Crystal Ball: What To Watch For At Watches & Wonders 2025

It’s hard to believe, with the proliferation of trade shows in the last few years (coming slowly out from under the shadow of the COVID pandemic and its travel restrictions) that there was a time not long ago when both the watch industry and its clients (and journalists) were wondering whether or not there was a desire, or a need, for trade shows at all. The two big events of the watch year used to be the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) which was a deliberately luxury-skewed white glove event in Geneva, and which included all the Richemont Group brands as well as, at its peak, brands as varied as Ulysse Nardin, Richard Mille, Audemars Piguet, and Girard Perregaux; followed a few months later by Baselworld, which included … well, just about everybody else, including a whole plethora of independents, as well as suppliers to the industry.

Today, the horological landscape is very different; premiumization of pricing has led to smaller numbers of watches being produced, and larger brands adopting more conservative designs and a narrower range of technical innovations. Independents have become at least as essential to  the modern watch landscape as larger established and group brands, although some of the better established indies are beginning to turn their thoughts towards their longer term prospects and legacies.

As always, the key questions for luxury watch brands are, how to maintain the perception of exclusivity in their products, and how to differentiate themselves from the competition?

This close to the start of the show, the rumor mill’s always churning faster by the hour but of course, the truth is we really won’t know what the brands have in store for us until the morning of April 1st, when most of the embargoes drop (although there are already new releases coming fast and furious this week). One thing that nobody seems to doubt, however, is that the blue chip brands will continue to largely dominate the market – Rolex, Cartier, Richard Mille, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet make up more than half of the total export value of Swiss watches, which is not just a reflection of their price structure – it’s also a testimony to the power of the brands in terms of their perceived exclusivity, value retention on the secondary market, and perceived value in terms of heritage, quality, and craftsmanship, all represented to varying degrees.

Incremental: There’s That Word Again

In general, I think we can expect this year to be, as last year was, a largely incremental one. The success of the biggest brands has in the last few years largely been built on appealing to the continuity of design and stability in terms of their basic identities – after a considerable amount of sometimes extremely expensive investment in innovating technically and aesthetically, most of the major brands have pruned their collections down to perceived essentials and the market has largely rewarded the re-establishment of more traditionally and conventionally oriented designs.

Cartier Monopoussoir, 2024

There are a number of relevant cases in point, but one excellent example is Cartier, which, after a flurry of innovative technical advances in the early to mid-2000s, returned under former CEO Cyrille Vigneron to celebrating its identity, established over more than a century, of inventiveness in basic forms. I’ve been hearing reservations about the reliance of Audemars Piguet on the Royal Oak and Offshore for most of its revenue for many years but the demand for those watches shows no signs of slackening (other than softening secondary market prices, but you can hardly lay that at the door of the Royal Oak).

Methods And Materials

This means that any actual innovations in design, materials science, and technical features are going to stand out more than ever, for the brands for whom their identity as innovators – “disruptors” as the industry likes to put it – is key. Hublot, which historically has been a brand that some serious enthusiasts have partly defined themselves by vocally rejecting, is actually one of the most consistent long-term innovators in materials science, and at LVMH Watch Week in New York earlier this year, they debuted another first – a two toned ceramic material never used before in watchmaking, and which we were explicitly told to expect more of at Watches & Wonders. Being disruptive can still be of value in distinguishing a brand but increasingly, brands seem to be aware that there has to be some real value added as well.

I don’t expect to see a great deal in terms of technical innovation this year, although I’d be more than happy to be surprised. Generally technical innovation – real technical innovation in watch engineering and movement design – is an expensive undertaking and the market often doesn’t really reward it. Such watches when they are launched are often produced in extremely small numbers at high prices, or are outright unique pieces. The Vacheron Constantin Berkley Supercomplication from last year will probably have some aspects of its design and engineering appear in wristwatches – I wouldn’t be surprised to seen some this year – and it was in addition to being a remarkable and record setting achievement in itself, an incredible catalyst for keeping the larger conversation about Vacheron going; the company is now in the enviable position of having a couple of very popular braceleted sports watch models in the 222 and the Overseas as well as a record-setting couple of supercomps unlikely to be challenged any time in the near future (or at all).

The IWC Eternal Calendar is another example from last year – I can’t think of anything less genuinely practical than a 45 million year precision moonphase complication but number one, boy is it fun to talk about and number two, it’s as important as ever for fine watchmaking to set and break records once in a while – superlatives are worth pursuing as an end in themselves, and I think we can take the observation that watchmaking need not restrict itself to the purely practical as read.

Is Ultra-Thin Wearing Thin?

