Meet Kristian Haagen, self-described “middle-aged watch collector” and author of eight watch books, a man with 156,000 followers keen to know his latest watch-related thoughts. “I came late to being an influencer and, really, being one wasn’t anything I thought I should be proud of. My privilege is that I get to talk only about watches, which is a very niche product”. In fact, it is all a bit odd, he says: “You buy a watch and talk about it, and other people buy the same watch. That's strange.”

Haagen may find the whole thing amusing and bemusing but the rising relevance of social media and, more specifically, its particular enthusiasts for different subjects – the so-called influencers of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok (each platform seemingly replacing the former) – is challenging the way marketing is done across many lifestyle-oriented industries. While that might sound like it has little or nothing to do with watches, the evidence suggests otherwise.

“In fact, Instagram has changed everything about the way watches are marketed,” Haagen contends. “If the cool gang on social media says a watch has to be 34mm, or whatever, that’s the way the market moves. And I’m influenced by that as well. Suddenly I feel uncool in a larger watch.”

Impressive Reach

Daniel Wellington is an oft-cited test case in the role of influencers in the watch world: the company’s founder Filip Tysander built his entire brand off the back of Instagram when it launched in 2010 – reaching out to multiple influencers, before they were even called such, and offering them free products and trackable promo codes to share, then repurposing their content in his brand’s advertising campaigns. Within three years, he was selling US$228m of watches.

Sure, with its relatively cheap production costs, Daniel Wellington could afford to give watches away. But it was some kind of lesson learned. Small wonder that much bigger brands the likes of TAG Heuer, Hublot, Audemars Piguet and IWC now, years later, collaborate with influencers on TikTok, with IWC being the first luxury watch brand to host a live stream event on the channel last year.

Certainly, the reach of influencers – notably those with the leverage of genuine subject knowledge and a personal rapport with engaged followers – can impress. When Robert-Jan Broer, founder of Fratello Watches, created the hashtag ‘speedytuesday’ on Facebook back in 2012, in celebration of Omega’s Speedmaster, it would go on to spawn an entire movement of fans, as well as events held around the globe and two limited-edition watches, one of which was produced in 2,012 units and sold out in four hours. The hashtag has since been used on Instagram more than 400,000 times. Its impact is still felt today, arguably.

Conservative Resistance

“It really took off like crazy,” says Broer. “But, importantly, it was all very genuine, just a community of like-minded Speedmaster enthusiasts and an idea that ran away with itself. Of course, Fratello was approached by other reputable brands after to do the same thing but [the proposals] felt made up and didn’t make sense to me, whereas I’ve collected Speedmasters for 20 years.”

And yet, for many at the higher end of the watch business – especially maybe those self-consciously positioning themselves as makers of ‘luxury products’ – there would appear to remain a deeply embedded reluctance to dip more than a toe into the influencer world. That may simply be down them being, as Haagen puts it, part of “the most conservative business in the world, selling a product that nobody needs.”

But Juerg Hostettler, influencer and founder of Brandfluence, a brand agency that has worked with the likes of Fortis, as well as Sony and Mercedes, is nonetheless surprised by just how little watch content there is put out by influencers, at least relative to other subjects. Some brands, he reckons, are still comfortable targeting an older demographic and see no reason to get into bed with influencers. Others he wonders “perhaps just don’t understand [the influencer world] yet. That encourages them to think they don’t need it.”

Fast Food Not Fine Dining

That reluctance may stem from a mismatch between what many watch brands deem to be central to their public image – their savoir-faire, their history, their complex micro-mechanics, all of which might require longer and deeper forms of media to cover well, and which the earlier watch blogs and forums did so well, sometimes to a scholarly extent; and what the dominant social media thrives on – lower-quality content, but snappier, instant-impact, quickly replaced, shareable and above all accessible coverage with an exponentially larger reach. Fast food as opposed to fine-dining, maybe.

“It’s why what [watch influencers] thrive on is a love of shape, not of complications,” argues Haagen. “One reason Cartier is doing so well now is that its products are all about shapes. It’s that simple.” Of course, as Haagen himself notes, that is only one reason so those of you who might be foaming at the mouth, given the overwhelming preference for round watches noted by, well everyone, should consider a muscle relaxant at this point.

Moving on, the nature of social media is maybe also why, given the algorithms at work, it skews towards the same kind of watch content. Even the same kind of watches, suggesting a trend – for steel sports watches, for example – or a spike in the desirability of a certain model has come up organically when actually it has been generated through data mining.

Desensitised and Devalued

“There's a huge issue here. While influencers have been good for building communities around what are, after all, a very specialist interest I think [the influencer ecosystem] has driven demand for certain models,” argues Justin Hast, Youtuber, regular IWC collaborator and publisher of ‘The Watch Annual’. “This distorts our view of a watch – you see one everywhere on social media, a (Patek Philippe) Nautilus, for example, but how often do you actually see anyone wearing one (in real life)? I think we become desensitised to models we see too much, which devalues them in some way I think”.

But there is also a tonal disparity: high-end watch brands are, on the whole, sober and often somewhat pompous. Instagram, and especially the new frontier of TikTok, often takes a more irreverent, humorous, playful, ironic and sometimes anarchic point of view. Check out the Horological Dictionary, for example; one recent, and relatively tame, post on Jaeger-LeCoultre introduces it as “a rare and exciting glimpse into the world’s most respected and least pronounceable watchmaker.”

