The 28th edition of the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, the annual fine watchmaking show better known as S.I.H.H., begins in Geneva on Monday. The number of brands exhibiting has increased again this year — to 35, with Hermès switching from Baselworld to join Richemont’s invitation-only event and five additional independent watchmakers participating in the quirky Carré des Horlogers category.
The Ones to Watch
Showstoppers this year include the world’s thinnest mechanical watch, IWC Schaffhausen’s 150th anniversary collection and a customer-friendly new movement from Baume & Mercier.
PIAGET: ALTIPLANO ULTIMATE CONCEPT
A concept watch; no price
Piaget has an extraordinary knack for creating ever-thinner mechanical watches, shaving this concept Altiplano (named for the flatness of the Andean plateau) down to 2 millimeters, case and all, creating the world’s thinnest mechanical watch. It’s filed for five patents as a result of the development, which Piaget says took three of its best minds four years to create. That, presumably, was one longer than planned as the watch is being introduced a year after the 60th anniversary of its landmark 1957 Calibre 9P, then one of the thinnest calibers in the world — also at 2 millimeters. The new watchmaking milestone is, for now, not available commercially.
VACHERON CONSTANTIN: FIFTYSIX COMPLETE CALENDAR
$39,700
Vacheron Constantin is one of the oldest brands in watchmaking, but it’s not averse to a root-and-branch overhaul of its collection. Following on the heels of the all-new Harmony and revamped Overseas lines, its latest invention is the FiftySix, a contemporary spin on the brand’s Reference 6073, an early water-resistant automatic introduced in 1956. The new piece is reminiscent of the original: The lugs are inspired by the brand’s Maltese cross emblem, and the retro box crystal rises above the bezel. Every variant in the new line has one of Vacheron’s hand-finished automatics, in this case one supplying a complete calendar function with a moon phase.
BAUME & MERCIER: CLIFTON BAUMATIC
$2,790
The fair’s most commercial movement development comes from Richemont’s most commercial brand. In recent years, the likes of Rolex and Omega have advanced their watches with much-improved movements. Now it’s the turn of Baume & Mercier, whose Baumatic BM12-1975A caliber is claimed to deliver magnetic resistance to 1,500 gauss (enough, the brand said, to fend off the effects of the magnets in our devices and their cases), a five-day power reserve, chronometer-certified precision of minus four to plus six seconds a day, and five-year recommended service intervals. Baume must hope that customers will be tempted by the Baumatic’s technology-to-value ratio.
IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN: TRIBUTE TO PALLWEBER EDITION 150 YEARS
$57,800
The biggest of the anniversaries at S.I.H.H. this year belongs to IWC Schaffhausen, now 150 years in the watchmaking business. The brand is introducing 27 limited-edition watches, called the Jubilee Collection. The standouts are the three Tribute to Pallweber Edition 150 Years pieces, the first IWC wristwatches to feature the digital hour and minute displays that appeared on the brand’s late 19th-century Pallweber pocket watches. Time is shown via two rotating discs that sit under two windows on a spartan dial cased in either rose gold, stainless steel or, as here, platinum. Only 25 platinum versions will be made.
Continue reading the main storyComplicating Matters
Global appetite for low-volume, haute horlogerie watches shows no signs of abating. This year’s new watch crop includes some spectacularly complicated pieces.
RICHARD MILLE: RM 53-01 TOURBILLON PABLO MAC DONOUGH
Price on application
Hyperbole is rarely enough to describe Richard Mille’s watches. The latest, the second timepiece made for the polo player Pablo Mac Donough, combines a suspended tourbillon with a series of materials designed so the watch can sustain the violence of a polo match. That includes the first use in watchmaking of laminated glass and a case made of Carbon TPT.
PARMIGIANI FLEURIER: TORIC CAPITOLE
$390,000
The complex aesthetic of Parmigiani’s Toric — the round case has doubly alternating gadroons and knurling — can be traced to Michel Parmigiani’s first watch. This new one-off piece is a minute repeater that chimes the time on demand, and shows the time using a three-pronged rotating central arm that points to a retrograde scale running around the north side of the dial.
GIRARD-PERREGAUX: NEO-TOURBILLON THREE BRIDGES SKELETON
$138,000
The roots of Girard-Perregaux’s three-bridges concept go back more than 100 years, but it was 20 years ago that the company began skeletonizing its signature movement. The latest model to make use of this striking architecture is the first skeleton version of the brand’s Neo-Tourbillon, a 45-millimeter design cased in titanium and defined by its three brooding black bridges.
VAN CLEEF & ARPELS: MIDNIGHT HEURE D’ICI & HEURE D’AILLEURS
$28,300
Van Cleef extends its line of what it calls “poetic complications” with this unusual hand-wound dual-time watch. It shows local and home time via two jumping hour displays (the hours appear on rotating discs that “jump” forward every hour), at 5 and 11 o’clock on the dial, while the minutes are indicated by a retrograde central hand that resets every 60 minutes.
ROGER DUBUIS: EXCALIBUR AVENTADOR S EDITION
$194,500
The watch industry is still mourning the loss of Roger Dubuis, who died in October at age 79. The memory of the industry veteran and founder of the brand lives on in the extraordinary watches carrying his name, among them this Lamborghini-inspired piece made of skeletonized C-SMC carbon and featuring a movement made more accurate by its double sprung balances.
ULYSSE NARDIN: FREAK VISION
$95,000
The first Freak, in 2001, pioneered the use of silicon in watchmaking, and the material is used liberally in the Freak Vision, the first automatic Freak and the first to use some of the tech flaunted in the brand’s 2017 InnoVision 2 concept watch. But, like past Freaks, the new watch is distinguished by its lack of a crown and use of the movement to display the time.
