Watches & Wonders 2k25
you're absolutely allowed to make fun of me for this hobby
Prior to the world’s biggest dummies putting on a a matching set of specially made “I’m with stupid” shirts that pointed simultaneously at all their colleagues and themselves, I was planning on writing a bit on Watches & Wonders last week! One hopes that the majority of subscribers are not weirdos like me who have succumbed to the “hobby” of caring about and purchasing long-past-anachronistic luxury jewelry pieces, and therefore have no idea what that means.
Watches & Wonders is a big watch industry trade show that happens in April in Geneva. Lots of major watch brands and conglomerates participate, and tend to announce many (if not all) of their new watches for the year at or around the trade show (including Rolex, Richemont, Patek Philippe, LVMH, Grand Seiko, and many other smaller independents like Nomos, Oris, Chopard, Parmigiani Fleurier, etc.) The major holdout is Swatch group, meaning this is a week free of Omega, Longines, Blancpain, Glasshutte Original, or Breguet.
I was gonna talk about my favorite and least favorite watches of the show, and I still will, but lol it is all vastly overshadowed to the point of meaninglessness by the fact that if these moronic tariffs ever come back into play, all these watches will be let’s say 25-35% more expensive and (conservatively) I have to imagine at least 2 of the couple dozen brands at the show will be shuttered (or at least cease exporting to the US) amid the tariff-induced US recession.
But anyway, one can only sustain so much panic, let’s have fun looking at silly toys.
Assorted Honorable Mention Watches I Liked
There’s a bunch of dressy watches that are way too expensive for me to ever even ponder considering, but they’re fun, especially when they’re in precious metal and small: Rolex 1908 on the new yellow gold bracelet, A. Lange & Sohne 1815 in 34mm, IWC Ingenieuer 35mm in gold, new dial color on the Patek Philippe Calatrava Pilot Travel-time, and the Parmigiani Fleurier Toric Quantieme Perpetuel
The Vacheron Constantin Solaria Ultra Grand Complication is insane, not just for the fact that it’s a billion complications and took almost a decade of watchmaker work to put together, but because it’s actually….. kinda good looking? Both in size and in overall design/color palette?
On the actually “I could plausibly buy if I really wanted to (but probably won’t because there’s already other things higher on my wishlist (and certainly wont as long as tariffs hang over our heads))” side, I love the lilac dial of the Grand Seiko SBGW323 Kiri, and really like the refresh of the Oris Big Crown Pointer Date. The colors and the retro-modernization is a much better fit for me than the more classical look the model’s had for the last while. I’m also curious about the Alpina Heritage Tropic-proof Handwinding. It’s gorgeous, but I just don’t know much about the brand to know whether ~$2000 is a good price for this kind of thing.
Would likely be on my top five list if anyone actually wrote anything about it or I could find it on the Cartier website
I’ve seen this mentioned in about a half-dozen YouTube videos and podcasts from the show, but no website has a write-up on this, including Cartier, so I have no details???? But allegedly there’s now a small size of the Cartier Santos, which (especially in the two-tone) allegedly really calls back to the Galbée and Carée models of the 80s/90s? Let me see!!!!
Top Five
5) JLC Reverso Geographic
With the caveat of I still need data (especially price and availability!) on the small Cartier Santos, I feel like I have two brand winners for my own personal Watches & Wonders, and JLC is definitely one. They went all out on the Reverso, with a half-dozen different models at all ranges of the (inflated, tbh, but oh well) price scale. This one is so fun! I love the world time complication on the reverse side! And it looks very charmingly mid-century, which is my favorite era of JLC!
4) Zenith Blue Ceramic Chronograph Trilogy (specifically the Pilot and Chronomaster, but the Defy Chronograph is also neat)
Zenith is my second brand winner, which is much more of a shock to me than JLC (I love JLC, so the surprise is just that they committed so hard to the Reverso exclusively.) But Zenith, I’m always more mixed on! But here, the blue ceramic is so eye-catching, and—for what it is—the prices are so much more (you have to punch me for saying this) reasonable than I would expect on a celebratory anniversary model. The Pilot chronograph has always been one I’ve enjoyed, but it really works in this context, and even more surprisingly I actually love this Chronomaster! It’s not a model I’ve typically had much affinity for, but idk, something about the blue!