Collectors will sneer at this, noting that Jaeger-LeCoultre is just as difficult to know how to pronounce as A. Lange & Söhne, Ulysse Nardin, or Vacheron Constantin. Or how about Bvlgari, which insists on this specific spelling? Even Tissot and Hublot, with two-syllable names, can be challenging for the English-speaking world, and we have not even addressed how watch brand names are presented in Chinese. On that note about Hublot though...

"The influencer world is the Wild West,
and the train going there has already departed"

Losing Control

Some social media accounts allow you to see a twenty-something flipping watches in a train station carpark or horological savant Nico Vanderhost’s latest entertaining takedown of celebrity watch collections. And this kind of thing reaches millions. But that loss of control of the narrative is something a deeply conservative industry has, to date, rarely been at ease with.

“The problem is that [many of the top brands] are stuck in this idea of a very polished, perfect world,” says Maxime Couturier, co-founder of brand marketing agency Apresdemain. It has worked with the likes of the Fondation Haute Horlogerie and Girard-Perregaux, and last year launched ‘Heist Out’, an underground, dissident watch magazine. “(Influencers) can be an amazing tool to grow interest in watches, and to connect collectors, but (the industry) needs to get beyond its image as always being an expensive-looking guy in a Patek. It needs to break those long-established codes, as the fashion industry has managed to do”.

“What [many major watch industry brands] think [is happening] doesn’t correspond to what’s actually happening online,” adds his business partner Lorenzo Maillard. “They have this idea that if you put a watch next to a tracksuit then viewers won’t get that their product is 100 percent luxury anymore. It’s crazy to me how brands have constrained themselves. It’s not as though consumers are asking for this exclusivity, this luxury lifestyle image.”

Breaking Free

Some, perhaps, are taking the hint. Cartier’s own Instagram account, which it launched in 2022, for example, has a decidedly less polished feel relative to its normally high-gloss marketing. It affords Cartier a different kind of cool – more Tiong Bahru, less Orchard Road.

Certainly, while social media has had a powerful impact on the way second-hand watches are bought and sold, on the fostering of the vintage market, and of meet-ups by watch-loving community groups, arguably it is influencers who will have the greater impact in changing how watches are perceived, and, some say, for the better.

Influencers argue, as they might, that breaking free of these constraints can only be a good thing for the watch industry, ripping watch appreciation out of the confines of haughty sales staff, beige boutiques and manufactured exclusivity, and making it much more diverse, more everyday, more fun and much more appealing to demographics the industry has been tardy to embrace: younger, fashion-conscious people, and women, such as those focused on by Instagram influencer Brynn Waller under the name of Dimepiece. This is precisely the demographic more likely to follow influencers of course.

"I do think that maybe the whole influencer
thing has gone too far - Don Cochrane, Vertex"

Beyond The Old Boys Club

“What’s really shifting, importantly, as a result of influencers is that [an interest in watches] is becoming more open as a hobby – it’s not just an old boys network talking about luxury Swiss watches,” argues Lydia Winters, who only discovered her passion for watches five years ago and now shares her watch photography with her many Instagram followers and ‘This Watch Life’ podcast. She argues that influencers especially have become a gateway to watches for a younger audience that – depending on the study you read – is in serious danger of losing all interest in watches.

“There are some people who still get excited about the more traditional technical aspects [of a watch]. But there are more and more influencers now reaching out to the even younger TikTok generation and saying, for example, that a watch can be Quartz, and that that’s ok," she adds. "They’re reaching out with an enthusiasm for watch design, or with stories about why they chose the watch they have. With an industry that has been far too serious for too long, they’re making watches joyful and whimsical again”.

While that might sound shockingly naïve, it is still informative and speaks to certain undeniable truths, although perhaps not the ones openly stated there. After all, influencers have proven key to the profile of independent watchmakers and the watch micro brands sector – those without the budgets to buy pages in glossy magazines, or to sign a contract with a Hollywood star, but often with the kind of visually arresting or unusual products for which the likes of Instagram is ideal. “I don’t think the whole micro-brand thing would have happened without them providing the necessary exposure,” says Lewis Heath, founder of AnOrdain and Paulin.

Independence is Power

So, are the more mainstream brands just moving too slowly? Some 15 years ago, digital watch platforms were shunned; now some are brands in their own right, and watch brands are keen on collaborating. But there remains a troubling sense... Yes, the more rough-and-tumble, quick-change world of social media and its influencers is a train that the watch brands need to board but it also has a destination they are not sure about. It may be reading between the lines, but of five major names in watches approached for comment about their attitude to influencers for this article, five found reasons not to comment.

Perhaps they are right to keep their cards close to their chest. As it is often described, the world of influencers is a ‘Wild West’ right now. And that influencer train? It may have already departed. Yes, influencers have arguably pushed brands to new levels of accountability for the quality of their products. They can act as an independent press, ridiculing your new watch while print media – dependent on advertising spent – reliably toe the line; this is not to say influencers of the sort cited here cannot be bought, but the watch collector with a sizeable following often cannot. “The collector community can be visceral and will come down on a brand very heavily if it thinks it’s doing something wrong,” as Hast notes. That is not something luxury brands are used to – even the old frontier of the collectors’ forum did not have the same reach. Its influence was limited, in other words.

On the other hand, as Broer notes, the influencer ecosystem, and its appeal to watch brands, seems to be bifurcating between influencers who are, as he puts it, “watch people, who have an emotional connection to the products”, and the growing army of “professional influencers” who are ready to push any product, watches included, often without revealing the deal that lies behind their enthusiasm; the ones, as Hast jokes, who seem to spend a lot of their time with their tops off standing by swimming pools.

