This 12 months guarantees a wealthy variety of trends in men’s watches: retro, futuristic, classical, sporty, neo-Gothic… it’s all going to be at Basel. Alex Doak selects some of Hall 1’s finest
Frédérique Constant Slimline Manufacture Moonphase
No, it isn’t a Patek Philippe Calatrava, however you’d be forgiven for considering otherwise. Frédérique Constant’s Slimline Manufacture Moonphase is a masterpiece of understatement, elegance and steadiness of design, and it’s also a drop-useless discount, featuring as it does the youthful Swiss brand’s in-home, or ‘manufacture’ movement, updated to incorporate a moonphase and circular date indicator in a slimline case profile.
Not only do you get a sapphire caseback on your cash, however you’ll be gazing upon excessive-finish ornamental touches similar to perlage, round Côtes de Genève and no less than 26 rubies.
RRP: from £2,530

Frédérique Fixed Slimline Manufacture Moonphase
Tissot Navigator
Tissot is celebrating its 160th anniversary this 12 months, and in continuation of the vastly successful Heritage reissue line first launched during its 150th celebrations, father or mother the Swatch Group has chosen the Navigator to commemorate this newest milestone.
Perfectly suited to the current craze for both world-timers and retro styles, this timepiece was initially created to rejoice Tissot’s centenary in 1953, and remains an invaluable instrument for roaming businessmen. Merely set it to any one of many world’s major 24 timezones to read its time from the minute track on the dial. What’s more, it’s a chronometer-rated computerized motion, making the value tag a knock-down cut price.
RRP: £1,040

Tissot Navigator
Hamilton
Jazzmaster Face2Face
Regardless of a line in stable utilitarian navy watches, Swatch Group’s mid-market Hamilton brand enjoys a heritage of outrageous anomalies – led by their Jetsons-esque Ventura pieces, but also peppered with one-offs such because the idea watch developed for Kubrick’s 2001: A House Odyssey.
This yr, in an act of sheer joyousness as well as technical prowess, we now have the Jazzmaster Face2Face – an oval watch restricted to 888 editions, which may be flipped, providing the wearer a alternative of two watch designs in a single, and two timezones. Brilliantly, each movements for all sides’s dial are automatic, lending a futuristic techiness, as well as a contact of zaniness.
RRP: £four,640

Hamilton Jazzmaster Face2Face
Bulgari
Diagono Moonphase
Watch consultants were profitable in predicting Bulgari’s whole absorption of loss-leading boutique brands Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth just a few years again, but have been somewhat much less profitable in predicting such fast acceptance of Bulgari’s newfound horological expertise by the diehard purists.
Yet another highly technical triumph from the Roman jeweller is that this, the Diagono Moonphase, which, as an alternative of deploying current Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth technology with a Bulgari badge, innovates by itself terms.
The timepiece’s champlevé lacquer dial frames a 5-lunar-phase arc at 6 o’clock, and the day by day advance of the moon is indicated by a hand that jumps from left to right when it is waxing, and from proper to left when it is waning.
RRP: E38,500 (£32,742)

Bulgari Diagono Moonphase
Omega Sedna
Now Omega has nailed its revolutionary Co-axial expertise, the Swiss marque has been working on other high-tech advancements, which are pushing its brand positioning larger and higher.
For its newest innovation, Swatch Group has tasked its prime metallurgists and scientists with creating an 18ct rose-gold alloy whose reddish hue will final several lifetimes. Named after the Inuit goddess Sedna, stated to live at the backside of the Arctic Ocean, the resulting formulation owes its enduring copper hue to the presence of palladium.
This Constellation piece is the primary outing for Sedna, and is proscribed to 1,952 pieces, as per the gathering’s launch year.
RRP: £thirteen,510

Omega Sedna
Seiko Premier Kinetic Direct Drive
Removed from simply resting on its laurels as every man’s ‘first first rate watch’, Seiko has maintained a stage of innovation that many manufacturers would do effectively to emulate. It's celebrating a quarter-century of its self-winding Kinetic expertise with this mannequin. Not only does the rotor cost the quartz motion’s battery as you move your arm, however you can too energy it by turning the crown. Whenever you do, the retrograde energy reserve cleverly switches to function as an indicator of how a lot energy you’re imparting.
RRP: E600 (£510)

Seiko Premier Kinetic Direct Drive
Breitling for Bentley
Mild Physique Midnight Carbon
It’s precisely 10 years since Breitling attached with Bentley and double-handedly defined the fashionable notion of the watch/automobile co-branding partnership – a model now enjoyed by brands from Bulgari and Maserati to Hublot and Ferrari.
The Breitling for Bentley watches were all the time at a far greater finish than the Swiss brand’s standard oeuvre, and this yr’s new Gentle Physique Midnight Carbon is not any different, boasting an extremely-gentle titanium ‘chassis’ coated with matt-black carbon, in addition to a dashboard-type dial that includes a 30-second sweep-seconds hand, permitting for highly exact elapsed-time measurement, down to eighths of a second.
RRP: £8,930

Breitling for Bentley Gentle Physique Midnight Carbon
Tag Heuer
Calibre 1887 Jack Heuer Edition
It was the round Carrera chronograph that set Tag Heuer on its strategy to becoming sports activities-watchmaker without equal. First launched 5 decades ago, the Carrera is all you’ll hear about from Tag this 12 months, and no dangerous factor. This Calibre 1887 Jack Heuer Edition pays tribute to the eponymous pioneering octogenarian, who spent the 1960s in the pitlanes, kitting out his motor-racing pals with Carreras and manning his precision timing gear at first/end line. The little brother of the new carbon-composite CMC Concept Chronograph, the asymmetrical case design comes from the Carrera Mikrogirder, and its case is pure Formulation 1 and aeronautics: black titanium carbide metal, no much less.
RRP: £5,285

Tag Heuer Calibre 1887 Jack Heuer Edition
Maurice Lacroix
Le Chronographe Squelette
Watches that Batman could be proud to sport have been on-trend ever since stealth wealth came in. Not even basic manufacturers like Maurice Lacroix have been resistant to the matt-black-on-matt-black effect. Its in-home-manufacture Le Chronographe Squelette boasts a deep, multi-layered dial, its three-dimensionality heightened by the bottom plate’s snailed architecture and the black screws’ distinction with the gem stones. Visible between the web of bridges are the gearing, escapement and even the column wheel.
RRP: £TBC

Maurice Lacroix Le Chronographe Squelette
Longines Conquest Classic
The enchantment of Longines’ men’s watches, and the brand as an entire, has benefitted hugely from recent raids on the archives at Saint-Imier HQ, with the Legend Diver, Waterproof Wrist Watch and Twenty-Four Hours all reminding us of the brand’s incredible back catalogue. However the future is firmly in thoughts with the up to date Conquest Traditional line.
In the identical spirit as the chronographs launched as early as 1881 for the horse-racing lovers and jockeys of New York, the watches are devoted to race-goers who share the joy of the season’s most prestigious races, all sponsored by Longines, from Chantilly to Hong Kong; Dubai to Royal Ascot. All are computerized, and the chronographs are fitted with Longines’ column-wheel calibre.
Rose-gold mannequin pictured. RRP: £6,810

Longines Conquest Classic
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