The Defy is fine; it wouldn’t make this top five, but it’s a solid honorable mention (and again, like with the Chronomaster, I like this blue ceramic version more than the normal Defys!)
3) Cartier Tank à Guichet
I am not as head-over-heels for this as others are, but I mean….. it’s very fun and I love the commitment to the bit of “we’re just going to straight up reissue an almost 100-year-old watch.” And it looks surprisingly good on wrist, from what I’ve seen of shots on the ground!
2) JLC Reverso Monoface Small Seconds in rose gold
Stunning. I love a Reverso, and I love rose gold, and I love the pairing of the opulence of the full gold case and bracelet with the restraint of the unadorned casebook. I’ve also heard that the bracelet is incredible, which I should hope given the price! Anyway, lovely lovely lovely, I will be opening a special $41,000 tier of this substack if anyone wants to sponsor my purchase of this gem.
1) Zenith GFJ
Again… Zenith with the surprise heaters!!!! I’m less into stone dials than others in this moment of stone-dial-mania, but I find something so magnetic about the mix of materials with the lapis center, the mother of pearl on the sub seconds, and the guilloche around the minute track. It also is hitting me at a time when I have a weird love of simple manually wound dress watches, so while this probably wouldn’t be my favorite if it hit in another year, it perfectly matches my peccadillos for now. This is a limited edition (with the resurrected chronometer movement and the platinum case) but the rumblings are there will be additional, maybe non-limited models that at least use this same caliber in the future, so we’ll see! Probably all way too expensive though, and again maybe they’ll land in a moment when my manually wound dress watch phase has gone. But still, stunning!
Bottom Five
5) Vacheron Constantin “Openface” 270th Anniversary
I don’t really like open-face designs, so this is a no for me. But I also dislike the Maltese cross dial effect that goes across this entire 270th Anniversary line, so I’m partly punishing this for the sins of the whole line in general.
4) Tag Heuer Monaco Chronograph Split Seconds
I get it’s a halo product, and in theory I’d love the F1 references (and I actually like the white ceramic case a bunch.) But I’m never big on skeletonization, and this is no exception.
3) Ulysse Nardin Diver [AIR]
In theory I can actually respect the skeletonization more here, in that it’s for a purpose: to make the alleged lightest dive watch ever. It’s just very ugly though!! I actually own a mid-90s Ulysse Nardin1 and there’s no brand that has a greater gulf between the historical style that I adore and the modern style that I detest than UN, so it ends up making me sad every time I see a new model lol.
2) IWC Pilot’s Watch Performance Chronograph Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month
It looks like a mall watch
1) Tag Heuer Formula 1 Solargraph
I am aware this is an emotional pick, and one that is now clichéd and has inspired its own counter-reaction and counter-counter-reactions. To be clear, this seems like it’s actually a good watch on its own terms! The design is fun, it’s seems well constructed. And I am pointedly not in the camp of “$1700 for a quartz watch?” Or even “$1700 for a plastic quartz watch???” Pre-tariff, I was mentally prepping myself to buy a ~$3500 quartz Cartier Tank, so whether or not that kind of price should be reasonable (it shouldn’t be, this whole hobby is so dumb and I’m so dumb for being into it), it definitely is.
No the problem is entirely one of expectations, which is: I wanted this to be LVMH’s Moonswatch. I wanted this to be a $500-or-under truly plastic watch that I could buy as a fun throwback toy. Instead, it is an entry-level real Tag Heuer watch. I not only don’t want that (and if I did want an entry-level Tag, it would not be in the stylings of the Formula 1) but now I’m mad because its existence means I won’t get the thing I actually want! And like the petulant child I am, that bugs me enough to outrank much worse watches on my silly little list!!!
Not this color, but this model