Geneva Dispatch
Plane trees, leviathans, and elephants
Geneva, like many old cities of Europe, doesn’t change much. I hadn’t been there since 2018, a full six years—plenty of time for new road overpasses, skyscrapers, or public space revamps. But not Geneva, or at least the parts I saw last week. It almost seems like a city where time stands still, perhaps appropriate for such a hub of timekeeping and keeper of traditions. The same boats in the lake, the flags flapping on the Pont du Mont Blanc, the watch brand signs atop the buildings, and those weird trees. Every time I’ve gone to Geneva (and it used to be annually) I vowed to figure out what those gnarled, naked trees that line the lake walk are, but I never did. They look like Joshua trees of the American Southwest, or some wayward cacti. This year I finally did the sensible thing: I googled it. Turns out they’re called plane trees, or Platanus x acerifolia. Since I always only went to Geneva in January, they were always leafless, like rows of tortured souls reaching skyward. But this time, in April, they were starting to leaf out and took on an entirely different appearance, one of springtime renewal. As one accustomed to the grey skies, icy rain, and bare trees of winter, it was refreshing.
But this isn’t Gardener’s World here. You came for my take on the horological extravaganza of Watches & Wonders 2024, the latest edition of the annual trade event showcasing what’s new from 54 brands, plus the “pirate” companies (Rolex CEO’s words, not mine) who take advantage of the presence of thousands of journalists, collectors, and retailers to set up shop in various hotel suites and an art college across town. I won’t bore you with specs and pricing of all the new watches on display, nor will this be an exhaustive catalog of what I saw. Think of this as a peek into the peripatetic existence of a jetlagged journalist, with impressions, reactions, and opinions.
At one point, on Day Two of the show, I found myself standing shoulder to shoulder in a darkened room within IWC’s cavernous “booth,” watching a video of the British astrophysicist, Brian Cox, expounding on the nature of time itself. Much of what he said flew right over my travel-fogged and sleep-deprived brain, but then the video concluded with a presentation of IWC’s new Portugieser Eternal Calendar and I snapped awake. Here was a timepiece of unsurpassed ambition and inventiveness, capable of displaying day, date, month, and year—accurately—for over 400 years, including the capricious Leap Years of the Gregorian calendar (that skips Leap Year altogether in certain years), and showing the phases of the Moon with an additional accuracy of, get this: 400 million years. To achieve these feats, IWC used a supercomputer to run trillions of calculations, and there’s a geared wheel in the movement that turns only once in decades, or centuries, I can’t remember. The watch is housed in a 44-millimeter platinum case, and will only be built on request for an undisclosed sum. I’m not requesting.
I actually had the privilege of strapping the prototype of the Eternal Calendar on my wrist during the presentation, and when I did, something clicked in my brain. This is why I like watchmaking. It’s not about the prestige, the luxury, the daily pragmatism, the price, or whether or not I would wear it, or could afford it (spoiler alert: I can’t). This is a confluence of art, craftsmanship, imagination, and science like no other. And, should you be the scion of a Gulf state oil fortune, or founder of a vaguely sinister but wildly successful online marketplace, you could even wear it on your wrist every single day, and then pass it down to your next generation, and on and on, until the Earth itself is sucked into the black hole of our dying Sun and time itself ceases. Time is, I’m afraid, not eternal.
I had a similar thrill later in the week, but inspired by an entirely different kind of watch: an $85,000 dive watch. After two days walking the Palexpo at Watches and Wonders, on Thursday I ambled over to the Beau-Rivage hotel on a beautiful sunny afternoon. The contrast was striking—intimate suites with bay windows thrown open to the glittering lake, cool breeze, and warm sun. I was really only here to see a handful of watch brands, and the first of those was Singer Reimagined. You’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of it. The brand is only a few years old, birthed from a company that specialized in building highly modified Porsche 911 sports cars. Previously they’d turned out some innovative and quite beautiful automotive themed chronographs, but the watch front and center last week was the DiveTrack, perhaps the most original dive watch I’ve laid hands on to date.
The DiveTrack moves the entire time of day display to a secondary position, on a ring encircling the periphery of the case, while the dial and hands are dedicated to timing a dive, or rather, the entire dive cycle, from plunge to surface interval to no-fly time before a trip back home. The movement powering the centrally mounted chronograph hands is displayed through a clear caseback, a proverbial city under glass, all housed in a gargantuan, yet wearable, 49-millimeter titanium case. I was utterly captivated by this watch. It’s not often that I encounter true haute horlogerie in the dive watch space. The two concepts—high watchmaking and blunt instrument—are rarely married, besides notable examples like the Richard Mille RM-032, the Ressence Type 3, or the Blancpain X Fathoms and I basked in the presence of such a unicorn. As I was leaving, the PR person from Singer said to me, “maybe one day you’d like to take this diving?” Yes, yes I would.
