Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2025 - Issue 57 i REVOLUTION WATCH

I read a post made by my friend Vasu, aka NYC Watch Guy, who suggested that — if I may paraphrase him — watch brands were wasting money by flying in journalists to their launch events and plying them with champagne. The post was shared by quite a few other people. Now, as a watch journalist for over two decades, I was perplexed. Is there really that little respect for my occupation? As you guys know, I can run a little hot-headed. My first reaction was: OK, that’s it — we’ll both have to be lashed to rocks, facing each other and punching each other in the face until one of us dies, just like in the ancient Greek combat sports tradition upheld by the great Theagenes. Which is a…

In celebration of Singapore’s 60th year of independence, Audemars Piguet has created a unique Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet Starwheel for the National Museum of Singapore. This special piece reimagines the traditional wandering hours against a red sparkling lacquer dial, paying tribute to Singapore’s national color. Encased in 18K white gold and black ceramic, it also features a sapphire caseback revealing a 22K pink gold rotor engraved with a special SG60 motif. Complete with two strap options — one rubber-coated, one denim with red stitching — this commemorative timepiece was donated to the Museum towards their fundraising initiatives. And that it did in spectacular fashion, when it hammered for SGD 480,000 on August 15, 2025, at the National Museum of Singapore charity dinner, achieving the highest price fetched at auction…

Named simply Cartier, this showcase marks the maison’s first major exhibition in the U.K. in almost 30 years, dedicated to Cartier jewels and watches. Staged by the V&A Museum with pieces from the V&A and Cartier Collection, alongside works from the Royal Collection, major international museums and private collections, it showcases more than 350 objects from this “jeweler of kings and the king of jewelers.” These include showstopping historic pieces such as the Williamson diamond brooch bearing a super rare 23.6-carat pink diamond, commissioned by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and Grace Kelly’s actual engagement ring, which she wore in her last film High Society (1956). Watch lovers, meanwhile, will appreciate the splendid collection of mystery clocks and Cartier London watches from the 1960s and ’70s, including the much-loved 1967…

Hanoi just got a little more Swiss flair with the arrival of IWC Schaffhausen’s first boutique in Vietnam, tucked inside the glamorous Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel. Inside, you’ll find the stars of IWC’s lineup: from its signature Pilot’s Watches to seafaring Portugiesers, chic Portofinos and the newly rebooted Ingenieurs. Over in Singapore, ION Orchard has seen a shuffle of horology’s big names as brands play musical chairs. TAG Heuer reopens its boutique on the third floor with a brandnew retail concept focused on immersive storytelling to showcase its core collections — Aquaracer, Formula 1, Carrera and Monaco. Chopard, too, recently opened its new boutique concept focusing on ethical craftsmanship and sustainable luxury, with a plush violet-themed Haute Joaillerie Salon that showcases the brand’s exquisite creations. Another new addition is Breguet,…

At first industrial and minimalist in aesthetic, the Laureato’s new face presents a grand feu enamel dial in gray. This was achieved by applying multiple layers of enamel, which are then fired five to 10 times, resulting in a deep, lustrous surface. Beneath the translucent grand feu enamel, in a departure from the Laureato’s usual Clous de Paris design, is a guilloché pattern in a sunray finish that radiates from the center — a motif that again adds to the multidimensional effect. The name Infinite Gray refers to the muted medium blue-gray color of the enamel, which has a range shifting from slate to pewter in changing light, further enhanced by the dynamic flinqué pattern. Beyond the dial’s artistry, the watch remains quintessentially Laureato, with a 42mm × 10.68mm stainless…

Tokyo streetwear provocateur #FR2, also known as Fxxking Rabbits, returns for another thematic collaboration with Franck Muller. Building on the buzz of their 2023 debut, the two brands reunite for the #FR2NCK MULLER Vanguard Beach Limited Edition, a bold new take on the watchmaker’s sporty Vanguard line. This summer-inspired drop swaps the original monochrome palette for saturated hues drawn from Franck Muller’s 2023 Beach collection, namely Heatwave Red, Surf Blue and Tropical Green. The dial features the unmistakable Fxxking Rabbits characters enjoying a day out at the beach The case is no ordinary color job. Franck Muller uses a high-heat process where glass is melted at 1,500°C, pulled into fine threads, then cooled and turned into sheets. These are dipped in custom color baths, then compressed into fiberglass composite blocks…

Asia and AI, Trump and tariffs, fakes and robberies… if Billy Joel were to write a song for the watch world like he did for the state of the world in “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” these would surely come up. But the surfeit of controversies and trending topics in the watch world today sometimes obscure the most essential, most elemental motivation to owning and loving a mechanical watch — and that is the understanding and appreciation that, at its very essence, a mechanical watch is art, the glorious result and evidence of human creativity and imagination. As such, it is more than its dollar value and time-telling capability, and infinitely more than the sum of its gears and levers, springs and wheels. If you simply wanted to tell the…

