Twelve of the world’s finest watchmakers have come together to display their finest creations for timepiece connoisseurs, in the third edition of Watches & Wonders, possibly Asia’s answer to Geneva’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH).
Organized by the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, which also puts together SIHH, Watches & Wonders touts itself more as a fair to attract end customers across Asia, rather than a trade show for retailers or press. Running now till October 3 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC), about 10,500 guests are expected to view timepieces over nearly 124,000 sq ft of exhibition space.
Exhibiting brands include A. Lange & Sohne, Baume & Mercier, Cartier, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Mont Blanc, Panerai, Piaget, Richard Mille, Roger Dubuis, Vacheron Constantin, and Van Cleef & Arpels. Eleven of those 12 brands, incidentally, are wholly owned by Swiss luxury conglomerate Richemont.
To commemorate its 185th anniversary this year, Baume & Mercier has chosen to introduce two new timepieces at the event. One, the Jade Promesse watch, is an homage to Chinese culture, with its jade bezel, 61 0.65-carat diamonds, and quartz movement. The other is a new five minute repeater pocket watch – the Clifton 1830 – in red gold, and available in a limited edition of 30 pieces.
Meanwhile, Cartier is unveiling three variations on a new model called the Clé de Cartier watch, which combines two of the maison’s best-known complications, the mysterious movement and the flying tourbillon. It will also showcase its expertise in the arts and crafts of watchmaking, via demonstrations of filigree work on the Panthère Filigree watch (pictured above), which was unveiled at SIHH 2015.
A rather more unusual addition to the lot, however, is Richard Mille’s RM69 Erotic Tourbillon. As the name might suggest, the model is the brand’s contribution to erotic watch complications, via an “erotic message display,” which uses three hexagonal titanium rollers to display a random selection of 216 different erotic messages (a new one is created each time the pusher at 10 o’clock is pressed).
Click here to view the top five watches of Watches & Wonders 2015.