Inconclusive Results

“There are those watch enthusiasts, but most influencers seem willing to [promote] just about anything. I stopped looking at social media about three years ago because I was getting too annoyed at all the things that weren’t accurate or were just made up,” says Paulin’s Heath, who is not yet convinced that influencers have much real commercial affect, not least because he suspects nowhere near as many people with the disposable income to buy a good watch are on social media as regularly as is often suggested.

“We had a lot of people on Instagram talking about how great our watches were and that didn’t seem to actually sell anything. Then we got a product review [on an online magazine] and sold 20 that weekend,” he notes.

If once influencers proposed a fresh alternative to traditional advertising and sponsorship, with its unabashed but dated kind of self-promotion, influencers already can look similarly tainted. This means both those who take the money and, unfortunately, those that do not. Clearly, regular users of unregulated social media are increasingly savvy to the financial dynamic that underpins many influencers’ relationships with watch companies: that they are paid, one way or another, to post positive comments or reviews.

Hardening Doubts

Kristian Haagen concedes that he has at times been pressured by watch brands, which shall remain nameless, to make changes to his posts or to push some aspect they were more keen to promote. His honest response? “I’m a softy on that,” he laughs. “There have been heated moments but I’d rather we all stayed good friends. Maybe they think I did something wrong? So I’ll change it. We have to remember here that we’re just talking about watches, not saving the world. And I think that the public isn’t stupid, thankfully – people know that influencers are another marketing channel and we shouldn’t forget that.”

Indeed, that is the way Don Cochrane, founder of Vertex, tends to think about it. As a small brand, it has a small marketing budget. He does not court influencers but, on rare occasions, he has given away a watch and, he says, it feels much the same as buying an ad in a publication.

“But I do think that maybe the whole influencer thing has already gone too far,” he says. “It’s reached saturation point, so it’s hard to get above all the chatter,” he says. “If we were to use an influencer it would be hard to know who that person would be, because it’s about finding people with real traction with their audience, and for us that may not be as simple as connoisseur watch collectors. I think my doubts about influencers will only harden.”

Finding The Right Fit

"There’s already a weariness about the relationship between brand and influencers setting in. My kids, 14 and 18, are very much fed up with posts that have obviously been paid for and don’t seem a good fit," agrees Hostettler. “Social media and many influencers on it remain a great way to research watches or to find out more about one you might already be thinking about buying. But for me it’s not a good place from which to take recommendations, especially those you haven’t asked for. That’s rightly causing suspicion”.

That means that those watch brands now warming to the idea of tapping influencers need to tread carefully. Justin Hast puts up a spirited defence of the right kind of relationship, one with that ‘good fit’. “Of course, the right collaboration between a big brand and an enthusiast who loves the brand, with whom it’s had a long relationship and whom the audience trusts makes perfect commercial sense,” he says, “just as to simply chase an influencer because they have big numbers doesn’t.”

“What I think we’re actually seeing now is a big shake-up, a shift away from platforms that haven’t honoured their audience with truly passionate and authoritative content,” he adds. "The influencers that resonate are those that bring people into the conversation. That can only be a good thing for both sides."

This article first appeared in WOW’s Legacy Issue #75

For more on the latest in luxury watch reads from WOW, click here.

The Future of Watchmaking Is Already Ticking

New watches begin development many years before launch, potentially, and brand management decides when to pull the trigger. In this sense, looking ahead to 2025 is not too difficult. Broadly speaking, forecasting such things as the dominance of the sports watch and the related return of the integrated bracelet is more difficult to get right. For this list, we decided to be bold and tell you what you can 100 percent expect to happen, and also what we hope will happen. 

It will not surprise you that we think the rough weather of 2024 will carry over into 2025, and there is every chance that brands will respond with more muted watches. Conservatism remains the tried-and-tested path to survival for big luxury, after all. This will be bad news for those who expect attention-grabbing moves from the birthday boys; brands have delayed major launches in the past and there is no reason to think 2025 will be different. On the other hand, brands that were big with the crypto set might be keeping the champagne at the ready since a Trump presidency in the USA is seen as beneficial; on the back of his election win, crypto rose to record highs and perhaps 2025 will be the year everyone finally goes to the moon. Keep those fingers crossed that the ballooning AI hype does not pop… 

Read More: The Metaverse Mirage: Why the Hype Is Fading

Of course, macroeconomic trends are outside the scope of articles like this one but it should always be remembered that fine watchmaking is vulnerable to how confident the wealthy feel. You will note that we have left the secondary market out of our list of predictions and that is by design. While availability is not great, the market has largely righted itself, but that could change. Certain in-demand evergreens still command higher-than-RRP and this is mainly supported by collectors who are a little too pampered by brands and those who are not. This is a feature of the world of watches and thus we will say no more about it. 

Artistry of the world’s premier independent watchmakers come together under one roof at Sincere Haute Horlogerien (SHH)

Finally, we could have said a lot more about the various leadership shakeups in the sector we gaze critically at but we shall see if the desired results roll in. Again, a lot is out of the control of the top brass but, at the highest levels of quality, they do need to figure out how to respond to the continuing rise of independent watchmakers. As long as retailers keep the action going, we foresee no changes. That said, here are our five top sort-of predictions for the new year in watchmaking. 

