Candy coloured dials, crazy complications and a solid gold Rolex – the highs and lows Watches and Wo

watches

A watch that tells the time backwards was just one of the scene-stealers, a DeepSea gold Rolex diver that goes to unreachable depths, and a white gold Patek for the billionaire who wants to be down with the kids, here are just some of this year’s big watch reveals

Watches & Wonders 2024, the world’s biggest wristwatch show ended last week and was bigger than ever with 54 brands in the main arena, and dozens more exhibiting on the fringe in hotels and other venues. Anticipation was high and some beautiful new watches were launched but there were also a few clunkers.

All the major brands were there except the Swatch Group (Omega, Longines, Breguet, and Swatch among others) who rebuffed the entreaties of Jean-Fréderic Dufour, the President of the Watches & Wonders Foundation. Dufour is also the CEO of Rolex, rarely gives interviews and was unusually candid before the show calling the brands that opted not to join the main show “pirates”, and expressing something close to exasperation at Omega’s snubbing.

Despite the hype and enthusiastic press releases, this was a more muted W&W than in recent years. Most of the headlines were taken by watches far out of the price range of most enthusiasts and only a handful of new watches announced cost less than €10,000. Not surprising then that W&W 2024 has been called a ‘filler year’ by some, and others have gone further with words like “lacklustre” with many brands filling out their catalogue with new iterations of existing watches rather than offering anything new. However, with luxury watch sales down in the last 12 months it is likely many brands are in a holding pattern.

Irish Master Watchmaker Stephen McGonigle of McGonigle Watches visited and he too was quite underwhelmed: “The most interesting things I saw at Watches & Wonders this year had nothing to do with horology – I spotted a beautiful Lamborghini Countach and a black swan swimming on the river.” That said, there were a few highlights worth a closer look and some brands kept a sense of fun, notably Ulysse Nardin who had a gigantic replica movement of their Freak ‘S’ Nomad on their stand, large enough to climb into.

Firsts at Watches & Wonders 2024

Vacheron Constantin released the world’s most complicated watch with 63 different complications. The Les Cabinotiers ‘Berkley Grand Complication’ is a chunky pocket watch and uses both the Gregorian calendar, the Chinese lunar calendar and the Chinese agricultural calendar as well as chiming and acting as a stopwatch and various other feats.

The Bulgari Octo Finissimo COSC is now the world’s thinnest mechanical watch at 1.7mm, a shade thinner (and a lot prettier) than the previous record holder the Richard Mille RM UP-01 Ferrari which was 1.75mm. The Bulgari also costs one-third the price of the RM at €600,000.

Meanwhile, Piaget’s Altiplano Ultimate Concept is now the world’s thinnest tourbillon watch at just 2mm thick. A previous version of the Altiplano held the record for the world’s thinnest watch.

Rolex

Rolex are by far the world’s biggest luxury watchmaker with 30 per cent of the watch market and over €10 billion in sales according to the 2024 Morgan Stanley survey. Inevitably their releases grabbed the first headlines. The standout Rolex release for 2024 is probably the Perpetual 1908 in platinum with an ice-blue guilloché rice-grain motif on the dial. Sadly these will be produced in tiny quantities and will cost €31,300.

If there was an award for audaciousness Rolex would have won with their 17.7mm thick solid 18ct gold Rolex Deepsea weighing 320g. The regular steel Rolex Deepsea has similar dimensions but it was something of a flex by Rolex to recreate it in solid gold but still make it capable of diving to 3900m, note that a human would be crushed long before they reached that level. Yours for around CHF 49,900 (€51,300).

The only new stainless steel watch of note from Rolex is a new GMT Master II with a grey-black bezel. Virtually everyone had predicted a new Black and Red Bezel “Coke” GMT and they were disappointed. This new GMT will of course sell very well whatever the colour. Rolex meanwhile discontinued the Yachtmaster II, the fluted dial Datejust and the divisive green Palm (frond) dial.

Tudor

Not for the first time Rolex’s sister brand Tudor got a much warmer reception from watch enthusiasts. There was a lot of love for the new Tudor Black Bay 58 GMT (€4,740) with a red-black bezel, a colourway many were hoping to see in a new version of the Rolex GMT. This is slimmer than previous Tudor GMTs at 12.8mm thick and neater on the wrist at 39mm diameter.

Tudor also released an all-black version of their standard Black Bay, essentially a Rolex Submariner but for half the price. Tudor also revealed a limited edition pink dial Black Bay Chrono (€5670), and like big brother Rolex they released a solid gold dive watch – the Black Bay 58 18ct gold which will cost €33,100.

Cartier

Cartier is the second biggest watch brand in the world with over €3 billion in watch sales annually and has been a standout at the last few Watches & Wonders. This year they again released one of the most talked about watches – the striking burgundy-coloured Cartier Santos Dumont Rewind which tells the time backwards. If you read that correctly, the hands go in the opposite direction. Price, €36,000. Cartier also released new colourways of the Tank Americain in platinum and yellow gold and revived the barrel-shaped Tortue line, originally launched in 1912 including a new version of the monopusher chronograph.

Grand Seiko

Grand Seiko had two notable releases at different ends of the scale with a reworking of the Kodo Constant-Force Tourbillon that wowed everyone at the W&W 2022, and a new hand-wound movement for the Evolution 9 ‘White Birch’. As usual, the detail on the dials and the polishing is exemplary. The Evolution 9 is available in titanium (c. €10,000) and an 18ct rose gold which will cost four times as much. Here’s hoping there is a stainless steel version soon.

IWC

IWC Schaffhausen caught a good amount of attention for their new Portugieser profiles including a new Portugieser Eternal Calendar with Moon Phase which in theory can accurately tell the date for the next 45 million years. The mechanism adds a leap day every four years and every 400 years it skips three leap years as does our calendar and the moon phase is accurate to one day over the next 45m years. All the Portugieser Automatic models have had their cases re-engineered giving a more slender profile and with some attractive new colours.

Patek Philippe

There were few surprises from Patek Philippe this year with some new colours and cases being about the only changes. I doubt they will gain many fans for the new two-tone 5520RG Travel Time Alarm with its four pushers and blunt styling. Better is the new version of the Nautilus Chronograph 5980 which replaces all other Nautilus chronograph models – presented in a fetching white gold with a denim strap, it works. (c. €69,000).

Best of the rest

TAG Heuer meanwhile has long been famous for their chronographs and released their first rattrapante model (rattrapante a chronograph movement with an additional seconds hand for the chronograph function superimposed over the normal seconds hand and an additional pusher). It comes with DLC-coated titanium which allows the watch to time laps. The catch is a price tag of €130,000 which is a little out of reach for most TAG Heuer collectors I suspect. For comparison, a Zenith rattrapante chronograph can be bought for less than €8,000 on the secondary market.

Jaeger-LeCoultre released some fine new versions of their Duometre Chronograph Moon and a new Perpetual Calendar Helio Tourbillon (a triple-axis tourbillon). There is also an impressive new version of their Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar which is a picture of elegance with overall improved specs for around €27,000.

Nomos Glashüte arrived at W&W with just one watch but in thirty-one colours. The Tagente 38 limited-editions are limited to 175 pieces of each colour to celebrate 175 years of watchmaking in this small town near Dresden. (c. €2,100 from Hartmanns Galway)

Finally, some other new watches worth looking up include the new skeleton dial Streamliner from Moser, the Promenade line from Czapek, the new gold and green dial Vacheron Constantin and the Van Cleef and Arpels ‘Enchanted Nature’.