One could imagine this watch forming a template for a topping of stylish Cerrato pizzaz. If it was indeed the watch he was referring to, that really would be a sweet bit of synchronicity. |
The new time-only Terra Nova 38 |
Last Tuesday the big day came, preceded by an appropriate level of teases on Instagram. Cerrato unveiled a suite of new watches across the categories of ‘land’ and ‘sea' – with 'air' apparently still to come.
There was indeed an entry-level hero product field watch – the Terra Nova, which cost £2,500 in its time-only version – one of a total of 13 models Cerrato introduced. (I’d called it right on the military reference book, by the way. I’d just picked the wrong watch.) Social media reaction was, not to put too fine a point on it, mixed.
The main beef was that the new products didn’t look anything like any Bremont watches before them. Meanwhile, the focus on being the first British brand to bring industrial quantities of watch manufacture back to the UK now appered be in retreat – these new watches ran off adapted Swiss Sellita movements. |
Brand new bag: Bremont's updated font and logo |
Then there was the logo. Gone was the chocks-away vintage-propeller-and-typeface iconography of yore. In its place was a new front and symbol that the internet suggested variously reminded it of Stone Island, the corporate ID of a generic nefarious tech company from a TV sci-fi drama or ‘a sort of United Nations-style stamp’. (It was actually created by a graphic designer with connections to Hérmes, and you can’t get much chicer than that.) All this griping seemed highly reminiscent of whenever a new creative director arrives at a big fashion house and upends everything that their predecessor laid down. (A new logo is aways the first thing to get the flak there, too.) And isn’t that what Cerrato was employed to do? To make the brand younger, more relevant and more accessible?
But yesterday afternoon, five days after the relaunch, Nick English took to Instagram to post a message, with the comments turned off, that had all the hallmarks of a politician appealing for calm in a crisis.
'Sometimes change is a good thing but it can be hard to get your head around,' he wrote. 'This is the beginning of a new exciting chapter which will continue to have adventure, and indeed military at the heart of the brand. Please do get a chance to see the watches in the flesh before you make your mind up.'
I quite liked Cerrato's new watches – particularly the entry-level Terra Nova. (There were also more expensive date, chronograph and tourbillon versions.) One suspects that in six months’ time – or when sales take a sharp up-tick, whichever comes first – the shock of the new will have died down. Cerrato gave me a try-on of all the new models and talked through his thought process. |
Davide Cerrato wearing his new Bremont Terra Nova 40.5 Turning Bezel Power Reserve |
About Time: What was the inspiration for the Terra Nova range?
Davide Cerrato: The military pocket watches of World War One. With the big, geometric numerals on dial, and the big crowns – because they would have had to have been operated with gloves. But we made a very modern application with three-dimensional Super-LumiNova blocks. And the dials are all shaded horizontally – that will become one of our design signs. Very interesting price point – £2,500. And a new metal bracelet, of incredible quality.
There’s quite a variety of straps and bracelets. Why was that important?
I am a bit obsessive about it. Seventy percent of the watch is bracelet. Everyone is copying others but this one is unique, in terms of design. We took the shape of the case and repeated it [through the bracelet]. It’s polished and brushed on the edge. And it’s 904L [steel], the same that Rolex uses. We used a factory in France [Julien Faure, near Saint-Etienne] for the Nato straps, the same one I used for Tudor, where everything is created on restored looms. One of the old Bremont trademarks was the so-called ‘Trip-Tick’, or three-piece, case. Has that gone now?
It was a question of cost, and it was a question of thickness. This [new] case is much, much thinner than ‘Trip-Tick’. The ‘Trip-Tick’ is thick. It was just a design ‘to be different’. There was no real point to it. So this is the new shape. And we bring in a new shape and bezel on the [redesigned] Supermarine [dive watch collection] in royal blue and racing green. Very British.
Are you calling this a rebrand? Or is that too strong? I think it’s too strong. We are shifting to Chapter Two. In Chapter Two we will not only continue to take care of the UK properly, but we are going global. And going global means reframing some elements so that we appeal and correspond to a global language. You've also tidied up the product line, reducing it by about 40 percent Yes. We had too many references. Too many limited editions. Now the segmentation is very clear. Sea, land and air. Diving, field watches and pilot watches.
Are Nick and Giles still involved in the company? Yes. They are on the board and they are always with us, but they are acting now as founders. So they are participating in some events, and so on. But they are no longer on the operation side, since I took over that.
How has everything been received in general? Really good. We’ve had a really positive reaction. What’s the story with the new logo? Some people have been a bit sniffy about that
That’s normal when you change things – you never have 100 per cent [approval]. At first they don’t know that on [the] pilot line [Bremont's existing aviation watches] we’ve kept the old logo. But here [stands up and points to the new logo behind us], right in the centre, you have a propeller with four blades. And that’s the key. I don’t want to lose the propeller. So our aviation link is at the very centre of the logo. Then you have the compass rose – for travel and adventure. And if you look even closer, there is also a little bit of the weaving of the Union Jack – so that speaks of Britishness. And, when you put [the logo] small on the dial – white, black, white, black, white, black – it looks like it is spinning. Which [stands for] engines and movement. So, again, it speaks of travelling and adventure. It’s embedding all the key elements of the brand. Just expressing them in a more modern way.
