At the mention of Richard Mille, classic cars don’t exactly spring to mind. The watches are all about advancement through the use of the best materials, so why would they be the driving force behind an event meant to celebrate the elegance of vintage machines?
The SIHH 2017 was my 19th attendance to the Geneva-based fair. What a pleasure to tour the inescapable Geneva Haute Horlogerie rendez-vous, which has been great vintage indeed! Here’s my top ten favorite watches, after over 2,000 pictures shot. These are presented without specific order, focusing on gents watches (no mention therefore of the magnificent jeweled watches from Cartier, Piaget or Van Cleef and Arpels). A tough choice but as we had to pick ten, here we go with my personal highlights…
By Martin Green
Time flies when having fun! That certainly goes for Urwerk, who celebrates this year its 20th anniversary and does so with the UR-T8 which they launched at the SIHH. The brand has come a long way in those twenty years, creating watches like the UR-103, UR-1001 and the EMC Time-Hunter. A signature feature of many of them are of course the three cone shaped discs indicating both the hour as well as the minutes, brought together by a stroke of genius. Of course, this complication is also present in the UR-T8, because what would a 20th-anniversary piece be without it?
With every passing SIHH, I find myself increasingly disinterested with everything that isn’t a time only or an ultra complicated wristwatch. On one end of the spectrum, what you get is the purest expression of a company’s design philosophy, while the other often provides a perverse pleasure in trying to rack your brain around the technical challenges the company has had to overcome. Very few watches tend to be both of these things. But when they are, they’re something extra special. Here’s one of them.
Launched with great fanfare in the middle of last year – see our introducing article – the Piaget Polo S was both a breath of fresh air for Piaget and, at the same time (and unfortunately) the most controversial watch of the year 2016. This is the sad part of the story. This watch is great… alone. But it lives in a market full of competitors. It seems that Piaget heard the complaints and for the SIHH 2017, some new limited editions have been showed, the Piaget Polo S Black ADLC / Rubber 3-hand and chronograph – a world of difference… And that’s were the deal becomes pretty interesting.
The SIHH 2017 is over and we’re left with mixed feelings. If all SIHH brands knew how to make us smile like A. Lange & Söhne seems to be able to do every year, there wouldn’t be any issues. This year, A. Lange & Söhne showed their 1815 Annual Calendar watch, and it immediately became […]
As you may know, last week we were busy at SIHH reporting on all the new releases, but this week we are back with some great vintage pieces for you. The timepieces range from simple two-hand dress watches to classic multi-scale chronographs, with brands like Rolex, Omega, and Jaeger-LeCoultre all represented. Read on to see the full selection.
SIHH 2017 has come to a close and the Executive Editor takes time out over the weekend to ponder his Top 5 SIHH 2017 picks. Overall, prices have trended down to more manageable but still not completely accessible levels; that said, this new development has made several brands more interesting from an accessibility standpoint and this group of…
If you read Monochrome on a regular basis, you should know that the Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda 1950 is a favorite of ours. Reasons are simple: it is a superb watch, with a great design, both elegant and slightly original (it sets apart from the masses of dress watches, without being too original) and it features a great, technical and hand-finished movement. For this 2017 edition of the SIHH, the brand comes with a great gift: the Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda 1950, now in steel (good for the wallet), still with the same micro-rotor movement and its beautiful decoration (good for amateurs) and with a few updates. Overview.
How often do you need to explain your love for watches? I’ve noticed that I don’t mind explaining why I like watches so much, or explaining what I am exactly doing all day as a watch journalist. It is understandable because – believe it or not – not everyone is into watches or even familiar […]