Back To Basics: The Best Watches At Watches & Wonders 2025 Were Quiet, Small, And Smart

I’m not really a roundup kind of guy. It’s just never been my thing. Every time I try to write one, I find it incredibly difficult. But I suppose it’s part of the job and this year it felt a bit more necessary than in the past.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a colleague and got hit with the inevitable post Watches & Wonders question: “What was your favorite watch from Watches & Wonders this year?” And they made it clear—I had to pick just one. Now granted, the stakes aren’t exactly high here. It’s not like choosing where to eat with your significant other. But still, I’ve never been great at being faced with multiple choices. Diner menus give me anxiety, nevermind having to choose from the releases of 6,000 retailers, not including those who showed up to the Time To Watches exhibition that ran parallel to the event.

That said, I also think I’m the best diner dinner date—because I never order just one thing. I go full smorgasbord. Why only choose one? Life’s too short. So, that’s the mindset I’m bringing into this roundup. Kind of like how an Instagram mom-blogger starts a post with “I never do this…” right before doing exactly that—I’m doing the same here.

And I believe there are a few pieces from this year’s Watches & Wonders that deserve a closer look—more conversation, a bit more analysis, and some perspective from voices across the industry.

The Year of Bracelets: Jaeger-LeCoultre Monoface Reverso Milanese Bracelet

Throwing a bit of a curveball in here to the roundup. One of my favorite releases from the show isn’t a watch at all, it’s a bracelet. Before I dive into why this one stands out as an absolutely elite offering, it’s worth pointing out that bracelets were a big story this year.

Tudor updated the Black Bay 58 line with a new five-link bracelet and, at long last, added the T-Fit clasp. Grand Seiko finally introduced a standard production micro-adjustable bracelet on their UFA model. Rolex elevated the 1908 with a yellow gold Settimo bracelet. It was everywhere, and I think it reflects a welcome shift in the way we think about watches. They’re no longer just about the case, dial, and complications.

The bracelet or strap matters, sometimes just as much. And I, for one, love that brands are finally giving them the attention they deserve. A bracelet can make or break a watch.

Now, on to the Milanese bracelet. Jaeger-LeCoultre is inching closer to the 100th anniversary of the Reverso, so naturally, they’re laying the groundwork with a series of tributes, following up last year’s 1931 reissues. And yes, the new Duoface and Monoface tributes are solid. But my god, that bracelet. This is what us Reverso fans have been waiting for.

Mesh bracelets, otherwise known as Milanese (meaning “of Milan”) have a long history in watchmaking, and with the Corvo’s (A Milanese family who helped revive the Reverso) role in the history of the Reverso it seems beyond fitting to include this offering. The origins of this woven metal technique stretch back centuries—even as far as the Etruscans, where similar patterns have been discovered in ancient burial sites. (You can take the teacher out of the classroom but you can’t take the classroom out of the teacher — as they say).

The style saw a revitalization during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, when Milanese goldsmiths crafted intricate jewelry from coiled, hand-wound wire. A bit like chainmail, disguised as jewelry. These delicately woven bracelets and necklaces eventually lent their name to their place of origin. In the world of watchmaking, “Milanese” has since become the go-to term for woven flexible mesh metal bracelets.

The new pink gold Milanese mesh bracelet from JLC features a sliding clasp—meaning there’s no longer any need to cut the bracelet to size, which always felt borderline insulting, even a bit sacrilegious. The bracelet itself is crafted from what I can only describe as a staggering 16 meters of gold thread. That’s the length of two city buses parked end to end, a standard telephone pole, a juvenile blue whale, or even an adult Brachiosaurus. Simply put: that’s a lot of gold.

The specific weave is called pezza—Italian for “cloth”—and it lives up to the name. It’s as supple as that silk hanky your grandfather kept tucked in his jacket pocket (that was an odd comparison). What makes this bracelet even more impressive is that it’s entirely hand-soldered, link by painstaking link. I don’t envy the artisan who made it, but I sure as hell appreciate them.

The updated lug design allows the bracelet to sit flush against the case in a seamlessly integrated way, helping the watch—just 7.56mm thick—wear low and snug on the wrist.

This bracelet transforms the pink gold Monoface Reverso from something you’d expect in the boardrooms of New York skyscrapers to something you might find at Rick’s Café in Casablanca.

Priced at $41,300. For more information visit JLC.