Legacy Matters

Anniversaries matter, or at least they do when the parties involved have decided on some number as being a big deal. While brands such as Rolex and Bell & Ross do not like to make a fuss, many more certainly do. In what is a yearly exercise for us, we check all the brand anniversaries and then even some key collections. What we are looking for here are indications that a special watch might be forthcoming, or maybe a fresh collection or subcollection. Consider that the Royal Oak Offshore was conceived as a sort of tribute and legacy transfer for the 20th anniversary of the Royal Oak. In 2025, we are particularly looking forward to Vacheron Constantin’s 270th, Breguet’s 250th and Audemars Piguet’s 150th but there are so many that we do expect some to skip the fanfare, as Zenith did in 2024 for the 55th anniversary of the El Primero. Here are a few brands and their big dates: A. Lange & Sohne (180th); Blancpain (290th); Maurice Lacroix (50th); Panerai (165th); TAG Heuer (165th) and Zenith (160th). It may have escaped most of us but 2024 was Patek Philippe’s 185th and the brand delivered an important milestone for itself and the industry to mark the occasion: the Cubitus. 

The TAG Heuer Formula 1 Chronograph x Oracle Red Bull Racing Watch (pictured above). 2025 sees  TAG Heuer return as the Official Timekeeper for Formula 1.

Leadership Moves That Could Reshape the Industry

Given the mixed economic outlook for watchmaking in 2025 — a continuation of the present scenario - quite a number of brands have course-corrected in 2024. In fact, the biggest news of all was the rise of Nicolas Bos to the group CEO position at Richemont. Staying with the same group, perhaps the most surprising news was the return of Jerome Lambert as CEO of Jaeger-LeCoultre; Lambert had been group COO and then CEO, although the role was reportedly very different to the one Bos now occupies, now that Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert will be more hands-off again. Other power moves at this watchmaking group include Louis Ferla getting the top job at Cartier, handing off his CEO hat at Vacheron Constantin to Laurent Perves (an in-house promotion); Catherine Renier climbs into the hotseat at Van Cleef & Arpels (she was at Jaeger-LeCoultre) while the CEO role at Roger Dubuis remains officially unoccupied. At LVMH, another game of musical chairs happened after the elevation of Frederic Arnault as the CEO of the watchmaking division and continuing tough times in China. With Ricardo Guadalupe retiring from the CEO position at Hublot, LVMH tapped Julien Tornare to take over; Tornare had been CEO of TAG Heuer, where he succeeded Arnault. Antoine Pin, former watchmaking boss at Bvlgari, replaces Tornare at TAG Heuer; Pin’s former role at the Roman jeweller has yet to be filled, officially. While Swatch Group is faring no better than its group peers in China, there has been little movement at the top there. A significant difference is at Breguet, where longtime Omega man Gregory Kissling has been appointed CEO. 

Shaping Up

With market observers and shareholders questioning the big brands over their China strategies and exposure, and perhaps even the sort of watches consumers in that market want, now might be the right moment for something completely different. Leading the way in this is an apparent renewed push in the neglected form watch category. The most prominent example here is the Patek Philippe Cubitus, and the Geneva brand has never bet big on China. Well, it is no bigger than it has in any other important market. It will be interesting to see if the new collection marks new China moves for the brand as it could herald sweeping changes across the board in watchmaking. We are also looking out for what high-impact brands such as Tissot and Swatch do, on the more affordable side. For the moment, all eyes will be on Watches and Wonders Geneva 2025 to see if more form pieces debut. It will take some years before the dust settles, just as it did some 20 years ago when brands tried to crack the dominance of the round shape.

Collaborations Fuel Creativity

In 2021, Ferrari and Richard Mille, driven by their shared quest for perfection, joined forces to create a long-term partnership.

Will brand collaborations pick up steam or will things stall? We answer our own question because these collaborations have been in the works for years maybe so they can only be delayed or cancelled. Typically, most watch brands have steered away from collaboration as keeping everything under one roof seemed the most efficient way of controlling brand DNA. Over the last year, and arguably even a few years before, the collaborative spirit seemed to be picking up steam. Watches and cars have always been a great pairing: Richard Mille has Ferrari, Roger Dubuis selected Lamborghini a couple of years ago and most recently H. Moser & Cie picked Alpine to cross-brand their products. There was once a time when it was considered sacrilege to have the Bamford Watch Company detail a Rolex but since then, the LVMH group has doubled down with a few key partnerships a couple of years ago. This year we saw them take this further through a unique collaboration between two houses we thought would never meet: Louis Vuitton and Akrivia. This is the beautifully made dual-face LVRR-01 Chronographe à Sonnerie. Even artist Seconde Seconde seems to be finding constant collaborative opportunities with big brands like Moser at one point, and others like Timex and Louis Erard. Speaking of Louis Erard, they have also been steadily gaining momentum with a string of collaborative watches with big names in the artisanal watchmaking scene like Vianney Halter, Kudoke, Konstantin Chaykin and Alain Silberstein. We have no doubt this will continue well into 2025.

Stoned and Dethroned

The precious stone dial trend seems to be coming back strong in 2024, a trend that we think should follow well into 2025. Of course, using these unique minerals as dials isn’t something new. What brand can resist offering a client a unique piece and due to the nature of these stones, whichever way you slice it, the resulting dial will offer enough variance to be different from however many watches are in that same collection. This year there were fantastic examples of these dials, including one from Ulysse Nardin using a rare mineral called chrysocolla, resulting in a dial that looks almost like the waters of some atoll out in the middle of the ocean. Of course, who can forget the limited edition models of Lange 1 watches that A. Lange & Sohne made to celebrate its 35th anniversary where these beautiful watches were furnished with even more pristine onyx dials. The laborious process of crafting these dials – sourcing the perfect sizes of stones, carefully slicing them into thin enough slices without them breaking, and getting the right alignment for the hands and indices – would be prohibitive for smaller brands to use them. Well, everyone was wrong about this because, last year, more than a handful of microbrands started using them. Timex put one in their Q Timex GMT; Baltic offered three limited edition runs with their Prismic Boutique Editions; and even new entries like Dennison Watches were able to offer these beautiful stone dials at extremely affordable prices. Stones like lapis lazuli and malachite are no longer reserved for ultra-luxury watches. Expect more good news on this front in 2025.

