What Geneva Watch Days Is Really Like

There’s a different vibe to Geneva Watch Days compared to Watches and Wonders. One is very much a structured event: held within the city’s Palexpo (albeit with other adjacent shows cropping up at the same time) and featuring all the usual suspects, from Rolex to Grand Seiko. Watches and Wonders is gloriously Swiss in its formality, with neat crowds, everyone in impeccably tailored suits and ties, appointments timed down to the minute, and Champagne practically on draught. This is how horological business is meant to be conducted in the land of precision, and conventions are there to be strictly followed.

Geneva Watch Days is much more of a maverick that occasionally likes to go off-piste. Founded in 2020, it’s still quite structured, but with lots of diverse events happening in different parts of the city – although most of the brands are concentrated in the Beau Rivage hotel, right in the city centre next to the lake.

Geneva Watch Days is not really a structured show as such; instead each brand takes a room (or a suite, for the well-funded ones) and turns it into a meeting room or exhibition area. You’re welcome to wander around all the rooms and make appointments with brand representatives if you want to take a closer look or do a deal. Get out of the hotel, and you’ll find all sorts of weird and wonderful brands hosting their own functions in different places too. It feels like much more like a musical festival than a classical concert, and there’s a big emphasis on reaching out to the public – even getting kids involved in watchmaking.

Most importantly of all though, it’s the brands themselves who tend to be the outliers, filled with people who like to do things differently (and that often includes not wearing a tie, or believing that watches exist principally to tell the time).

That’s not to say that you don’t get your fair share of fizz and canapés: the Geneva Watch Days inauguration party on Wednesday night is legendary, held in a white marquee opposite the Beau Rivage hotel. It feels a bit like the best wedding you’ve ever been to – where the most honoured guests are actually on people’s wrists and the conversation is universally interesting.

And what makes that party particularly memorable is the fact that absolutely everyone is there, in the same room (or rather, tent). In total, around 17,000 people now descend on Geneva for Watch Days every year, to see about 400 new launches.

On Wednesday night, you mingle with CEOs, founders, content creators, PRs media, dealers, and renowned collectors. It’s the horological equivalent of being at the Oscars party, with celebrity-spotting available around every corner. And of course, like every good party, there’s an after-party. The Leopard Room under the Hotel d’Angleterre is the watchmaking world’s answer to the Jungle Room, and for those seeking a budget option – which is always relative in Switzerland – there’s the Grand Duke pub around the corner. 

Not everything is centred around the Beau Rivage area though, as all sorts of boutiques pop up around the city – particularly in the old town – with their own activities, shows, and concepts. You can even immerse yourself in the world of watchmaking over lunch, if you head to a new lakeside café called the Breitling Kitchen (they do a mean steak tartare). As they put it themselves, it’s the “place to B” (sorry)…

The experience of being in the city during Watch Days is a truly immersive one. You can take part in workshops, and even have a go at making a watch. An auction of 16 experiences donated by some of the exhibitors even raised a six-figure sum for the Geneva Watchmaking School, which will fund scholarships for young watchmakers. The whole city thrums with the sheer creative energy of the industry.

And Watch Week definitely encourages that creativity. Nothing is off-limits. One of the highlights, for example, was examining the Byrne watch, where John Byrne – who sadly passed away earlier this year – created a complication that changes the look of the dial every 24 hours. The story of how it came into being is just as compelling: he was inspired by an evening at the ballet, where one scene placed dancers behind each other, alternating them so quickly that it looked like a single dancer’s face was constantly changing.

This made him wonder if the same effect could be achieved on a watch face – and the result is a patented process (known as the GyroDial) that can be almost infinitely personalised. The brand produces around 50 pieces a year, with one customer – who obviously enjoys his time at the casino – specifying that the numerals should transform themselves into hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. The latest release is an amazing world timer, where the names of the cities constantly change: based on the GyroDial Zero, which exposes the unique movement.

That’s the sort of thing you get at Watch Week, with some very top-end watchmakers, such as Daniel Roth – who came with the Extra Plat Rose Gold Gilt, just 7.7 millimetres thick – exhibiting alongside more accessible brands.

Unimatic, for example, showed a very sleek new 36mm Modello Cinque watch – in contrast to their normal dive watch aesthetic – as well as a delightful panda (dial that is, as opposed to bamboo-eating pet).

But one of my favourites was their soon-to-be-released ‘truffle’ watch based on the Modello Uno: in a distinctive beige-brown hue that pays tribute to the famous tuber often found in the Langhe area of northern Italy.

Another prominent Italian brand was Laboratorio Gaga, which arrived with their new titanium version of the Labormatic and Aqualab dive watch: all carrying the distinctive design language of renowned London-based artist Mo Coppoletta. 

There were plenty of other sneak previews and special editions throughout the Watch Days, underlining the quirky and individual nature of the event – as well as the overwhelming demand for personalisation that is a real trend of the industry now. Ironically, it's the smaller brands that are in the best position to cope with that.

