Trend - A Year in Review (part one)
WORLDTEMPUS - 28 December 2012
After what seemed like just a few days after Christmas, the industry got on the road and headed to Geneva for the SIHH in January, excited to see the year's first new offerings. As usual, there were many beautiful and exotic products to discover.
Almost twelve months later, what still sticks out in my memory from that fair are the many creative timepieces that Richard Mille introduced, in particular the RM 056 Sapphire Felipe Massa, which is a true masterpiece of ingenuity for just a handful of very wealthy collectors. Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced Diane Kruger as the new face of its brand along with a timepiece that represents a ballet of mechanical beauty: the Duometre a Spherotourbillon. And Montblanc surprised the watch world with the TimeWriter II, a very logical solution to high-frequency chronograph measurement.
The GTE Superwatch awarded independent boutique brands for their courage: the Cabestan Trapezium for design and the Heritage Watch Manufactory for Caliber HWM 880 on the technical side.
February was spent for most of the media and some of the brands scrambling to after-evaluate the SIHH and simultaneously prepare for Baselworld all at the same time thanks to the short period of only six weeks between the fairs. This was due to Baselworld's need to get the massive reconstruction of Hall 1 accomplished in time for 2013's (later) edition. It was a crunch, but somehow everyone survived and many incredible things were shown at the fair, such as HYT's H1, a new way to tell time using liquid.
HYT
Glashutte Original was the second-time sponsor of Germany's most exciting Hollywood-style event: the Berlinale. Though this film fair is normally unrelated to watchmaking, the Glashutte-based brand pulled out all the stops to bring fine watchmaking to a new public.
As predicted, cold March weather accompanied Baselworld, which was for the first time accompanied by Worldtempus's own mini Twitter site in conjunction with Jaquet Droz. More visitors, media coverage and - what seemed like more - watches than ever graced this 95th edition of the world's most important watch fair. You can read what went down here.
Three days after the year's biggest event closed its doors, I boarded a plane to Kathmandu to witness something extraordinary: our planet's first Sherpa watchmakers. Accompanied by world-renowned adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and, the Sherpas' boss Michael Kobold as well as his American head watchmaker, I discovered that horology has many faces.
As April flowers turned into May showers, our attention turned to the tennis courts: in Estoril, Roland Garros, and naturally Wimbledon. Tennis seems to have become the greatest unexplored sport for watch brand ambassadorships, and many marques announced new "faces" who chase the fuzzy yellow ball. Could that be thanks to our own Miguel Seabra?
In June, Audemars Piguet celebrated 40 years of the Royal Oak in New York City and Paris, Jaquet Droz celebrated its historic android roots and I donned a modern classic for a month of test, wearing the Urwerk UR-110.
Tomorrow, we'll reminisce about the second half of 2012. Be sure to catch it!
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