Watches rock

Nobody needs a wristwatch. But it’s the things we don’t need that we covet most—and watches certainly fit the bill. They can be talismans of success, conversation pieces, expressions of taste, or simply good investments. In 2022, a banner year for top-notch releases, these 12 new watches were all of the above. That they also happen to tell us the time—without reminding us of all our unread emails—is really a bonus.

- Nick Sullivan

CARTIER Many of us yearn for the same few iconic watches because they say we are in the club. Often these are bigger watches, and identifiable from across the room. But some watches are recognisable precisely because they are tiny. Take the Cartier Tank, seen at left in a new black, steel version from the Tank Must collection. It takes a maverick spirit to rock a watch that small, that refined, that minimal. It worked for Ali, Warhol and Delon. And who wouldn’t want to join that club?

Cartier Tank Must

BULGARI The legendary Roman house has been pushing the boundaries in watchmaking for a decade, breaking records and winning major prizes for ever more refined, superthin watches—and even thinner movements. The centrepiece of that ongoing effort is the Octo Finissimo, a watch that, by virtue of its striking, faceted geometric case and wafer-thin in-house automatic movement, manages to look both substantial and ethereal at the same time.

Bulgari Octo Finissimo in rose gold

MONTBLANC Montblanc’s Geosphere line started as a special edition in 2018, but the unique design—which features two counter-rotating convex subdials showing planet earth viewed from above the North and South Poles—has since become a pillar of the brand’s output. Each new edition boasts the sort of ingenious functionality and high-end finishing normally associated with far more expensive watches. In September, the house added this 0 Oxygen, a watch assembled in a vacuum, partly to celebrate the high-altitude climbing that inspired it, but also to reduce fogging from condensation and wear to the internal workings from oxidation.