2020 is the year of the off-show without a salon. It started in January with LVMH Watch Week in Dubai, just before the world came to a halt and with it the two salons planned for April. Months of bans and uncertainty passed without any exhibitions or events of any kind. Until 26 August, when the Geneva Watch Days opened. A three-day event of presentations and (a few) events, officially attended by 16 manufacturers and unofficially by numerous other small companies, in a 'non-salon outing' that took place in the most varied places in the city.
Top names could be found in the largest and most luxurious hotels on the Quai du Mont-Blanc. In other words, those hotels where European nobility stayed more than a century ago (Elisabeth of Bavaria, the 'Princess Sissi', who was stabbed to death by an anarchist on the lakeside in Geneva, died at the Hotel Beau-Rivage).
Bulgari's new world record was unveiled at the Ritz-Carlton, the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Chronograph Skeleton Automatic, which combines the House's last four records in a single watch in a mere 7.40 millimetres. And what CEO Jean-Christophe Babin called a "brand new collection", but which is in fact an extraordinary comeback: the Aluminium. A watch that was a Bulgari best-seller in the early 2000s, now re-proposed and updated in certain stylistic details, losing its "Diagono" name but retaining its sloping bezel. The new Aluminium is destined to become the House's entry price in the men's segment, on which the entire product presentation held in Geneva focused, including the range extension of the Octo Finissimo S. Still in the Bulgari house, the Gérald Genta signature sees the launch of a second model, again on the case of the Arena Bi-retro, now in a two-tone version.
Girard-Perregaux experiments again with the identifying element of the Tourbillon Tre Ponti, evolving its design into the 'Free Bridge': a single slender bridge with an arrowhead tip, curved to accommodate the tourbillon cage. The real novelty, however, is entirely technical. In fact, the Free Bridge adopts a new silicon balance, a material that Girard-Perregaux was among the first to use - in 2013 - in the creation of a revolutionary escapement: the Constant Escapement L.M., where the initials stand for Luigi Macaluso, the man who brought the brand back to life in the late 1980s. The Free Bridge's variable-inertia balance wheel has a geometry reminiscent of the blades of a windmill, at the ends of which are inserted masses: four symmetrical and four asymmetrical (each pair of masses is placed at the ends of a diameter and the larger ones alternate with the smaller ones on the perimeter). The larger adjustment masses can slide on the silicon arms of the balance (towards the centre or outwards) for macro-adjustment of the oscillation frequency. The smaller, eccentric masses, on the other hand, can rotate on themselves, for fine adjustment of the frequency, in order to fine-tune the running of the watch.
Ulysse Nardin continues down the road of astonishing watchmaking with the Blast. A skeleton model that echoes the Executive collection by fusing the latter's skeleton dial design with silicon technology and a case with geometries inspired by the Stealth bomber. The company's description of it is a flourish of explosive definitions for an automatic tourbillon with a micro-rotor equipped with a balance with silicon balance spring oscillating at 18,000 vibrations per hour, as in the best of traditions. The watch is part of the product line marked by the so-called 'X factor', introduced by the House with the Freak X.
Bulgari was not the only name to focus on the entry price segment. Breitling is launching the Endurance Pro, a quartz chronograph with a case in Breitlight, a polymeric material registered by the company; scratchproof, ultra-light and thermally stable. The movement is the Breitling SuperQuartz, a thermocompensated quartz calibre, which thus maintains its precision even in circumstances characterised by significant temperature variations (between 8 and 38 degrees centigrade, as required by COSC certification, let alone in our cities, where we experience at most, in summer, fluctuations from almost 40 degrees outside to 20 in the frozen food aisle of supermarkets). In fact, as the temperature changes, the quartz crystals can change their geometry and so their vibration frequency changes. The SuperQuartz movement IC compensates for the frequency variations induced by heat or cold.
H. Moser & Cie. is extending the range of the Streamliner, presented in recent months in a chronograph variant, with a three-hand watch named - precisely - Centre Seconds. And it equips it with an unmistakable dial shaded in the typical shade of green used by the company.
In the same vein, De Bethune works on its iconic DB28 by introducing the central bridge, with its characteristic delta shape, in blue sapphire. Czapek & Cie. has worked on a model already in the collection, the Place Vêndome Tourbillon now launched in the Dark Matter version, using black enamel for the dial and ADLC titanium for the case. From dark matter, we move on to the moon with the creation of Louis Moinet, who sets a real lunar fragment in his Moon (a name that leaves nothing to the imagination). To present this and other models, the French manufacturer set up a gallery of film memorabilia from major American science fiction films, starting with the Star Wars saga, at the Hotel d'Angleterre. It is no coincidence that at the entrance one was greeted by R2-D2, in the theme of the Space Revolution model, which reproduces two spaceships on the dial. The Star Wars theme can also be found at Urwerk, with the new UR-100 Gold "C3PO" (and who doesn't recognise the name of Luke Skywalker's protocol droid turn the page), which combines the typical satellite time display with that of the kilometres travelled from a point on the equator during 20 minutes of Earth's rotation and those travelled by the Earth, in the same time interval, in its revolution around the Sun (38,742 km).
Last, among the major novelties seen at Geneva Watch Week, we held the fascinating new creation of the Chronométrie Ferdinand Berthoud, a signature brought back to life two years ago by Karl-Friederich Scheufele, co-president of Chopard and a great watchmaking connoisseur. The new collection is inspired by the marine chronometers made by Berthoud 250 years ago, when he was appointed watchmaker to the French Navy. The Chronomètre FB2 RE encloses in a round case, like the historic marine chronometers, a movement that respects the canons of chronometry of the time, with a fusee and chain winding system and remontoir d'égalité, to ensure constant rate throughout the watch's winding. This is combined with a jumping seconds display (deadbeat seconds), which facilitates the reading of this datum, and a variable-inertia balance that is the real star of the movement, visible from the back side and embellished with a hand-engraved grené finish.