There’s something about seeing a dive watch in the middle of Manhattan that invites a bit of dissonance — all that marine heritage surrounded by concrete and cabs. But on a recent evening at Blancpain’s new Madison Avenue boutique, the contrast felt surprisingly fitting. Watches may live happily on city-dwellers wrists, but their stories often start somewhere else, in this case deep under the surface of the ocean. Hosted by Blancpain and Revolution, the evening brought together collectors, conservationists and watch lovers for a celebration of the Fifty Fathoms and the ideas it’s come to represent. This wasn’t just about showing off new models (although there were certainly plenty there to get excited about); it was about sparking a conversation about exploration and preservation, and the role watches still play…

Manual. Tourbillon. 40mm across in sandblasted titanium. Integrated bracelet. At 1.85mm thin, it’s thinner than a Swiss five-franc coin. Meet the Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon, officially the world’s thinnest tourbillon, vanquishing Piaget’s 2024 Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon, which measured in at 2mm. It was by the skin of its nose — 0.15mm to be exact — but Bvlgari successfully wrestled back the crown as king of the ultra-thins with the Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon, unveiled at this year’s Watches and Wonders. With that, the Italian powerhouse comes full circle. Bvlgari’s Octo Finissimo story began 11 years ago in 2014 with the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Manual, featuring what was then the thinnest hand-wound flying tourbillon movement in the world, the Caliber BVL 268. It measured a wafer-thin 1.95mm and marked the…

We have long been fans of the sleek, understated aesthetics of the Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF family at Revolution, beginning with the Tonda PF Micro Rotor that kickstarted the revival of the brand in 2021 through to our sold-out limited edition in 2022, nicknamed “Serenissima” and 2025’s Tonda PF GMT Rattrapante with a cool new lake-green dial. The Tonda PF is all about stealth luxury and fine detailing, backed by solid in-house watchmaking know-how, all of which make for a winning combination. Indeed, for a while, the Tonda PF was a welcome respite that offered simplicity and elegance in the white noise of bling, ultra complications and over design. When it comes to the Tonda PF Sport family, the same aesthetics rule. MINIMALIST IN GOLD AND SANDSTONE This new addition…

The history of Urban Jürgensen is less a linear tale than a legacy shaped primarily by three acts. The first is by the man himself: Urban Jurgensen was a horologist and academic whose scientific approach set a new standard for 19th-century watchmaking outside the established centers of watchmaking power. Then, over a century later, Peter Baumberger and the great English watchmaker Derek Pratt restored the name through uncompromising craft at a time when such values had all but disappeared. The third act of Urban Jürgensen, which began in June this year, is enacted by the father-and-son team, Andy and Alex Rosenfield, working with watchmaking maestro Kari Voutilainen. The first three models of its 2025 collection are the UJ-1, a 250th anniversary watch honoring the life’s work of Derek Pratt, and…

When I started this series of articles on the “silent forces” who work behind the scenes yet form the vital infrastructure of Swiss horology that is so crucial to our enduring success, and even our very survival when times are fraught with challenges, I thought immediately of my friend Catherine Eberlé-Devaux, who performs a Herculean role in consistently uplifting the industry. I first met Catherine in her role as Heritage Director at TAG Heuer. Our first conversation was incredibly memorable, and within moments I was blown away by the depth and scope of her knowledge. I had brought up the idea of creating a Heuer Bundeswehr watch together, and she immediately brought up the fact that some of these watches were called “Sternzeit Reguliert” as they were regulated to “star…

The Hermès Arceau Le Temps Suspendu, first introduced in 2011, marked the beginning of a trilogy of watches in which mechanics became a philosophical statement that was as much about the nature of time as it was about watchmaking. They were compelling because sophisticated mechanics were deployed to undermine the very purpose of sophisticated mechanics. The Le Temps Suspendu wore its complexity so lightly and resolved its unusual function with such visual elegance that how it did it felt beside the point. The effect was so self-contained and satisfying that it didn’t draw attention to the mechanical effort behind it. Now that the mechanism is partially visible through the sapphire dial, its technical reality has finally hit home. As a recap, pressing the button at 9 o’clock allows the wearer…

Cheryl Chia One of the greatest technical minds in luxury watch journalism today, Cheryl Chia is a renowned watch writer with a deep interest in specialist topics such as independent watchmaking, movement engineering and decoration. Contrary to popular sentiment, she believes that watches can be assessed objectively in terms of complexity, quality and finishing. Tania Edwards Tania Edwards began her long career in the watch industry when she promoted Patek Philippe’s 150th Anniversary in 1989, and later became Vice President of the Henri Stern Watch Agency. In 2019, she started Collectability with friend and fellow Patek Philippe expert John Reardon. In this issue, Tania describes the fascinating history of the officer’s watch. Ross Povey Ross Povey, the founder of TudorCollector.com is a former editor of Revolution U.K. He has contributed…

