2017 Review of Best and Worst Watch Brands
The All-time And Worst Of SIHH 2017
The Lookout man Snob Weighs In On The Highs And Lows Of SIHH 2017
In that location are two really big chief events in the watch world every year in Switzerland. The really big one is Baselworld, which has been going on for decades, and which is where the vast, vast majority of Swiss and other watch brands show their wares to an eager public. The other is the Salon International Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH, which got started all the way back in 1991 when Cartier, forth with Gerald Genta, Daniel Roth, Piaget, and Baume & Mercier decided to go off in a huff and have their own fiddling party in Geneva, far from the madding crowd of Baselworld. 1 wonders if there isn't a curse over the whole thing – Genta and Roth have been consumed past Bulgari; Baume & Mercier is on life support; Piaget struggles to brand anyone who's not French, take their watchmaking seriously (and to be fair, more people should but Americans peculiarly, who seem to be terminally insecure equally a nation well-nigh their masculinity, continue to find the notion of thin-and-elegant both likewise effeminate and too European) and Cartier … is Cartier.
A Pinkies-Out Affair
Be that as it may, the Salon has generally grown over the years, and though information technology's however very much a pinkies-out matter, information technology's a very well attended one. Afterwards one total day most of the brands have had their large introductions sent out blinking into the low-cal of day – is there anything practiced at that place, or is information technology the usual circular of utterly senseless, wildly expensive concept-car equivalents at one terminate, and carelessly thought through pieces for the merely well off proles at the other?
Well, if you don't have to own things, there is some interesting watchmaking going on — like F1 racing, completely unaffordable to mere mortals, but still fun to watch from the sidelines. Vacheron Constantin has just released its start full-on grande sonnerie striking scout (that'southward a spotter that chimes the hours and quarters, just like a grandfather clock) and then has uber- tourbillon maker Greubel Forsey (the two movements look quite alike from the dorsum and it makes 1 wonder who is developing what for whom, past the way). Vacheron as well has a rather fascinating astronomical wristwatch – the Celestia – which is quite beautiful, and which is besides a one-off costing most i million dollars. Lange & Sohne has an absurdly expensive new fellow member of the Pour le Merite family, in the Tourbograph Cascade le Merite – again, lovely, technically interesting, and a half million dollars.
Vacheron Celestia
IWC's Da Vincis
IWC is trying difficult to make people really like the Da Vinci family of watches and I happen to think they are not making a bad job of it. Da Vinci is a tough sell; the whole aesthetic is rooted in the 1980s and the slightly dotard, old-gent-in-the-library-with-cigars-and-cognac design of the original Da Vincis does not update well, but credit to IWC for trying. I don't mind the Tourbillon Retrograde Chronograph at all, and at around $100,000 information technology'south not stupidly expensive, just really, really, really ridiculously expensive. (A fine distinction, perhaps, simply a real one).
Panerai
Panerai as well has something interesting in a new Carbotech watch with a tantalum-ceramic move plate that comes with a fifty twelvemonth warranty and needs no conventional oils; a fascinating object, albeit at around $50,000 (now we're getting somewhere). On the other hand Richard Mille continues to demonstrate its apprehending at separating people with a lot of money, who recollect that makes them connoisseurs, from their ill-gotten gains, with the RM 50-03 split up seconds chronograph, priced at $980,000, which is and then utterly laughable that it passes to the realm of tragedy, but if it helps a few more folks in Switzerland buy the chalet of their dreams, who are we to cavil, friends?
Baume & Mercier
Lastly permit us look briefly at Baume & Mercier. This twelvemonth they accept come out with, for under $2000, some quite nice looking dive watches. Watches like these will never prepare the globe afire, merely they shouldn't effort. Alas for B&One thousand, they seem doomed to release their many attempts at stylish and affordable watches every twelvemonth, to resounding worldwide indifference. Reading some of the early reactions to their Club collection of dive watches reminds me, of course, that if you are a scout brand, yous really tin't win; try to impress with new technical innovations and you're accused of irrelevant showboating; create incremental improvements to solid existing designs and you are accused of timidity; introduce a line of affordable watches that offer a new accept on a well-trodden category and yous're accused of sterile lack of imagination.
Watch enthusiasts: we largely get what we deserve. The Salon this yr offers very little that seems a new vision for rejuvenating watchmaking, in the backwash of a pretty bad year, only maybe we shouldn't mutter about that too much either. The inherent conservativism of the Swiss may change piffling from one twelvemonth to the side by side, but the older I get, the more I'1000 convinced that's not an entirely bad thing.
Men's Watches
Watch Snob
SIHH
Source: https://www.askmen.com/style/watch_snob/the-best-and-worst-of-sihh-2017.html
0 Response to "2017 Review of Best and Worst Watch Brands"
Post a Comment