Another trend is of course for smaller watches, and in that vein Bremont showcased a new 35mm version of their Terra Nova jumping hour watch – which to my mind works a lot better than the current version, as it leaves a lot less empty space on the dial. The Frosted version was particularly eye-catching in white, and there’s even a Frosted Pink version available for the adventurous. Bremont’s CEO Davide Cerrato wore the new Burgundy version: another show-stopper.

Oris even came out with a 29mm Big Crown Pointer Date; their smallest watch in recent memory. And it seemed to get a lot of people very excited.

Similarly the trend for stone dials continues, and one company that has made it their speciality is Dennison. In Geneva, they took it one stage further by presenting the ALD elements dial. It uses their signature cushion case but combines four natural stones with one dial: Tiger’s Eye, Lapis Lazuli, Onyx and Amazonite.

These are all individually cut and then assembled into a distinctive jigsaw-like pattern, meaning that no two are exactly identical. 

Fears showed off their very first perpetual calendar watch, based on the Brunswick 39, which is a serious statement of intent from the British brand. It packs an automatic Dubois-Depraz movement developed especially for it, with the moonphase complication being the most complex watch that Fears has ever made – as well as the most expensive (at over £26,000). Holding it, you see that it’s a beautiful work of understated elegance, that absolutely merits its price tag – there’s even a solid 18 carat gold rotor visible through the display case back, and it’s only around 10mm thick.

It’s the goal of many brands to move gradually upmarket, and while this is unquestionably a big jump from Fears, there has been a lot of justified interest – and crucially the British company has no plans to abandon its traditional loyal customer base by limiting supply of more affordable watches.

Geneva Watch Days isn’t exclusively the preserve of independents though. Zenith was one of the bigger brands represented, using the event to launch their first three-hand version of the Chronomaster collection, powered by the legendary El Primero movement. The result is a very simple but classy sports watch.

It’s hard to pick a favourite among such exalted company, but the Laurent Ferrier Classic Moon Dust is up there. It looks even more stunning than the photos suggest, but innovates with a date wheel that can tell the difference between months with 30 days and 31 days – needing only one adjustment on March 1 (to deal with the varying length of February). At around £63,000, it was one of the more expensive watches I surveyed, along with the incredible Bulgari Octo Finissimo collaboration with Vianney Halter in titanium (also available in rose gold).

A similar technical innovation was pioneered by another brand that makes breathtakingly beautiful watches: Ming. This was the Ming 57.05 Comet Worldtimer, and its party trick is how it deals with daylight-saving time. Ming essentially separates the cities that observe daylight saving time from those that don’t, with the non-DST cities fixed on the inner bezel while the DST cities are on a movable outer bezel. When the clocks change, you click the bezel to advance all the affected cities by one hour simultaneously – triggering an indicator that changes from silver to red to tell you that DST is active. Starting from around £7200, this offers great value for something that’s really different.

And speaking of value, one of the most compelling stories was the return of Gallet, bought by Breitling last year as their entry level to luxury brands. The name itself is 200 years old precisely – hence the relaunch this year – and has got some magnificent history behind it: a Gallet stopwatch timed the first flight of the Wright brothers in 1903. The aviation theme has been reprised in the latest collections: Flying Officer, Multichron Pilot, Multichron Sport and Gallet Classics. Expect to pay £2,500–£5,000 for time-only models and £4,000–£7,000 for chronographs, meaning that we’re probably going to hear a lot more from this brand in future.

At the opening press conference in the magnificent Palais Eynard, attended by Swiss politicians as well as industry representatives, Geneva Watch Days organiser Jean-Christophe Babin spoke about the enduring value of the event, and in particular – which is a point that people often miss – how it perfectly complements Watches and Wonders.

“There’s no rivalry; there is space for both,” he pointed out. “The fact that there is a five-month gap definitely helps, but mostly it means that we give more brands the opportunity to be represented. If you combine the brands who show at Watches and Wonders with the other brands who show here [71 in total, a new record], that gives you a total of more than 100 different brands, at all levels, displaying their products in Geneva throughout the year: which is fantastic for the industry and fantastic for Geneva.”

The true total is actually a lot higher, as there are so many other brands represented at the pop-up events throughout the city: the Maker’s Club in the old town, for example, showcased not only master watchmaker Luca Soprana’s own exquisite watches, but also one that he has created for Desder: a new Italian brand inspired by motorsport, which has produced a triple-axis tourbillon housed within a unique case that looks a bit like the bodywork of a Bugatti Atlantique, and is currently a sponsor of the prestigious GT World championship.

The D001 needs to be seen to be believed, but the symbiosis between cars and watches has always been a close one; if you look at the side profile of the Byrne watch mentioned earlier, you see shades of the distinctive flanks of a Porsche 911.

A very early example of a 911 was parked by the Beau Rivage for most of the week, but there were two other cars outside the lobby that also stood out. The first was Bianchet’s elegant Maserati, no doubt put at the disposal of the company’s top customers after an Ultrafino Tonneau Ceramic. The second was a vintage Fiat 500 convertible – perfectly encapsulating the eclectic charm of a week like no other.