5 Big Trends Spotted at 2024 Geneva Watch Week

When Watches and Wonders, the luxury watch industry’s premier buying fair, concluded at the Palexpo convention center in Geneva in early April, there seemed to be a consensus among attendees: Momentous product introductions were few and far between. 

“I thought it was a very bad year in terms of novelties,” William Massena, founder of the independent brand Massena Lab and a longtime industry observer, tells Gem + Jewel

He cited the watch trade’s years-long production cycle and noted that the models rolling out now were likely designed between 2020 and 2021. 

“Remember what we were doing then?” Massena says. “We were home with the kids. Form follows function. If someone has a great idea and the engineers and watchmakers are home and don’t have access to their big computers and CAD, at end of the day, you get maybe shaped watches and old complications.”

Despite the dearth of groundbreaking introductions, showgoers were upbeat, and the mood was festive. Beyond the Watches and Wonders event, where brands such as Cartier, Rolex and Patek Philippe showed their collections, a host of satellite fairs catered to lovers of microbrands and independent watchmaking. 

A handful of trends, highlighted below, emerged, reflecting the look and feel of the year’s new timepieces. 

 

The Metal: Rose Gold

In a departure from the recent past, when all the attention was on steel, watchmakers opted to encase their timepieces in more precious materials this year. Rose gold was the clear favorite, especially when combined with a contrasting color such as black or grey. 

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Rolex Oyster

Rolex's new Day-Date 40 

From Patek Philippe’s reintroduction of its iconic 1968 Ellipse model, now available on a chic rose gold chain bracelet, to the new Day-Date 40 from Rolex, which paired a pink gold case and bracelet with a slate ombré dial, the obsession over rose, or pink, gold was evident across Watches and Wonders and outside the fair, too.

Vanguart, for example, a high-end independent brand that welcomed buyers and press at the Beau Rivage Hotel on Lake Geneva, showed its contemporary new Orb tourbillon model in a stylish rose gold and white execution.

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Patek

Patek Philippe’s reintroduced Ellipse

 

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Vanguart

New Vanguart Orb 

The Color: Red

When it comes to color trends, watchmakers tend to follow the herd. A few years ago, the dominant color — for dials, straps and accent details such as hands — was blue. A year or two later, watchmakers all seemed to have gotten the green memo. This year, there were plenty of blue and green dials, but a new shade emerged as a contender: Red, in all its incarnations, from a bold scarlet to a more subdued coral, added a surprisingly bright new palette to the watchmaking mix.

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Montblanc Iced

New red-dialed Montblanc Iced Sea

At Cartier, a new edition of the Santos-Dumont came with a carnelian red laquer dial and a surprise: To read the time, you’ll need to move your eye counterclockwise (12 remains at the top but the 1 is now at the traditional 11 o’clock position, 2 is at the 10 o’clock position and so on).

Montblanc and Grand Seiko both introduced sporty steel models with blazing red dials. In the case of the latter’s new Spring Drive Chronograph GMT (honoring the 20th anniversary of the 9R Spring Drive movement series), the Japanese watchmaker said it chose the hue to express “the changing colors of summer mornings in Shinshu,” the region in central Japan where all Spring Drive timepieces are manufactured.

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Grand Seiko

Grand Seiko's new new Spring Drive Chronograph GMT

 

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Cartier Santos

Cartier's new Santos-Dumont 

 

The Complication: Tourbillon

The tourbillon is one of watchmaking’s showiest complications. Often made visible through a cutout on the dial, the revolving mechanism, patented by the watchmaker Abraham-Louis Bréguet in 1801, was designed to counteract the effects of gravity on the gears of a mechanical timepiece. For the past 20 years, watchmakers have been obsessed with it.

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 A. Lange

A. Lange & Söhne's new Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold “Lumen”

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Piaget

Piaget's new Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon 150th Anniversary

And 2024 was no exception. Perhaps the most noteworthy new model was the Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon 150th Anniversary, a wafer-thin watch incorporating a flying tourbillon into its main plate. At just 2 mm thick, the piece is a marvel of micro-engineering.

At the other end of the watchmaking spectrum was the new Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon Honeygold “Lumen” from the German watchmaker A. Lange & Söhne.

Combining a flyback chronograph with a precisely jumping minute counter, perpetual calendar and tourbillon with a stop-seconds mechanism, the brand opted to place the spinning device not on the dial, but in the back, where it’s visible through the sapphire caseback. 

 

The Style: Shaped Watches

Call it the Cartier effect. Known for its shapely dress watches — the rectangular Tank, the oval-shaped Baignoire and the bent-out-shape Crash, to name a few — the Parisian jeweler and watchmaker seems to have inspired more brands to eschew simple, conventional round cases for more daring silhouettes.

The big introduction from Hermès, for example, was the new Hermès Cut, whose 36 mm case is made up of “a circle within a round shape,” the brand’s somewhat coy description of the concentric, and slightly irregular, shapes that comprise the new model. A nod to sculpture and hewn marble, the Cut boasts subtle details, such as a bevel-cut bezel framing an opaline, silver-toned dial, that punctuate its elegant minimalist design.

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Hermes the Cut

The new Hermès Cut

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Gerald Charles

A new Gerald Charles Maestro

Other brands doubled down on their heritage. For example, Gerald Charles, founded in 2000 by the legendary watch designer Gérald Charles Genta, introduced a slew of new pieces in the brand’s signature Maestro case, which lies somewhere between a square and an octagon.

 

The Buzz: Independents

While innovation was not a major theme among most group-owned brands (including those under the LVMH and Richemont umbrellas), it was the guiding force for independent watchmakers who showed their pieces in Geneva.

Take Atelier Wen, a microbrand founded by two French Sinophiles seeking to honor Chinese culture and craftsmanship through timepieces such as the Perception “Concept,” a handsome guilloche model encased in rare tantalum.

Singer Reimagined, another indie, wowed buyers with its Singer Reimagined Divetrack, a dive watch that broke the mold.

Watches and Wonders trends Atelier Wen

Atelier Wen Perception "Concept"

Watches and Wonders trends 2024 Singer Diver

Singer's new Reimagined Divetrack

“Ninety-nine percent of all dive watches look the same — not this one,” Asher Rapkin, co-founder of Collective Horology and co-host of the Openwork podcast, tells Gem + Jewel. “The core concept is that it’s designed around the experience of diving. There’s a certain amount of time to be underwater, a certain amount of time to wait until you can fly again. It’s a completely different way to think about dive watches. It’s one of the most eye-opening watches I’ve seen in years. And I don’t even sell them.”