Going Small The A Lange & Sohne 1815 In 34mm

I’ve mentioned this before, but let’s make it official: I’m not a tall guy. I could blame genetics or the coffee I started drinking at the way-too-early age of 13. Either way, 42mm is the absolute max diameter I can wear, and even then, I haven’t bought a 42mm watch since picking up my Speedy, many moons ago.

Maybe it’s a bit horologically immature, but when deciding whether I like a watch, one of the first specs I look at is the diameter. That said, lug-to-lug is probably even more important when it comes to fit—looking at you, Nomos, with your wildly long lugs on the Tangente.

So when I caught wind of the updated 1815 release from A. Lange & Söhne, I was quite intrigued. First off, the 1815 line often flies under the radar, overshadowed by the more iconic Lange 1 and Zeitwerk. But for me, the 1815 is where I always seem to land. There’s so much history baked into this line. Named after Ferdinand Adolph Lange’s birth year, the design language draws heavily from the brand’s historic pocket watches. The 1815 family includes everything from a chronograph to a rattrapante, tourbillon, annual calendar, and even a rattrapante perpetual calendar.

The time-only 1815 originally measured 38.5mm in diameter and 8.8mm thick, right in that sweet spot. (We really need a better term than “Goldilocks zone.”) It was wearable on almost any wrist, and honestly, I never felt this part of the catalog needed a refresh. Plus, the original versions were all white-dialed, a fitting nod to their pocket watch heritage. So when I first saw that the new models would come in at 34mm and feature blue dials, I was… underwhelmed. On paper, it didn’t feel necessary.

But, as with many things in life, my opinion evolved. And this new 1815 quickly became one of my favorite releases of the show. Not only did it shrink in diameter, but it also slimmed down to just 6.4mm in height, embracing the “smaller is better” trend that’s sweeping across the industry. To make this happen, Lange developed a new movement: the caliber L152.1.

As much as I’d love to go deep on the movement to keep Jack proud, I’ll stick to the highlights. The L152.1 features a large balance wheel with a freely oscillating balance spring, a redesigned going train, and an upgraded 72-hour power reserve, a big jump from the previous 1815’s 55 hours.

We could talk about the finishing, but at this point, that’s expected. It’s Lange. The movement is, as always, a masterpiece. There’s nothing quite like staring into the bellows of an A. Lange & Söhne caliber, never a detail spared.

And now, with the 35mm Saxonia officially (and quietly) discontinued, this release makes more sense than it did at first glance. It fits perfectly within the current shift toward smaller, simpler, and more refined design—and I’m all in on this latest drop.

Priced at €27,000. For more information visit A. Lange & Söhne.

The Overlooked: The Alpina Heritage Tropic Proof

Vintage vibes and modern appeal—that’s the cliche name of the game these days. More brands than I care to list are digging into their archives, resurrecting designs from the past as trends shift toward smaller cases and simpler design codes. The thing is, pulling this off well is incredibly difficult. But I think Alpina absolutely nailed it. (There’s got to be a better idiom than “hit it out of the park”—but you get the idea.)

The Alpina Heritage Tropic Proof builds off the success of the Heritage Automatic model and, to me, signals a real shift in collector sentiment. We don’t need watches anymore. So why make something overly complicated when simple just works? (More on that below). But the time-only Tropic Proof, coming in at 34mm and just 9.25mm thick, does exactly that. Like a good Italian meal with just three ingredients, sometimes three hands is all you need to make something beautiful.

The original version featured cases made by the legendary Francis Borgel. If you’re unfamiliar with why that matters, Tony Traina has a fantastic deep dive that’s worth a read. The short version? Borgel made waterproof cases for the likes of Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, and Movado—his work is a cornerstone in horological history. This re-edition, with its decagonal screw-down case and angled lugs, is a loving callback to those iconic cases.

The watch comes in both black and white dial variants, but it’s the white dial that really does it for me. Alpina calls the dial finishing simply “shiny finishing”—which, let’s be honest, could use a little marketing finesse. (Not unlike Seiko calling their bidirectional winding system the “magic lever.”) Still, the finishing is a faithful nod to the original, doing its best to echo those early gilt dials.

Inside is what Alpina describes as an “in-house” hand-wound movement. The AL-480 is a new caliber for the brand, offering a 42-hour power reserve and a beat rate of 4Hz. This watch was never meant to steal headlines but honestly, it deserves way more love than it’s getting. Alpina is part of the Citizen Watch Group alongside Bulova and Frédérique Constant and the group is clearly evolving their brands with intention. Coming in just shy of $2,000, this is an everyday watch with a ton of thoughtful historical callbacks—and plenty of charm to go with it.

