The world's finest watchmakers pulled out all the stops at this year's SIHH fine watchmaking fair, combining imagination with craftsmanship to create timepieces as elegant as they are technically accomplished. Here's a pick of five of the most eye-catching men's watches presented at the event
The Audemars Piguet "Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar" is a striking watch with a yellow gold case and a new automatic caliber 5134 movement. The case is made from 18-karat yellow gold, contrasting with the blue "Grande Tapisserie" decorated dial, patterned with three-dimensional squares.
The Richard Mille "RM 67-01 Automatic Extra Flat" watch has a barrel-shaped case with an ultra-flat design. This model is meticulously crafted, with over 215 machining operations required to make each case. The watch runs on the CRMA6 automatic movement, visible through the dial’s cutaway skeleton design. This watch is just 7.75mm thick.
The A. Lange & Söhne "1815 Tourbillon Handwerkskunst" rounds off celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ferdinand Adolph Lange, founder of A. Lange & Söhne. It combines two of the watchmaker’s patented mechanisms, seeing a tourbillon with a stop-seconds device (first seen in 2008) twinned with a Zero-Reset function (developed in 1997) allowing greater precision when setting the time. This exceptional timepiece uses a Lange manual-wind L102.1 caliber movement, assembled and decorated by hand.
The Montblanc "Heritage Chronométrie Date by Hand" watch has a new date complication designed and developed in-house. Here, the date is shown on a disc rather than in a window, making the date scale easier to read. This watch is powered by an automatic mechanical movement and has a power reserve of 38 hours.
The Jaeger-LeCoultre "Reverso Tribute Gyrotourbillon" celebrates the 85th anniversary of the iconic "Reverso" watch. Using the Jaeger-LeCoultre manual-wind caliber 179 movement, this highly technical model has an entirely cutaway rear face. A day/night indicator is positioned at 11 o’clock, and seconds are tracked by a graduated disc rotating to the rhythm of the Gyrotourbillon.