Cartier Santos 100 Unisex Watch WM503251

As the cuff watch makes its big comeback, timeless "secret" watches constellate the watchmaking heavens. Femininity always arrives at the meeting on time.
It's the season's absolute must have. The cuff watch, the watchmaking interpretation of the famous bracelet - which has basically become the it-bracelet - is appearing everywhere. In women's magazines, on the wrists of stars, in the display windows of the most visible jewellers and watchmakers: it is increasingly inescapable. Piaget is getting involved with a series of very 1970s cuff watches. The company is thus expanding its Couture Precieuse collection with mesh bracelets that highlight the historic skill of Piaget's chain makers. The sparkle of pink gold mesh, delicately hand-enamelled by hand like the delicate work of a seamstress, is enhanced by ruby red, white or turquoise mother-of-pearl.

For Chaumet, the cuff watch is a regularly re-visited great classic. A true icon, the Khesis watch has created a stir with its rice grain mesh bracelet renowned for its great flexibility and "second skin" feeling. The watch whose name means "light" is adorned this season with starry crystal, an innovative and sparkling material that is exclusively made for Chaumet.
At Graff, the cuff watch glitters with a thousand fires. Like a lacework bracelet, the Graff Lace model embodies exceptional jewellery know-how in the art of gemsetting. Lace has long been a favourite source of inspiration for Graff, which in this instance illustrates this art by almost imperceptibly entwining an exceptional paving consisting of 180 different sized diamonds on the bracelet and 104 round diamonds on the watch case and dial. A piece of jewellery that is metamorphosed into a watch and issued in a limited edition of ten watches, each totalling 44 carats.
The time of secrets

The "secret" watch provides an ideal opportunity to experiment. Year after year, the genre is reproduced with ever renewed inventiveness to dress feminine wrists with timepieces that prefer not to reveal their function. Cartier continues its exploration of extraordinary beasts with a tortoise watch whose shell made of diamond scales conceals the passage of time.
 

Chanel exalts the beauty of the stones and the passing of time with a majestic secret watch paved with a shower of diamonds in which the sun occupies the central place. This radiant sun motif, featured in the "Bijoux de Diamants" collection created by Miss Chanel in 1932 and re-visited here, serves to conceal the incessant ballet of the hours and minutes in this inspired watch harbouring an exquisite treasure… At DeLaneau, the case of the Magic Rubies secret watch displays a cloud of 664 round diamonds and 181 baguette-cut rubies set on a cover protecting a mother-of-pearl dial, also set with rubies. The bracelet sparkles just as brightly with 370 baguette-cut diamonds and 144 baguette-cut rubies. A unique piece that is precious in every way.
Indefinable beauty

These jewellery watches defy any form of classification. Their common denominator? A creative freedom that is expressed in every detail. At de GRISOGONO, jewellery watches are like sweets that are eye-candy only. The most recent of the collections designed by Fawaz Gruosi, the Sugar watch reveals an elegance which oscillates between baroque style and modernity at the whim of gemsetting gourmets. Diamonds, emeralds, orange or blue sapphires sparkle with mischief on the contours of the watches which are produced in ten different versions. The mobile gems flowing along the side of the case create a particularly striking effect.

At Qi Jewels, creative freedom is embodied in a watch collection featuring an indefinable style. Made in Switzerland for a little more than a year, the brand's creations highlight noble natural materials by integrating them into plaits and knots that are an endangered species. Their ancestral symbolism is revived in these Qi - which signifies vital energy in Chinese - eco-luxury watches and jewellery, the sale of which contributes to supporting projects protecting our planet's property and resources.
Finally, at Jaeger-LeCoultre, creative freedom blends the brand's know-how in the exercise of artistic crafts with its the mechanical expertise. The Rendez-Vous Celestial watch is as much a horological as a jewellery creation and features a zodiac calendar that reveals the position of constellations all year round through the positioning of an annual date which regulates the time display and measurement system. The Grande Maison of the Vallee de Joux enhances this instrument lapis-lazuli, a constellation of diamonds and a hand-decorated movement graced with a sunny côtes soleilles motif creating a radiant aesthetic effect echoing that on the dial.