financetom
News
financetom
/
News
/
SIHH 2019: Candy coloured, retro, aircrafts-inspired and gender neutral are the new mainstream in luxury watches
News World Market Environment Technology Personal Finance Politics Retail Business Economy Cryptocurrency Forex Stocks Market Commodities
SIHH 2019: Candy coloured, retro, aircrafts-inspired and gender neutral are the new mainstream in luxury watches
Jan 18, 2019 7:26 AM

The world’s foremost luxury watch fair, the 29th edition of SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie), which is underway in Geneva, offers some interesting insights into the world of luxury horology.

It reinforces the fact that marque horology brands prefer the more traditional offline method of selling handcrafted beauties (going by ambitious plans of retail stores that are being unveiled at the fair) rather than the ecommerce route.

Buying watches is the ultimate luxury experience that can only be recreated in a brand’s experiential stores, or so goes the thinking. More significant is the fact that new ideas in the watch industry, which have been floating around the market for a couple of years, are now getting entrenched.

Piaget SIHH

Dials as Colour Canvases

Painted dials have always been restricted to limited editions. In 2019, however, R&D with dials is going mainstream and this doesn’t just include conventional hand-painted exquisiteness. The smoked salmon pink dial of the retro Montblanc Heritage Pulsograph (a doctor’s watch that can read your blood pressure) is an example.

A Lange & Sohne Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon

Audemars Piguet’s ‘Royal Oak Jumbo Extra Flat’ and A Lange & Sohne’s ‘Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon’ share the salmon pink hue. The blue guilloche (engraved) dial of Jaeger le Coultre’s new collection; the blue-on-blue piece in Audemars Piguet’s 11.59 collection with deep-blue printed argenté dial that has a recess, a hinged cuvette with an engraving of Lange’s headquarters and a hand-engraved balance cock with blued lines; as well as Vacheron Constantin’s elegant deep blue Patrimony dress watch, are indicative of the coloured dial trend.

A Lange & Sohne salmon pink

Montblanc 1858 Geosphere’s ‘khaki’ green dial is paired with a green canvas strap or a tan brown leather strap, which broadens its sartorial appeal. But it is left to Swiss watchmaking brand Richard Mille — famous for brightly coloured watches — to catapult this trend to new heights with their Bonbon collection. The technicolor watches have a dial with a range of colours referenced from cotton candy and sugary fruit gummies. Pieces from the new Bonbon collection start at $122,000.

Montblanc khaki green watches

Ulysse Nardin is ready to introduce its limited edition erotic watches to a bigger market but in far more understated versions. The 10 erotic watches unveiled at SIHH display the brand’s long-standing tradition of exceptional erotic watches with moving Jacquemarts (animated, mechanised wood or metal figures that strike the hours on a bell with a hammer) on the dial.

Ulysse Nardin mermaid watch

They are hand-painted by Italian erotic comic book artist Milo Manara and are inspired by a mythical story of a mermaid and a pretty young woman who encounter each other underwater. Their love story has a very unusual witness: a shark, who appears on some of the dials.

Blast from the Past

‘Inspired by nature’ is a trend that is seeing many takers, among them Montblanc, a brand known to be spot on with inspirations drawn from a larger social-political context, as issues of sustainability and preservation of natural resources take centre-stage. Their ‘1858 collection’ is inspired by the adventurous world of mountain exploration and is a reinterpretation of the old Minerva pocket watches from the 1920s and the 1930s. It combines a vintage-looking bronze case — a natural element that changes over time — and in-house complications.

Montblanc 1848 collection

Cartier announced the re-release of its Tonneau watch in platinum and pink gold. They looped back 113 years into the past and returned with the Cartier Tonneau, which was originally released in 1906.

Cartier Tonneau watch

Pilot and Diver Watches

This year, IWC Schaffhausen will release a series of pilot watches in its Spitfire family, among them the ‘The Longest Flight’ limited edition of 250 timepieces. The edition has been designed for pilots Steve Boultbee Brooks and Matt Jones, founders of England-based Boultbee Flight Academy, who will make aviation history with the first round-the-world flight in a restored Silver Spitfire in summer 2019, to achieve the distinction of being the world’s longest flight.