We watch enthusiasts have become conditioned to expect big things from our favorite brands every year. We await the raising of the curtain on a titanium Rolex, an entirely new family of Tudor watches, a thinnest this, deepest that. So when it doesn’t happen (Bulgari did show off a new world record thin watch, for the record), we call it an iterative year, a “commercial” year, where brands play it safe and simply turn out a new color-way, a tweaked bezel, some new straps. I suspect there was a time in the history of watchmaking and especially these big annual shows, when brands were lucky to come up with anything new. Think about the Rolex Explorer or Submariner of old, hardly changed in over 50 years. The Speedmaster remains the same since the late ‘60s. Watches are supposed to be incrementally improved, stalwarts of stability and constancy in a turbulent world. This is not seasonal fashion, and I for one like the reassurance of familiarity from our favorites.
Nomos is a company I’ve long enjoyed, both up close and from afar. Based in Glashütte, Germany, they’re both the most, and the least, German brand I know. Their watches adhere to many design codes of the minimalist Bauhaus design school, and their movements are solidly Teutonic, but they also come at the business of designing and selling watches with a wit and charisma unlike its more staid compatriots, who focus on engineering prowess and tradition. Their 31 flavors of Tangente colors was a stroke of genius, with the same watch presented with a Baskin-Robbins array of dial and hand combinations. It was fun and fresh without being a reinvention.
Similarly colorful was Norqain, a young Swiss brand that has become something of an industry darling through youthful, sporty marketing, some athletic ambassadors, and an endorsement from one of the most respected of Swiss watch royalty (Jean-Claude Biver). The brand’s booth at Watches and Wonders was like walking into a mountaineering outfitter, with rock walls, attendants wearing climbing harnesses and puffy vests, and dome tents for private meeting spaces. The watches, specifically the aptly named Wild One, are refreshing in their design, with “Nortec” carbon fiber-based cases, soft rubber straps, shock-proof movements, and lots of color. While not entirely in my aesthetic crosshairs, I’d love to strap one on and go running in the Alps.
Zenith answered my prayers, bringing a dive watch back into its lineup after too many years. Correction: two dive watches, the Defy Revival and the Defy Extreme. The former is a 1:1 remake of a watch from 1969, down to its 37mm size and fluorescent orange color, while the latter is a new entrant in the “leviathan” class of divers—42.5mm with 600 meters of water resistance, nuclear-grade lume, and some sporty strap choices. Now, I’m not one to nitpick about pricing. This is all luxury stuff anyway and my pocketbook remains firmly shut, but at over $7,000 and $11,000, respectively, these will not be in my dive locker any time soon. Still, a new diver, much less two, from a brand is always something to celebrate.
Speaking of divers, and let’s be honest, it’s what I do, it was a good year for undersea timepieces. Beyond the Zeniths, the Singer Reimagined, and the solid gold Rolex Deepsea (not to mention another spin on the Tudor Black Bay), I had fun kicking tires with the new Sinn U50 Hydro with its trick oil-filled case for unmatched dial legibility and five kilometers of water resistance, the shrunken Doxa SUB 200T (surprisingly good on my big wrist), and a tweaked Oris Aquis (iteration at its most subtle). I’d also be remiss in not mentioning the rather underrated Delma Quattro, a watch that’s been around a while but one I’ve always wanted to see. The watch case clicks, bayonet style, into two different strap systems or onto a metal plate engraved with dive tables, the latter of which could be clipped onto a diving harness with a lanyard. It felt properly inventive, circa early 1970s, when dive watch brands were always looking for new ways to impress its customers through gimmicks. And I’m all for it.
Sometimes reinvention is taken a bit too far and this leads me to the proverbial pachyderm in the room: Bremont. The British company’s sweeping overhaul of not only some watches, but also its logo, its management team, and its entire ethos, was the talk of the show last week. As you remember, I was invited to Henley, England, a few weeks ago for a sneak preview of what they’ve been up to. If I’m honest, and that’s what you pay me for, it’s been uncomfortable to watch. If you know me, you know I’ve been a Bremont fan for many years. I could almost say it was my favorite brand in my earliest years writing about watches. They were coming up just as I was gaining a foothold in my own career. I befriended the two founding brothers, many of its employees, have owned half a dozen of their watches, wrote ad copy for a few campaigns, and was even featured in a couple of their catalogs. You could argue that I was too close for comfort in my capacity as a “journalist.” Regardless, it’s been with a sense of melancholy, and whiplash, that I’ve watched the recent reboot of a company I loved.
