SHOWSTOPPERS

While we spend the issue saying a long goodbye to all sorts of watches from last year, here we offer a hot take on key highlights from the LVMH Watch Week

- ASHOK SOMAN

Watch fairs always seem to improve, year after year and this is usually tied to expansive growth that feels inexorable.

Unfortunately, it only feels that way. As we have seen, repeatedly, such growth is often fragile and prone to collapse. Sometimes, the comeback story sees watchmaking getting stronger and maybe that will be the case this time. This year’s LVMH Watch Week offers an interesting case study because more of the group’s brands are taking part and this means that brands without significant horological depth might end up developing it.

Needless to say, this is good because more choices are welcome but we do wonder if the emerging environment is the right stage. The much reported slowdown in Chinese demand might only be temporary but this market’s tastes might yet evolve and this no doubt worries groups like LVMH. Such worries, if indeed they exist, do not make themselves felt in the watches revealed at Bulgari, Hublot, Daniel Roth, Gerald Genta, L’Epée 1839, Louis Vuitton, TAG Heuer, Tiffany & Co and Zenith.

Of the brands introducing novelties to the world, perhaps none was more of a surprise than Tiffany & Co, although some of you might recall the brand’s various abortive and ill-fated attempts to establish watches as a vital part of its universe, as the brands like to say. We shall see what we can tell from the directions the watches exhibit. In a few words, things are looking up at Tiffany & Co. First, the question emerges of what exactly LVMH wants to do or accomplish with its travelling two-day extravaganza that bills itself as a “Week.” With Bulgari finally placing its bets on Watches and Wonders, all the major names of the group are represented at the world’s biggest and most important showcase of new watches and watchmaking culture. In a tightening business environment that exhibits signs of future challenges, big events are often the first to feel the effects.