So you’ll still be flying the flag as a British brand?
Yes. You know adventure and exploration are the convergence of the early days of British watchmaking. Both to help [people] navigate and to discover. And then, in the early days of exploration, with Cook, Shackleton and Livingstone. The company is continuing that legacy today. Focusing into tool watches, into a specific British design, British colours. That’s our differentiation. |
What watches do the watch bosses wear? |
They spend all day talking up their brand’s products. But what watches do the watch bosses choose to wear themselves? We asked them. |
Frédéric Arnault, CEO, LVMH Watches |
Tag Heuer Monaco Split-Seconds |
"A pièce unique gifted to me when I left my old job [CEO of Tag Heuer] to take up my new role [CEO of LVMH Watches]. It is one-of-one, and engraved on the back." |
Fabrizio Buonamassa, product creation executive director, Bulgari |
Bulgari Bulgari (2024 edition), in yellow gold |
“I've loved the Bulagri Bulgari from the beginning [1975]. And, honestly, I am here [in this job] because of the advertising campaign that I saw in 2001, when I was in Turin. I saw a picture of this watch in aluminium and I said ‘But this brand is fantastic!’ The Bulgari Bulgari was born at a time when the watchmaking world was very different. The round case and the unique thickness – the double logo [the brand name written twice around the bezel] reminded me of a coin. Bulgari was very popular in the 1970s thanks to the wave of La Dolce Vita. But it was super-expensive. Bulgari Bulgari was the first watch with a certain price point that was ‘affordable’.”
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Laurent Feniou, managing director, Cartier |
“Today my watch is 'just' a Tank. But it is 100 years of Trinity [Cartier's tricoloured jewellery collection, that now includes bracelets and cufflinks], launched in 1924 – so it is the combination I'm wearing that makes it special. The watch on it's own is still a classic, of course." |
Michel Navas, co-founder and master watchmaker of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton | Gérald Genta Triple Calendar Moonphase, in yellow gold |
“A perpetual calendar from the late 1980s. I like it for two things that are very rare. The waterproof case, which makes it a bit thicker. And these side lugs, where most of [Genta’s watches] had centre lugs – it’s not a typical Genta. So I like it because it’s different. I have not tried it in the shower, no. But I got it [pre-owned] because it was described as 31 [millimetres] and I knew it was 36 because of the reference number – inside information, kind-of – so they made a mistake on pricing.”
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Nicholas Biebuyck, heritage director, Tag Heuer |
Heuer Carrera reference 1158 / Heuer Carrera ‘Dato’ 45 reference 3147 |
“These are two museum pieces. This one is from 1971, one of the earliest 1158s – it launched with the silver dial, then it came with the champagne dial and the famous ‘champaign noir’ version that the [motorsport] drivers wore. Mario Andretti wore this exact configuration. And this ‘Dato’ from 1968 is quite cool because it was issued to the Royal Jordanian Air Force. It’s got a case back engraving.” |
Ricardo Guadalupe, CEO, Hublot |
Hublot Big Bang Unico, in blue ceramic |
“I always dress in blue! It was introduced two years ago, in this blue version. I like the Velcro strap, too – because you can really feel it fits well. The mix of a sporty strap with this high-tech watch is excellent, too.” |
Benoit de Clerck, CEO and president, Zenith |
Zenith Defy Skyline Chronograph |
"Incredibly comfortable and light. The strap's amazing, and of course it has the El Primero 3600 calibre. Yes, I'm a little biased but this is an incredible watch." |
Keith Metcalfe, European director of luxury, eBay |
Baume & Mercier Clifton Automatic Calendar Moon-Phase Chronograph
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"My 'smart watch', for important meetings, which I have some of today. I love the dial. There's a lot of detail but it's still really paired-back and elegant. Yes, I got it on eBay. £1,600 - so it qualified for our Authenticity Guarantee. I'm really pleased with it." |
Nicholas Biebuyck, heritage director, Tag Heuer (again) |
Tag Heuer Formula 1 Mk 1, in plastic (circa 1986) |
Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph |
Following on from last year's 60th anniversary remix of the Carrera, this new version adds a classic panda configuration and pops of bright red to the dial, emphasising its motorsport origins to the max. The 'glassbox' crystal remains a winner, keeping vintage-heads and people who just like nice-looking watches equally satisfied. £6,100. tagheuer.com
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ALL THE NEW 2024 ROLEX WATCHES ARE HERE |
New GMT-Master IIs, new Daytonas, new Sky-Dwellers. In precious metals galore.
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