Watches & Wonders 2025! New Rolex, Patek Philippe releases, Nico Leonard, Roman Sharf & more!
Geneva
They say that third time’s a charm and this is it!
Our third trip to Watches and Wonders in the horological heartlands of Geneva, and I CAN’T WAIT!
As well as being an absolutely gorgeous city in its own right, nestled between the Alps and the Jura mountains at the shores of Lake Geneva, it is also without a doubt, the watch capital of the world.
I’m going to give you a bit of history here, so if you’re not quite nerdy enough for it, you’ve got time to go and fix a coffee before we get to the 2025 show. ;)
Watches and Switzerland have been linked together for the past 500 years tracing back to The Reformation.
The Reformation was a religious reform movement that swept through Europe in the 1500s.
This is where the split between Roman Catholic and Protestant originated, after a row about doctrine.
It hit Germany and France particularly hard, and subsequently due to the violence of war, a number of German and French Protestants moved over the border into Switzerland, which was a neutral territory.
With it, they brought their skill as watchmakers.
John Calvin, a prominent Protestant reformer led a revolution in Geneva, which made it a hospitable place for those who had fled.
He was a man who promoted austerity as part of his doctrine, particularly where appearance was concerned, and under Calvinism the citizens of Geneva were banned from wearing jewellery.
This led the jewellers, goldsmiths and enamelers to switch their focus away from jewellery and on to watchmaking because functional items were exempt from the new jewellery laws.
They had found a loophole. Praise be.
Swiss jewellers teamed up with French and German watchmakers and from the ashes of war and austerity the Swiss watchmaking industry was born.
The laws governing jewellery in Geneva were relaxed by the late 1600s so watchmaking became more and more opulent as time went on.
By the 1800s Swiss watchmaking was a seriously expanding industry, and ingenious farmers who were running livestock in the Val-De-Ruz and Neuchatel mountains in the summer, were turning their hands to watch and clock repair during the winter months to create an income.
Many of the farmers ultimately found watchmaking more profitable so moved to live in the villages that had sprung up in Le Locle and La Chaux Du Fonds which were pretty much all geared around servicing the new industrial boom.
Switzerland is now the worlds largest exporter of watches, with over 700 manufactures spread largely over Jura and here, glorious Geneva!
Watches are so prolific here, that even from where I stand here on the Pont Du Mont Blanc, I can spot Rolex, Tudor, RM, and Patek.
Fast forward to 2025 and the seriously cool Watches and Wonders is in its fifth year having become the main trade show in Geneva since the downfall of Baselworld, which last opened its doors in 2019 after haemorrhaging brands thanks to conflicts regarding provision for exhibitors and also exorbitant pricing which was decreasing foot traffic as nobody wanted to sell a watch in order to afford a beer.
Even though W&W is technically a new-ish show in the post Baselworld era, it’s actually well established as it’s a rebrand of SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) which has been in operation since 1991.
New name, same party, so on with the show.
2024 Recap
2024 gave us a pretty decent crop of new toys to lust after.
Patek went pale blue denim with the decidedly tasty Nautilus 5980/60G and Aquanaut 5164G but alas, nothing sporty in steel last year.
Rolex dished up a monochrome GMT-Master 2 with a black and grey bezel, introduced some new and tasty Day-Dates, particularly the Ombre, and launched probably my unexpected favourite pair of the show - the RBR black and white MOP dial Daytonas - Marmite, but I love em.
They also released a full yellow gold Deep-Sea. <crickets chirping>
Tudor introduced a Black Bay 58 GMT and a trio of monochrome “Black Bay Black” models which ditched the guilt and pleased the fans.
UN gave us both an excellent meet up to chat watches, as well as the inimitable Freak Nomad which was one of my personal stars of the show.
Overall, 2024 was a very safe and very attractive set of new releases, but, and this is no particular criticism, there was nothing spanking new and innovative that blew my mind from the bigger brands.
Granted we’re in a global economic slump at the moment, and the watch industry is being affected much like the rest of the world, but Im half of the opinion that something needs to drop that is so far removed from changing a bezel colour that it blows our skirts up.
I’d love to see a whole new line of something drop in Geneva, but having said that and been treated to some of the mock-ups and photoshop dream drops, im going to have to say probably not a new Rolex “Land-Dweller”
What do I want? I’ll know it when I see it, and that’s part of the excitement of the show for me.
Apart from the obligatory nose around Rolex, Patek and Vacheron, I’m going to be keeping my eye out for Bvlgari, Moser and Ressence as they seem to be quietly and pleasingly bonkers with some of their innovations.
Less bonkers but always a treat, Piaget and Czapek are on my hit list for a nosey and I can never resist the terminally underrated LUC Chopard offerings either.
I’m also hoping to get a good look around Panerai, partly in the fond hope that they’ve seen sense and brought back the icons, and partly to see if anything changes between this year and next under the new CEO of the brand Emmanuel Perrin following the exit of Jean Marc Pontroue.
They really are my Kryptonite. Love the brand, don’t love what’s happened to it over the past few years. Fingers crossed for a revival.
Other than that, I’m hoping to meet a few fellow watch-nuts to drink beer and discuss our horological hopes and dreams while bringing it all to your screens at home!
LETS GO!