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Enamelling is a tedious process, to put it mildly. The raw material must first be ground into a fine powder, and then mixed with a suitable medium (oils or water are both used) to form a paint-like emulsion. This liquid is then applied like paint, before being fired in a kiln to vitrify it – the medium evaporates, while the powder melts and fuses into glass. There are variations to these steps, of course. Some manufactures, for example, choose to sieve the power directly onto a base of either brass or gold, and fire this “layer” of powder directly. Whatever the process, every step is fraught with danger. The product may crack during the firing process. Unseen impurities may surface as imperfections. Colours may react in unexpected ways. There are numerous risks to endure. Why, then, does this technique continue to be used?

Despite all its drawbacks, enamel still has a depth and nuance that cannot be replicated anywhere else. It is also permanent – vitrified enamel is essentially inert and, like noble metals, will remain unchanged a century from now. The different techniques used in enamelling are capable of creating a wide spectrum of products as well, from a single large surface free of blemishes, to microscopic levels of detail in an enamel painting. Perhaps the romantic aspect of this metiers d’art accounts for part of its appeal too; the time and touch of the enamellist is the perfect counterpoint to the watchmaker, with art on one side and science on the other.

Variations on Theme

Enamels are fired at various temperatures – or not at all – depending on their types. Grand feu (literally “great fire”) enamel is fired at around 820 degrees Celsius, although intermediate firings to “set” it may be at around 100 degrees Celsius, to boil the solvent off without fusing the powder. Enamels in general, including those used in miniature painting, may also be fired at around 100 degrees Celsius instead. Finally, there is cold enamel, an epoxy resin that cures and hardens at room temperature.

What difference does it make? For a start, higher temperatures are definitely more difficult to work with, since the enamel may crack during firing, or the subsequent cooling down process. The spectrum of colours used in grand feu enamelling is also more limited, as there are less compounds that can withstand the temperature. The choice of technique boils down to the desired product – for all its drawbacks, grand feu enamel has an inimitable look. A great monochromatic example is the Breguet reference 5177. Enamels, porcelains, and lacquers all share common properties of hardness, durability, and the ability to take on both matte and polished finishes. The three aren’t interchangeable though. Lacquer is an organic finish that is applied in layers, with each successive coat curing at room temperature before the next is added. Porcelain is a ceramic that is produced by firing materials in a kiln to vitrify them. Although enamel is also fired, it only contains glass and colouring compounds, and lacks porcelain’s clay content.

Raised Feilds

In champlevé enamelling, a thick dial base is engraved to create hollow cells, before these cavities are filled with enamel and fired. Because the engraving step produces rough surfaces at the bottom of each cell, the champlevé technique typically uses only opaque enamels. The method allows areas on the dial to be selectively excavated, and for enamels to be mixed freely within each dial. This is done to great effect in the Van Cleef & Arpel Brise d'Été (above and opposite), which demonstrates the brand's decorative chops with not only champlevé enamelling but also valloné and plique-à-jour (discussed later); valloné is a type of champlevé, with more depth and nuance thanks to hill-like reliefs.

Champlevé enamelling’s use isn’t limited to creating decorative art. In Parmigiani Fleurier’s Tecnica Ombre Blanche, for instance, it was simply the most appropriate technique. Although the timepiece has a simple white enamel dial, its surface is interrupted by three sub-dials and an aperture for the tourbillon. This watch was new in 2016 and not only has Parmigiani Fleurier not revisited it, what with the brand's renaissance, but no other brand has explored it either. As noted in our earlier story, the alternative here
would be to make a complete enamel dial, before cutting out the appropriate sections in the middle. One can, however, imagine the risks of doing that.

Is there a limit to the level of details that can be achieved with champlevé enamel? Patek Philippe may have the answer with the Ref. 6002 Sun Moon Tourbillon (right). Apart from the centre portion, which is produced using the cloisonné technique (discussed later), the timepiece’s dial is a work of champlevé enamel – even the railway track chapter ring was milled out in relief, before the recesses are filled with enamel and fired.

Engraving isn’t necessarily the only way to produce the cells used in champlevé enamel though. Hublot put a modern twist on things with the Classic Fusion Enamel Britto, by stamping the white gold dial base to create the raised borders between the cells. This not only reduces the time needed for each dial but also ensures uniformity between them. Subsequent steps, however, remain unchanged: the cells were sequentially filled with different colours of enamel and fired multiple times before the entire dial surface was polished to form a uniformly smooth surface.

Wire Work

Cloisonné enamelling is almost like the opposite of the champlevé technique – instead of removing material from a dial blank, things are added on it instead. The cloisons (literally “partitions”) here refer to the wires, each no thicker than a human hair, that the enamellist bends into shape and attaches onto a base to create enclosed cells. These cells are then filled with enamel of different colours, before the dial is fired to fuse the powder. The wires remain visible in the final product, and look like outlines of a drawing, with a metallic sheen that contrasts with the glassy surfaces of the infilled enamel.