Speaking of which, I think there is an excellent chance that the decade-long pursuit of new records in ultra-thin watchmaking, which, depending on how you look at it, began when Bulgari launched its Octo Finissimo Tourbillon. In general the thinnest watches of the last few years (like Bulgari’s Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC) rely on very unconventional movement architecture in which the case itself functions as the movement mainplate (although it’s worth remembering that this strategy was used as far back as 1986, by Audemars Piguet, in the Caliber 2870/reference 25643, which was at the time the world’s thinnest tourbillon, as well as one of the thinnest mechanical watches ever made.

At some point, though, you run up against inevitable obstacles in basic materials, as well as basic watchmaking – a mainspring, for instance, has to have a certain height in order to provide enough usable power to run the watch. The Ultra COSC is highly unusual in this field in that in addition to being a record setting thin watch, it’s also chronometer certified, but I think for now the market’s interest in ultra thin watchmaking as a competitive sport is pretty satiated. I don’t, however, think that the market’s interest in more classically oriented ultra thin watchmaking is at all saturated, but setting a new record in watches which were primarily designed to do just that, may not be the headlines-grabber that it used to be.

Return Of The Ladies’ Watch

One area in which I think there is considerable room for growth is in the category of traditionally designed ladies’ watches – and I’m going to mention Bulgari once again; the company debuted a new, miniature automatic movement, the BVS100, in seven new Serpenti Seduttori and two new Serpenti Tubogas watches. The movement is also going to be shared with LVMH’s other brands, which helps amortize the cost of manufacturing and development. The whole idea of ladies’ watches as a prescriptive category – that is, that it comes with the added baggage of seeming to say that women should be wearing ladies’ watches rather than conventionally masculine designs – is I think at this point, pretty much dead and buried; AP CEO Ilaria Resta has said that AP will eliminate the ladies’ watch category from its catalog entirely.

However, the market still definitely wants ladies’ watches as an option, and I think greater engagement with traditional fine watchmaking values, a la the cal. BVS100, is something we’ll see more of at the show.

Collaborations: Less May Be More

Finally, there is the question of collaborations. Some of the earliest really meaningful collaborations I can remember were undertaken at Harry Winston in the Opus series, which were launched in 2001. These were exceedingly sophisticated and very ambitious collaborations between Winston and an independent watchmaker and it was always anybody’s guess whether in any given year the watch would actually work on launch date (it took around a decade for working Opus 3 watches to be delivered, for instance) but they were absolutely a full throated vote of confidence in the idea of collaborations as fertile ground for creativity, and for exploring watchmaking and watch engineering which would have been unlikely to happen under different circumstances.

Since then, we’ve seen just about every kind of collaboration imaginable, including the more conventional collaborations between watch brands and companies outside the watch industry (automotive collaborations are certainly a permanent feature of the watch landscape). However, the idea that a collaboration is interesting in and of itself, as a collaboration, is pretty much dead in the water. Clients for this sort of thing have become increasingly satiated and are moving towards cynical and I think that while unexpected and meaningful collaborations can still charm, and surprise, and offer real watchmaking value – the latest Louis Vuitton collab with Kari Voutilainen is a case in point, at least if you ask me – but there is a fine line between intriguingly unexpected and jarringly off brand, and my guess is that we will see fewer, with the partners chosen with greater care, both at Watches & Wonders and across the rest of the year.

And PS: Rapid Fire Round

• World Time/GMT Watches: expect to see more of these at the show; both have well established mechanical solutions and offer a lot of opportunities for design variations.
• Perpetual Calendars: I don’t think AP’s new single crown, no pusher design is the last we have seen of technical improvements in perpetuals; with prototyping in software available, we may seen some more secular perpetual calendars this year.
• Chronographs and Rattrapantes: Carole Forestier once memorably told me that any idiot could design a tourbillon; “chronographs are hard” she said. That said I don’t expect any major technical innovations in chronographs from the show although I would love to see some of the high visibility brands that have never done a rattrapante, or which don’t have one in their catalog, introduce one.
• Diver’s watches: are a category that seems ever more attractive in an uncertain world. Buying one in the face of Current Events may be predictable, and introducing new models may be predictable, but as with hoarding bottled water and toilet paper when a big blow’s a-comin’ on, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Might see a bunch of new ones at the show.
• Tourbillons: I would love to see more tourbillons specifically fine tuned for chronometric superiority and delivered with actual ratings, but I’m not holding my breath.
• Luxury takes on steel sports watches: an easy route to premiumization, although you can go both ways as Vacheron’s shown with the 222. If you gold it, they will come – although the price of gold may dampen the ardor for the metal.

See you in Geneva!