IWC pilot watch copy

The watch marries the patented timezoner mechanism with an IWC-manufactured automatic movement. It can be set in a different time zone by a simple rotational movement of the bezel. The hour hand, the 24-hour display and the date rotate automatically at the same time. The black dial, stainless steel case and textile green strap ensure that the technical vibe holds strong.

IWC spitfire

Panerai has dedicated the year to nautical watches. But the new diver watches have fashioned plastic straps, which feel more like textile and have been created entirely from used plastic bottles (each strap reusing three bottles worth of recycled plastic). Variants include the ‘Marina Militare’ which is a tribute to their long-standing affiliation with the Italian Navy, and has a new material called BMG-TECH, made of aluminum, titanium, nickel and copper, making it impervious to corrosion.

JLC Blue

Gender Neutral

Some watchmakers are wearing their politically correct beliefs on their sleeves by packaging a few of their timepieces as ‘unisex’ and rejecting gender labels. Among them is Audemars Piguet’s newest Code 11.59 collection, with five complications and three new calibers: a self-winding contraption with seconds and date indicators, an integrated column wheel chronograph with flyback function and a self-winding flying tourbillon.

Vacheron Constantin’s Patrimony dress watch

The new caliber 4302, an automatic time-and-date movement, has a dedicated 22k gold winding rotor and a 70-hour power reserve. The most magical element of this collection is the rose-gold perpetual calendar, featuring a truly magical aventurine dial recalling a starlit sky.

The process of manufacturing aventurine glass originated in 17th century Venice, a material often used on ladies’ watches. Today, the glass is obtained by introducing black copper oxide and cobalt during the cooling phase, which colours the glass in blue and produces a constellation of mineral particles.

Richard Mille Bon Bon

Cartier has expanded its square-dialed Santos collection into a unisex range with an updated Santos-Dumont in two-tone pink gold and stainless steel and all-pink gold. Inspired by the original 1904 design, it incorporates a slimline, high-efficiency quartz movement, which allows for a thinner, more comfortable-to-wear watch, said to be hit with younger buyers looking to invest in a high-end watch.

Deepali Nandwani is a journalist who keeps a close watch on the world of luxury.

Comments
Welcome to financetom comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Related Articles >
US Dollar Price Action Setups: EUR/USD, AUD/USD, USD/CHF Levels to Watch
US Dollar Price Action Setups: EUR/USD, AUD/USD, USD/CHF Levels to Watch
Jun 4, 2024
US Dollar Setups: (EUR/USD, AUD/USD, USD/CHF) A path for a lower dollar comes into view as data deterioratesEUR/USD in focus ahead of ECB cutDollar bulls look for a lower AUD/USD as risk appetite wanes, iron ore prices easeSwiss franc advances at pace but overheating warnings flash red A Path for a Lower USD Comes into View as Data Deteriorates There’s...
USD/JPY Below 156.00 on US Dollar Weakness, US Jobs Data Remains Key
USD/JPY Below 156.00 on US Dollar Weakness, US Jobs Data Remains Key
Jun 4, 2024
Japanese Yen Prices, Charts, and Analysis US ISM PMI highlights weak manufacturing activityJapan spent over $62 billion propping up the Japanese Yen. Recommended by Nick Cawley Get Your Free JPY Forecast The latest Institute for Supply Management (ISM) data released yesterday reveals that manufacturing activity in the United States continues to contract for the second consecutive month and the 18th...
Dollar declines after weak data
Dollar declines after weak data
Jun 3, 2024
The US dollar lost ground against most major rivals on Monday following weak data which triggered new speculation about the future of monetary policies. The US personal spending data released boosted the odds of Fed interest rate cuts this year. And earlier today, the ISM manufacturing PMI fell to 48.7 in May from 49.2 in April, digging deeper into negative...
Dollar holds ground above two-month lows ahead of US labor data
Dollar holds ground above two-month lows ahead of US labor data
Jun 4, 2024
Dollar rose in European trade on Tuesday against a basket of major rivals, holding its ground above two-month lows and on track for the first profit in four days. The gains are stymied by the declining US 10-year treasury yields following weak US data, which signaled slowing GDP growth in the second quarter. Now traders await important US labor data,...
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.financetom.com All Rights Reserved