Plique-à-jour (“letting in daylight) enamel can be considered a variation of cloisonné enamel, but the technique is a lot rarer owing to its complexity and fragility. Like its cloisonné sibling, plique-à-jour enamelling involves creating enclosed cells using wires, before filling them with enamel. In this case, however, there is no base. The lack of a backing can be achieved in various ways, but usually involves working on a base layer a la cloisonné enamelling, before filing it away to leave just the wires holding onto vitrified enamel. Since there is no base, plique-à-jour enamelling almost always involves transparent or translucent enamel that allows light through, which essentially creates tiny stained glass windows.

Van Cleef & Arpels has used the above technique to great effect. In the Lady Arpels Nuit Enchantee watch (seen here across both pages), a grisaille enamelled lower section supplies nightime context to an upper section with elements executed in plique-à-jour (the fairy's wings) and façonné enamel (to cradle the yellow sapphires) forms the foreground. Even the surfeit of sapphires, diamonds and rock crystal cannot overwhelm the artistry here.

Hybrid Theory

There are several “hybrid” techniques that combine enamelling with other decorative arts, and flinqué enamelling is arguably the best known given its long history of use. The technique combines guillochage with enamelling – a brass or gold dial is first decorated with guilloché, before layers of enamel are successively applied and fired. When this enamel coating is sufficiently thick, it is polished to create a smooth surface; the final result is a translucent lens through which the guilloché is admired. Depending on the desired effect, the enamel used may be colourless to impart a subtle sheen, or coloured for more visual oomph, like the trio of limited edition Rotonde de Cartier high complications unveiled at Watches & Wonders 2015. Vacheron Constantin has even adapted the technique by using guilloché patterns to mimic woven fabrics in the Métiers d’Art Elégance Sartoriale.

Developed by the husband-and-wife team of Olivier and Dominique Vaucher, shaded enamel (email ombrant) also involves the application of translucent enamel over an engraved dial. Instead of a regular pattern a la guilloché, however, shaded enamel entails the creation of an image in relief. This technique was last used in the Hermès Arceau Tigre, but the watchmaker does utilise other hybrid techniques, seen prominently on the unique Arceau pocket cheval punk.

The final technique here is Cartier’s enamel granulation, which combines enamelling with Etruscan granulation originally used by goldsmiths. The craft requires multiple steps and is extremely tedious, to say the least. Enamel is first worked into threads of different diameters, before these threads are chipped off bit by bit to form beads of various sizes. The beads are then sorted by colour and applied to the dial successively to assemble an image, with intermediate firings to set and fuse the enamel. As different colours of enamel fuse at different temperatures, there is a clearly-defined order for the assembly process; up to 30 firings are necessary, and each dial requires nearly a month to complete. Like shaded enamel, enamel granulation is a very recent development, and Cartier is reviving it in its Maison des Métiers d’Art in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Metallic Content

Paillonné is among the rarest enamelling techniques today, and practically synonymous with Jaquet Droz, which mainly works on special creations these days. The manufacture did have full-time enamellists who don’t just produce enamel dials, but also train artisans to perpetuate this know-how. The “paillon” here refers to the small ornamental motifs that are created from gold leaf, and are the calling card of the technique. Essentially, paillonné enamelling involves setting paillons within enamel to form patterns, with regular geometric ones being the norm. Emblematic of this technique is the Patek Philippe
Ref. 5077/100G models, as seen here. The technique begins with a layer of coloured enamel that is first fired to set it. Upon this layer, the paillons are positioned, before translucent enamel is applied and fired, thus “locking” the paillons in. Additional steps can be taken to create even more intricate designs. Before the coloured enamel layer is applied, for instance, the substrate surface may first be decorated with guilloché, which basically creates flinqué enamel that is then decorated with paillons over it. Alternatively, the substrate surface can be hand engraved – there are no hard and fast rules to this.

In lieu of regular patterns, Jaeger-LeCoultre opted for a twist on the technique, by distributing flecks of silver randomly on the dial instead. The result can be seen in the Hybris Artistica Duomètre Sphérotourbillon Enamel, whose enamel dial mimics the look of lapis lazuli. While not paillonné enamelling per se, Vacheron Constantin’s use of hand-applied precious powder deserves a mention here. In the manufacture’s Métiers d’Art Villes Lumières timepieces, gold, platinum, diamond, and pearl powders are affixed to the surface of the enamel dial by Japanese enamel artisan Yoko Imai. Instead of being covered with a layer of enamel, these particles sit atop them, and catch the light variously to mimic a bird’s eye view of a city at night.

Brush Strokes

Enamel painting is simply painting with enamel pigments rather than some other medium. The technique is challenging not just due to the canvas’s size, which makes it miniature painting as well, but also because of the multiple firings needed to vitrify and set the enamels, colour by colour by colour. Given the level of detail that can be achieved (as seen in the Patek Philippe Ref. 5531R here), however, this is
one of the few techniques that are capable of making their subjects almost lifelike. Consider Slim d’Hermès Pocket Panthère, which has the eponymous animal rendered in this technique, for example. Jaeger-LeCoultre has many examples, courtesy of its in-house workshops.

Grisaille enamel can be considered a subset of enamel painting, and is a specific method of painting white on black to create monochromic imagery. The black canvas is grand feu enamel that must first be applied, fired, and then polished to create a perfectly smooth surface that’s free of imperfections. This preparatory step is, in and of itself, already very challenging, as minute flaws are extremely easy to spot on such a surface – this explains why most watch brands offer white enamel dials, but black onyx or lacquer dials instead of enamel. Upon this black canvas, the enamellist paints using Blanc de Limoges, which is a white enamel whose powder is more finely ground than normal. To create micro details, fine brushes, needles, and even cactus thorns are used, and the dial is painted and fired multiple times to create the nuanced paintings grisaille enamel is known for.

