Watches & Wonders 2021: the lineup

From golden ‘beach to tuxedo’ watches to smoked dials and integrated steel bracelets, taking stock of trends at the industry’s biggest virtual fair

Watches & Wonders Geneva (formerly SIHH) began earlier this week on Wednesday, and includes all the big guns. That’s close to 40 brands under one virtual roof and 400 hours of presentations! As suave CEOs (mostly French and Italian) and marketing heads line up to present the timepieces they and their teams have worked on for years, those with the best audio-visual experience and ease in front of the camera stand to win. Terms like ‘new normal’ or ‘deep dives’ are generously dropped before the presentations, and Q&A sessions are carefully manned. And as the days unfold, some strong trends emerge — the importance of e-commerce, for instance (Hermès had its brand new flagship collection, H08, available for retail online immediately after their launch). Travel is another theme, whether with IWC’s Big Pilot’s watches, Rolex’s releases or Montblanc’s tribute to mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s five-week solo trek across the Gobi Desert in 2004. There are golden ‘beach to tuxedo’ watches, integrated steel bracelets, the return of the fumé trend from the 70s, coloured experiments from Cartier, Oris and Rolex, and a focus on transparency in watches (courtesy strides in sapphire tech). Over the next few days, The Hindu Weekend will present in-depth stories on watch experiments and storytelling from the fair. But for now, here’s a round-up of the head-turners. watchesandwonders.com, April 7-13 The Escape II Absolute Sapphire is the world’s first double ‘triple-axis tourbillon’ in full sapphire case. They call it Spherion, and the six barrels powering the diamond-set double Spherion movement has nothing to hide. The machining and polishing alone takes 150 hours.