I won’t go into all the details of what has transpired. It’s been covered many places by now. The short version is, the founding brothers have been quietly displaced by the big American investors, a new CEO brought in to reinvent not only the watches, but the messaging, the production, and most importantly, the pricing. The tightrope Bremont is intending to walk now is that of rugged tool watch with a distinct “Britishness” (their words). Wait, wasn’t that what they were before? Hardened steel, chronometer grade, anti-magnetic and shock resistant movements in distinctive, wholly original designs. The company always embraced quixotic, eminently British adventures like crossing the largest islands on Earth, rowing oceans, climbing peaks, diving wrecks, driving motorcycles across continents, flying old planes, and driving vintage cars across countries. They were worn by “SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches.” And while the company was not without its missteps, Bremont was refreshingly irreverent and wholly un-Swiss in its attitudes. All that seems to be changing.
The new Terra Nova watch, the centerpiece of Bremont’s display in Geneva, is fine, if a bit generic, or perhaps “formulaic” is the right word. Gone are the Trip-Tick case, the hardened steel, the chronometer movement. Now it’s a more pedestrian case shape, with a vintage-inspired dial, some questionable design elements like a compass bezel or no sweep hand (on a field watch no less) and an off the shelf Swiss caliber hidden behind a closed caseback. It all feels a little too safe, and if you put Hamilton or Longines on the dial, no one would think twice. Aesthetics are subjective, and maybe the Terra Nova will appeal to a new crop of buyers and buoy Bremont’s sales on the back of lower pricing, but if you paid any attention to social media last week, it’s apparent that the Bremont faithful are not happy.
Add to the mix an entire redesign of the Supermarine family and now you’ve hit me in the solar plexus. What was easily my favorite Bremont watch has been rendered unrecognizable as the supreme British diver’s watch it once was. No more Trip-Tick, the sapphire bezel is gone, the distinctive dials, the excellent straps… Again, it feels too safe, not the elegantly rugged watch of old. I’ll pour one out for the Supermarine.
It’s never easy to refresh a brand, and I’m no expert, but one thing I do know is, don’t try to do it all at once. New logo? Sure. A new watch family? Go for it. Redesign a modern icon? Maybe pump the brakes. Sell off the CNC machines and put the founders out to pasture? Wow. As one old Bremont fan wrote me privately, “it feels like the loss of a dear family pet.” I don’t want to be unfair or mean-spirited here. After all, brands are businesses, and doing their best to make money for investors and shareholders. Who knows, maybe the new strategies will work. Time will tell. But going forward, I’ll be watching Bremont’s trajectory from a slight distance, with a sense of detachment, and that makes me sad. And that’s all I’ll write about it for now. It was a good innings, Bremont. I wish you well.
Going to Watches and Wonders is a privilege, one that is bestowed upon a select group of journalists, by invitation. The foundation that puts on the show covers hotel nights for us visitors (I paid my own airfare) and the brands cover a few meals. The event is comfortable, even lavish, befitting the luxury nature of modern high watchmaking and access to it is seductive. It can be a sort of golden handcuffs though. There’s an expectation that those attending from the press cover the watches and brands on display, and though not explicitly stated, with some measure of polite decorum and favorable impressions. How I got on the list this year, after six years away in the wilderness, I am not sure. I don’t write for the big industry publications much these days, and don’t even take appointments with the majority of the brands at the show. So I feel incredibly fortunate to have been invited and been able to attend this year, mainly because it enabled me to meet and catch up with so many of the friends I made over the years in the business. And of course to see some truly spectacular and inspiring horological creations. I’d love to go again next year, but that remains to be seen if I make the cut in 2025. At least I got to see the plane trees blossom.
Great read Jason and great seeing you there. I must say, six years without an invite – considering you basically invented the genre of on the wrist, underwater dive watch reviews you'd think you'd be grandfathered in at this point 😂 . I will miss the original Supermarine, as well. I never owned one but I still have a ALT-1Z from the first year they showed at Basel and after all these years, the Trip-Tick case still looks essentially new.
Jason, thank you for your candid, insightful comments, especially about our old friend, Bremont. Your perspective is why we subscribe. For our British mate, it's the passing of an era. Time, gentlemen, please.