Owing to its complexity, grisaille enamel is rarely seen. There are brands that still offer metiers ‘dart watches with them though, sometimes even with their own take on the technique. In the Métiers d’Art Hommage à l’Art de la Danse collection, Vacheron Constantin opted to use translucent brown enamel for the dial base, to impart a greater sense of depth, while softening the contrast between the two colours. Patek Philippe and Van Cleef utilise the technique in models featured earlier in this story.

This article first appeared on WOW’s Legacy 2025 Issue

For more on the latest in luxury watch reads from WOW, click here.

Everose Gold

These are all complicated points and we will be covering them briefly. We bring this point to the fore because fine watchmaking has been in the public eye itself recently for the investment angle. Specifically, some types of watches might qualify as alternative investment assets. To be clear, we have always argued (or at least cautioned) against this but we acknowledge reality and there are many of you, dear readers, who are intrigued by the potential of watches to not only retain value but also to grow it.

Some years ago, before we dared to comment on the phenomenon of investing in watches, we hinted at what a dark world this might herald. It was an Editor’s Note with the catchy title Watches as Currency, and watches cased in precious metal are the personification of this idea. If gold, in particular, is a kind of currency, then wearing watches cased in this material will really be like having cash strapped to one’s wrist. Well, perhaps just a digital display that indicates how much the watch in question is valued at. A good way to grab the attention of thieves you say? Welcome to the world of those who rock all-gold watches, and Singapore might just be the safest place on earth to do this.

As a counterpoint, the watch-buying community knows all too well that the best deals available on the secondary market are timepieces cased in precious metals. That means any precious metal, not just gold. To be blunt, these are the types of watches that shed the most value, including examples from the biggest names in Swiss watchmaking. Generally speaking, the why of this is hard to explain, especially versus amped-up valuations on steel watches, but the hypothesis (from specialists, including us) is that the precious metal recommended retail prices have always been too high. This is especially true when any given brand also offers a model in a non-precious metal variant too.

Magic Gold

Hublot flexed its materials science muscle in 2012 with its demonstration of the properties of Magic Gold. While the manufacture was known for its forward- thinking ways prior to this, its fame was tied closely to synthetic materials. Hublot also has a proprietary gold alloy called King Gold, which owes its superior reddish hue to a higher-than-normal mix of copper, but this achievement was dwarfed by the arrival of Magic Gold, a type of metal matrix composite (MMC), which we covered briefly in Summer. Hublot is certainly not the only watch brand experimenting with MMCs but we focus here because Magic Gold is probably the most familiar material for watch cases, and remains a part of the core collection – Cerachrom and Ceragold are a different matter.

When it debuted, Magic Gold promised a golden revolution of sorts because it was meant to be a scratch-resistant gold alloy. It does not take expert knowledge to realise that gold is a relatively soft and dense metal that is prone to scratching – steel is significantly harder but no less of a scratch magnet, as they say in watch collecting circles. Hublot’s mission was to create and deliver a material that would qualify as 18k gold (as most gold watch cases are) that also exhibited a degree of scratch resistance that was all but impossible for a metal alloy. The manufacture decided to add ceramic (either as continuous strands or particulates) to a gold matrix to achieve this end. Nothing like this had been tried before in watchmaking so Hublot turned to the materials science experts at the EPFL in Lausanne. The manufacture has its own research and development facility, but fundamental research is impossible to do in a silo.

The materials specialists began with selecting their raw materials. This included 24k gold, aluminium, and boron carbide – boron carbide is a ceramic and is the third hardest substance known to humans. The proportions used were as follows: 75 percent (gold), 3 percent (aluminium) and 22 percent (boron carbide). Boron carbide powder is first compacted into a desired shape before being sintered to form a porous solid. Pure molten 24k gold is then forced into these pores under 200 bars of pressure – Hublot once described this as forcing water into a room full of footballs (EuropaStar, 2011). This revealing metaphor indicates that rather than the ceramic being the matrix that holds gold, it is the other way around. This is perfectly in line with Magic Gold being an MMC of course. Needless to say, Magic Gold is harder and more resistant to scratches than traditional gold alloys, while still maintaining the luxurious appearance and properties of gold. How tough is it, exactly? Well, apparently only diamond tools can make a dent in Magic Gold.

To machine Magic Gold, CNC machines equipped with ultrasonic cutters and diamond-tipped tools had to be specially ordered from Germany. Our last update on Magic Gold noted that 28 bezels in Magic Gold took three weeks to machine, and that only between 30-40 complete cases could be produced monthly. This is unlikely to have changed as Magic Gold remains truly rare in the Hublot assortment. It is no small thing that this innovation remains in play, and it has had more than 10 years now of testing Magic Gold in the wild. No solution is perfect, and Magic Gold may yet receive an update in the years to come.

Sedna Gold

Qualified honesty has everything to do with why watch brands with big industrial bases tend to flex materials science credentials with creations that advertise their expertise boldly. While Sedna gold was once associated exclusively with Omega, which introduced it in 2013, it is now a staple part of Blancpain offerings too. Needless to say, both brands are a part of the Swatch Group universe and the presence of Sedna gold at both brands is only one marker of the synergies at play. With this fact in mind, we will acknowledge the material developments with precious metals at Omega but would be remiss in our duties as a specialist commentator if we did not note the great work done at Rado, Tissot and Swatch itself in the area of ceramics, composites and polymers (various plastics).

