Simply The Best: This year’s Watches & Wonders highlights statement-making timepieces

Emirates Man

At this year’s Watches & Wonders men were spoilt for choice when it came to statement-making timepieces.

PIAGET – POLO SIGNATURE
True Blue

There is something so satisfying about a maison that understands its own DNA so completely it can build an entire collection moment around a single decorative groove. Those rippled horizontal striations – gadroons, in Piaget’s vocabulary – have been the house’s secret weapon since 1979, and at Watches & Wonders this year the Polo Signature collection got a full wardrobe refresh around them. Deep blue dials now run across the range, with a sodalite-dialled Polo 79 making a stone-cold case for the allure of mineral glamour. Effortless, considered, and evergreen in its attitude – this is Piaget doing exactly what the brand does best.

CARTIER – CARTIER PRIVÉ – LA COLLECTION
Treat Yourself

A decade in, and Cartier Privé still knows exactly how to make a collector’s pulse race. For its tenth opus, the Maison didn’t just revisit one of its archival shapes – it brought back three. The Tank Normale, Tortue Chronographe Monopoussoir and Crash Squelette arrive together in platinum, bound by a thread of deep burgundy that runs through each piece like a shared secret. The Crash, in particular, is something else entirely – its movement hand-hammered into submission, wildly skeletal, limited to just 150 pieces. This isn’t nostalgia. This is Cartier reminding everyone, very quietly and very confidently, who invented the game.

ULYSSE NARDIN – SUPER FREAK
Get Your Freak On

Twenty-five years after the original Freak turned watchmaking on its head, Ulysse Nardin arrives at Watches & Wonders with something that makes even that landmark moment feel like a warm-up act. The Super Freak houses the world’s first automatic double tourbillon – two inclined, counter-rotating cages floating on a flying carousel, averaging their rates through the world’s smallest differential. A newly patented gimbal system, borrowed from aerospace navigation, makes a seconds display possible for the very first time in a Freak. All 511 components assembled by a single watchmaker, over 60 hours. Fifty pieces exist. This is watchmaking as an extreme sport – and we are here for it.

VACHERON CONSTANTIN – CALIBRE 2550 OVERSEAS AUTOMATIQUE ULTRA-THIN
Slender Strength

Seven years of R&D for 0.05 mm. That’s the kind of obsessive, borderline unreasonable commitment that separates the truly great maisons from everyone else. Vacheron Constantin’s new Overseas Ultra-Thin arrives powered by an in-house movement measuring just 2.4mm thick – a whisper thinner than the legendary calibre it succeeds, which launched back in 1968. The full watch sits at 7.35 mm, all in a proprietary platinum hardened to resist scratching at nearly three times the standard. The salmon dial, a colour the maison has loved since the 1940s, gives it warmth without softness. Limited to 255 pieces. This is watchmaking as quiet, iron-willed perfection – and it shows.

HUBLOT – BIG BANG IMPACT ONE MILLION
Shine Bright

A million dollars. Five hundred diamonds. And one flying tourbillon suspended in mid-air at the centre of it all. As any watch connoisseur knows, Hublot doesn’t do subtle, and with the Big Bang Impact One Million, it isn’t trying to. But what makes this watch more than just an extravagant jewellery exercise is the genuine technical audacity underneath – baguettes and fancy-cut diamonds spiralling outward in a three-dimensional vortex that took hundreds of hours to set correctly, wrapped around a hand-wound movement with a five-day power reserve. At 45 mm in white gold, this watch is a wrist statement that announces itself from across the room. Bold, unapologetic, and utterly Hublot.

AUDEMARS PIGUET – CODE 11.59 SELFWINDING PERPETUAL CALENDAR OPENWORKED
Lay Bare Your Soul

Leave it to Audemars Piguet to make transparency the ultimate flex. The Swiss maison arrived at Watches & Wonders with Calibre 7139, a self-winding perpetual calendar that strips away every unnecessary layer to put its mechanical wizardry on full display. With over 30 hours of hand-finishing poured into each piece, this isn’t engineering – it’s obsession. Two 41mm references carry the new movement. But we were wowed by the white gold and black ceramic Code 11.59. Bridging the gap between visibility and legibility, it wears its sapphire dial like a confession – and honestly, at this level of craft, why would you hide a thing?

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Images: Supplied