Priced at $1,895. For more information visit Alpina.

Chopard L.U.C. Quattro

The Chopard L.U.C. Quattro earned the last spot on my personal Mount Rushmore of releases this year. The new Quattro comes in at 39mm, down from the original 43mm. The watch first debuted in 2005, was refreshed in 2011, and last updated in 2018. It’s gone through several design tweaks over the years, but what I find most compelling is how the movement itself has endured. It’s aged remarkably well during a time when innovation is the name of the game.

While it’s not technically a time-only watch (there’s a date, small seconds at 6 o’clock, and a power reserve—now moved to the caseback), it steers clear of grand complications. It’s small and simple (to a degree). No rattrapante, no minute repeater, no orrery tracking the heavens above. Just a beautifully refined piece of mechanical watchmaking. It’s about as opulent, and as simple, as a watch can be.

The term Opulent Simplicity isn’t mine. That credit goes to Tony Traina, who unpacked it wonderfully in a recent Substack. I won’t rehash his entire explanation, but the phrase speaks volumes—especially when it comes to this strange, beautiful intersection we’re seeing between “geezer watches” and stealth wealth. To me, that’s exactly what the new Quattro embodies.

Now, when it comes to movement manufacturing, Chopard still doesn’t always get its due. Outside the truly initiated, the brand is often associated more with high jewelry than high horology. But under the hood, they can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best.

The L.U.C. collection, introduced in 1997, is named after Chopard’s founder, Louis-Ulysse Chopard. These watches showcase the brand’s in-house calibers and commitment to traditional watchmaking. As TimeZone’s Walt Odets once wrote of the Michel Parmigiani-designed L.U.C. 1.96:
“…an extraordinary development, particularly from a house often thought of, in recent years, more for jewelry watches than for significant horological craft. From the standpoint of both design and execution, the caliber 1.96 is probably the finest automatic movement being produced in Switzerland today.”

And the 2025 Quattro continues that legacy. Inside is the caliber 98.09-L, a refined descendant of the original Quattro movement. What impresses me most is the 1.885 meters of mainspring, about the height of a standard doorway, coiled across four barrels, stacked in two pairs. That’s how you get a nine-day power reserve. The new layout moves the power-reserve indicator to the back, allowing the dial to breathe. Usually long power reserves and accuracy don’t go hand in hand, but the Quattro is an exception, as it is COSC certified. As expected for an L.U.C., the movement boasts Geneva Seal finishing and a swan’s neck regulator for fine adjustment.

But what doesn’t get nearly enough attention is the hairspring. This movement uses a Phillips terminal curve, a specific shaping of the spring’s outer coil designed to keep the balance wheel oscillating as concentrically as possible. This minimizes positional error and reduces pivot friction, which allows it to deliver more consistent timekeeping across positions.

Finally the case. The watch features a bassine-shaped mid-case which, if you were curious like I was, is a design inspired by the shallow curves of a traditional French washbasin. It essentially allows the watch to get thick at the center and hug the wrist a bit more at the lugs, making it play a lot smaller than the 10.4mm thickness would have you believe.

Front and center is a deep frosted navy blue dial (navy is my term not theirs), with herringbone-shaped hour markers in rose gold. It’s a dramatic departure from previous Quattro designs, and comes across a bit less clinical than previous iterations.

All in all, the Quattro doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to. And in a year packed with noise, that might be what makes it the most compelling.

Priced at $38,400. For more information visit Chopard. 

Closing Thoughts on Watches & Wonders

At the end of the day, watches are a reflection of culture—a subset of the fashion world that keeps one foot in the realm of technological innovation, but culture nonetheless. And like all forms of culture, watches are subject to trends. Trends, by nature, come and go. I mean, Kendrick Lamar wore bellbottoms at the Super Bowl—give it time and we’ll probably see baggy shorts make a comeback in the NBA.

Many brands continue to revisit designs from eras when there wasn’t such a crisis of meaning—when risk-taking in design felt more natural than calculated. What I actually loved about this year’s Watches & Wonders is that, in a strange way, it felt a little flat. And I mean that in the best possible sense. When we’re talking about watches most people will never own, it’s refreshing to see brands embracing simplicity—returning to a more restrained, refined version of the industry.

We don’t always need 41 complications. We don’t always need 45mm dive watches. Sometimes, doing something small, simple, and beautifully executed—like making a perfect meal with only three ingredients—demonstrates just as much mastery as building the world’s most complicated watch ever could.