From July 18 to August 10, 2025, at Paragon Mall’s Atrium in Singapore, Bvlgari presented Beyond Time, an immersive exhibition that transformed the space into a sensory-rich gallery, offering visitors an unprecedented look into Bvlgari’s contemporary approach to horology. “It is a profound honor to present Bvlgari’s world of watchmaking in Singapore,” said Jeffrey Hang, Regional Managing Director of Bvlgari. “To have Beyond Time begin its journey here is especially meaningful. It is our tribute to SG60 and a celebration of shared values — design, innovation and craftsmanship.” Modeled on the celebrated architecture of its Geneva Watches and Wonders showcase, the Beyond Time pop-up in Singapore was imagined as an open, multisensory environment, layered with thematic zones paying homage to Bvlgari’s most iconic watch pillars, including the Serpenti, the Octo,…

The MB&F Legacy Machine Exhibition concluded its two-week showcase at the Raffles Hotel Singapore in July, where visitors were invited to explore some of the brand’s most inventive watches to trace the LM’s narrative arc — from the earliest LM1, with its floating balance wheel suspended over twin time displays, to the LM Sequential EVO, its latest evolution in a double chronograph with a “Twinverter” binary switch. The LM series has always existed at the curious intersection of 19th century pocket watch elegance and 21st century mechanical innovation. Conceived by MB&F founder Maximilian Büsser as a “what if” scenario — what his iconic Horological Machines might have looked like, were they designed over 100 years before — the series has grown from a single, classically proportioned machine into a family…

With its sleek sculptural lines and distinctive shape, the Octo Finissimo case has long been the ideal canvas and inspiration for a small handful of very special editions. Unlike the usual cross-brand or celebrity-led collabs often seen in the watch industry, these editions blur the line between sculpture and watch, art and horology. We are talking, of course, about Bvlgari’s collaboration with Japanese architects Tadao Ando and Kazuyo Sejima, amongst others. Ando’s first collab with Bvlgari in 2019 was a stunning, mesmerizing play on a spiral motif that began at the off-centered seconds hand and rippled outward to the rest of the dial on a titanium Octo Finissimo Automatic. Printed in black lacquer on the titanium dial, the ripples echoed the curves of the round bezel, even as they were…

The watch world is one that consistently looks to its past. Reissues and revivals crowd the shelves, each promising authenticity through heritage. Independent makers often take the opposite approach, pushing into the avant-garde with creations that are intriguing but sometimes difficult to wear. Sitting between these poles is Gagà Laboratorio, a young brand that looks to culture as much as mechanics. Its watches are not exercises in nostalgia, nor are they willfully eccentric. Instead, they draw from Italian design history, filtered through Swiss craft, to create objects that are original yet grounded, playful yet practical. A project four years in the making, the brand was founded in 2024 by Ruben Tomella, the man behind Gagà Milano. Where his first venture became known for flamboyance and oversized numerals, Gagà Laboratorio was…

When images of this watch first broke, the world clearly sat up and took notice. It was, after all, something of a unicorn. It was reported to be a one-of-a kind Rolex that had been converted into a perpetual calendar by none other than one of the world’s first independent watchmakers, Franck Muller. For decades, we heard the story of a watch that Franck received as a graduation project at L’École d’Horlogerie de Genève as one of its top pupils. We also heard that he single-handedly converted that timepiece into a perpetual calendar, using no more than 50 parts. Even more impressive — he added the perpetual calendar mechanism in the existing space of the watch case. It was said that Rolex was so impressed that they agreed to meet…

YOU’VE DESCRIBED MARTEAU & CO. AS THE FIRST “CIRCULAR AUCTION PLATFORM” FOR INDEPENDENT WATCHMAKING — CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT THAT MEANS IN PRACTICAL TERMS FOR COLLECTORS, WATCHMAKERS AND THE BROADER WATCH ECOSYSTEM? In a typical auction, there are three players: the seller, the buyer and the auction house. We’ve added a fourth — the watchmaker. With every sale on our platform, the original maker earns a commission. It’s a simple idea, but it changes everything. It means watchmakers stay connected to their work and benefit from its long-term value, not just the first sale. HOW DOES YOUR ROYALTY SYSTEM FOR WATCHMAKERS WORK, AND WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IT’S IMPORTANT FOR INDEPENDENT CREATORS TO BENEFIT FROM SECONDARY MARKET SALES? Any time a watch is sold on Marteau, the original watchmaker gets…