GREUBEL FORSEY: GMT EARTH
610,000 Swiss francs; price in U.S. dollars to be announced
The quietly excellent Greubel Forsey studio continues to produce bombastic watches. This 33-piece edition, triple-patented GMT Earth is essentially a multiple time-zone watch but, in the hands of the company’s visionaries, it has become three-dimensional watchmaking theater. See the rotating, spherical globe showing Universal Time and the inclined 24-second tourbillon.
Sticking With the Classics
The Swiss watch industry prides itself on innovation, but it also knows the power of its timeless designs. Many of these have been refined this year to meet the demands of today’s consumer.
CARTIER: SANTOS DE CARTIER
$20,400
Cartier’s emphasis on what it calls montres de formes, or watch forms, continues this year with a return to its original wristwatch design, the Santos. The aesthetic has changed little since its 1904 debut, but the new version is a vehicle for the brand’s QuickSwitch and SmartLink systems, developments that take some of the hassle out of switching straps and adjusting bracelets. As ever, the references cover metals, straps and case sizes, many of them with Cartier’s 1847 MC in-house automatic, including a new Large model, shown, in 18-karat rose gold.
MONTBLANC: 1858 MONOPUSHER CHRONOGRAPH LIMITED EDITION 100
$30,000
Montblanc’s Minerva watchmaking atelier is legendary among collectors. The German company uses the Swiss watchmaking operation to produce handcrafted movements for classic-looking pieces like its 40-millimeter 1858 Monopusher Chronograph, which this year has been released in smoky green — an early indication of a 2018 design trend.
OFFICINE PANERAI: LUMINOR DUE 3 DAYS AUTOMATIC ORO ROSSO — 38 MILLIMETER
$15,300
The industrywide trend toward smaller watches finally has arrived at Panerai, whose latest Luminor Due is 38 millimeters in diameter, making it the smallest watch that the Florentine company has ever made. In red gold, with an ivory dial and blue numerals, and on a blue alligator strap, it also indicates that Panerai is courting women more actively than ever before.
HERMÈS: CARRÉ H
$7,725
Hermès’s S.I.H.H. debut will be remembered for the return of the Carré H, a creation of the lodestar designer Marc Berthier. The prolific Frenchman has enlarged the watch and added an array of facets and finishes to the dial, alongside graphic numerals formed from an exclusive new font. It’s powered by a Hermès in-house movement and comes on a Barénia leather strap.
AUDEMARS PIGUET: ROYAL OAK OFFSHORE SELFWINDING CHRONOGRAPH
$27,700
The Offshore, the sportier, heavier-set alter ego of Audemars Piguet’s (genuinely) iconic 1972 Royal Oak, debuted in 1993 when Swiss watchmaking was getting back on its feet after the ravages of the Quartz Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. In its 25th-anniversary year, the Offshore now returns in its original guise as a muscular 42-millimeter stainless steel chronograph.
JAEGER-LECOULTRE: REVERSO TRIBUTE DUOFACE
Price on application
Jaeger-LeCoultre, the favorite of polo players, and the Argentine bootmaker Casa Fagliano combine again to create one of the Swiss company’s Art Deco Reversos. The watch’s reversible pink-gold case has two dials — slate gray on the front, silvered on the reverse — that show different time zones, and it comes on a two-tone cordovan leather Fagliano strap.
A. LANGE & SÖHNE: 1815 HOMAGE TO WALTER LANGE
47,000 euros; price in U.S. dollars to be announced
The news of Walter Lange’s death overshadowed S.I.H.H. last year. The memory of the man who brought fine watchmaking back to Glashütte, Germany, in 1990 was the inspiration behind this one-off stainless steel piece, which features jumping seconds. It will be auctioned for charity; limited-edition versions in precious metals also will be made.
The Independents
Independent Swiss watchmakers always have been responsible for many of the most unconventional timepieces seen at S.I.H.H. The squad of 17 independents, five of them new to the event this year, gather at the show’s Carré des Horlogers area.
URWERK: UR-210 BLACK PLATINUM
$155,000
Urwerk’s revolving satellite complication shows time by what it calls “wandering hours,” three prongs that extend along a retrograde minutes scale. Every 60 minutes, these rotate in 1/10th of a second, the blink of an eye, to start the new hour. Only 20 of these pieces will be made in platinum, coated with DLC (diamond-like carbon), and in titanium.
H. MOSER & CIE: ENDEAVOUR TOURBILLON CONCEPT
$69,000
In the latest iteration of its Endeavour watch, H. Moser & Cie has added to its trademark Funky Blue dial an opening that reveals a flying tourbillon. Despite producing only 1,200 watches a year, the brand develops and produces its own hairsprings, the spiral that sits at the heart of a watch mechanism.
RESSENCE: TYPE 2 E-CROWN CONCEPT
Price to be announced
The mechanical Type 2, recognizable by its revolving dial, will be joined this year by Ressence’s e-Crown technology, an automated autonomous electronic system that automatically sets the watch to the correct time. Wearers can connect their timepiece to an app so it can be adjusted by location. Or the system can be switched off, making the watch almost conventional.
FERDINAND BERTHOUD: CHRONOMÈTRE FB-1R.6-1
$245,000
Backed by Chopard, Ferdinand Berthoud has made good ground since its 2015 introduction. Its latest haute horlogerie piece is a regulator (a watch with non-coaxial hour and minute hands), that deploys an old-school fusée-and-chain transmission that can be seen through a pair of lateral portholes in the watch’s carburized stainless steel case.
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