All of the above is just proof positive that Swatch Group knows how to do fundamental research into new materials and how to industrialise the same. While in 2016 we wrote that Omega was making waves with its anti-magnetic movements, today we could report that many Swatch Group brands have followed suit. LiquidMetal, a zirconium-based amorphous alloy that gets inlaid into ceramic bezels using a combination of high heat and high pressure, was also deployed by Omega first, but has since been adopted by Blancpain. When it comes to case materials proper, Omega was also first out of the gate with Ceragold in 2012, which was a combination of ceramic and gold, although not quite rising to the level of Magic Gold.

While Ceragold is indeed a niche material for Omega, Sedna gold is anything but. Named after the red planetoid which was once the furthest observed object of that mass in our solar system, the 18k alloy is a proprietary blend of gold, copper and palladium. Like other rose gold alloys, Sedna owes its distinctive colour to its copper content. The palladium content functions to give the colour long-term stability, much as platinum does in other alloys. While Omega has used Sedna gold aggressively, with the material mostly supplanting traditional rose gold in all collections, Blancpain is currently limiting it to just the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe collection.

It would be remiss of us to neglect Omega’s other precious metal alloy efforts in recent years, which range from Canopus gold to perhaps the best-known of all proprietary blends, Moonshine gold. Of course, there the key messaging was handled by Swatch, which actually used it in a version of the MoonSwatch. We say this is the most widely recognised brand-owned gold alloy because Swatch has a huge reach – the Mission to Moonshine watch is probably one of the most popular Swatch models of 2023 – and it never fails to mention that Moonshine is an Omega trademark.

Honey Gold

Also returning in this updated list is the alloy introduced by A. Lange & Söhne in 2010. It originally appeared in the Homage to F.A. Lange trio of limited edition watches and is known officially as Honeygold; we typically list it as honey gold as a matter of house style. The Glashütte manufacture has been remarkably consistent in keeping the use of honey gold as limited as possible. It was only five years after its auspicious and audacious debut that A. Lange & Söhne decided to roll it out again, this time at Watches and Wonders 2015.

At this Hong Kong precursor to the grand Geneva show, the 1815 200th Anniversary F.A. Lange debuted as a 200-piece limited edition. Subsequently, honey gold has featured in a handful of releases, not all of which are related at all to F. A. Lange. This year, it is the Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold Lumen, which features prominently elsewhere this issue. Other key models in this proprietary gold alloy are the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater (last year) and standard Zeitwerk (2021) watches; a second trio of Homage to F.A. Lange watches (2020); and Langematik Perpetual (2019).

Aesthetically, honey gold’s hue falls between its pink and yellow siblings, with a noticeably lower saturation – it is paler, yet redder than yellow gold, and has a marked resemblance to honey (no duh). This alloy’s colour stems from its higher proportions of copper vis-à-vis regular yellow gold, and the addition of zinc; obviously, this is still an 18k alloy so the proportions are in the remaining 25% of the alloy that are not gold.

Honey gold was not developed by A. Lange & Sohne with only aesthetics in mind; this was not even the primary reason. Instead, the manufacture was keen on creating a gold alloy that was more scratch-resistant for its cases. With a hardness of 320 Vickers, honey gold has around twice the hardness of standard 18k yellow gold, which lives in the 150 to 160 Vickers range. The result, by all accounts, is a hardier watch case that is less prone to dings and scratches,

Despite its greater hardness, honey gold is not necessarily more difficult to work. Any equipment that is primed to machine steel cases, which are even harder, is more than capable of handling honey gold; A. Lange & Söhne does not make cases anyway. When used in movement components, however, the material does present challenges to the finisseurs. The Homage to F.A. Lange watches have balance cocks executed in honey gold rather than German silver, as is typically the case. Hand-engraving these pieces with the manufacture’s signature floral motif is thus more difficult and time-consuming, while also requiring a special set of burins with harder blades.

Armour Gold

A recent addition to the parade of proprietary gold alloys, Armour Gold is IWC’s first ride into the realm of precious metals but certainly not its first rodeo in the material innovation circuit. Like many of the watch brands featured here, IWC is known for playing with materials, including being the first top-tier brand to use ceramic for its cases. This became an IWC specialty in some ways, with observers always looking forward to hardy yet aesthetically pleasing materials from the brand’s new releases. In this way, Armour Gold is very much playing to established strengths in IWC’s watches-for-professionals game.

In our chat with the professionals at IWC in Geneva, we got into the substance of Armour Gold, in passing. The gist of it had to do with functional relevance, even when the matter of aesthetics was weightier. So, yes, Armour Gold does purport to live up to its name; in fact, every alloy on this list has some degree of functional distinctiveness, though we did not perform any tests ourselves. IWC introduced its proprietary gold rather quietly, back in 2019; a number of journalists were surprised that Armour Gold was not new for this year.

For IWC, the pertinent qualities of Armour Gold are its resistance to wear and we know the manufacture would not have bothered if it was just to have a different colour. When the material was introduced with the Big Pilot’s Watch Constant-Force Tourbillon Edition Le Petit Prince, the brand noted that it was its first experiment with so-called hard gold. This kind of gold is approximately five to 10 times more wear-resistant than standard red gold. By wear-resistant, we understand this to mean that the material resists scratches better than regular gold alloys. In another press release for a watch that used Armour Gold, the brand noted that it achieves these levels of resistance and hardness thanks to “improved microstructure,” though it is not evident what exactly this means.

At present, IWC only offers nine models in Armour Gold, which includes three novelties this year (Portugieser Perpetual Calendar 44 with black or white dial; and Portugieser Hand-Wound Tourbillon Day & Night).

This article first appeared on WOW’s Autumn Issue #74

For more on the latest in luxury watch reads from WOW, click here.