Watch Trends from LVMH Watch Week 2023
Plus the biggest trends to know from one of the watch world’s major fairs.
It’s worth noting that at LVMH Watch Week, an event mostly dedicated to mechanical timepieces and jewellery watches, two watch executives mentioned that smart watches had increased people’s interest in the kinds of timepieces that don’t monitor your heart rate.
The great “quartz crisis” of the late 1970s and early ’80s, when the battery-operated watches coming out of Japan threatened to upend – and certainly changed – the traditional watch world (and its Swiss manufactures), is sometimes invoked when discussing the advent of smart and connected watches. However, both Antoine Pin, managing director of Bulgari Watches, and Frédéric Arnault, CEO of Tag Heuer, see digital watches as increasing interest in timepieces more generally.
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Arnault, the fourth child of LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, started working for Tag Heuer in the brand’s smart watch division in 2017 before becoming CEO in June 2020. He was excited to present the brand’s new Connected timepiece novelties alongside pieces such as a 600-piece limited-edition Tag Heuer Carrera 60th anniversary watch and the TAG Heuer Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph, which is powered by a solar movement.
Arnault says Tag Heuer’s Connected watches – one of them notably worn by Will Sharpe as Evan in one of last year’s most talked-about shows, White Lotus – are selling wildly (“like nuts”). “Smart watches are a huge trend as well,” he says. “I believe that has a positive impact on the interest in watches overall because people now are used to wearing something on their wrists, so they also get interested in traditional watchmaking.”
“I believe that [smart watches] has a positive impact on the interest in watches overall because people now are used to wearing something on their wrists, so they also get interested in traditional watchmaking.”
Additions to the Connected Watch, launched at LVMH Watch Week, include a new Connected Calibre E4 Golf Edition and TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4 Sport Edition 45 mm with a flexible rubber strap.
Since he became CEO, Arnault has been steering a transformation of the brand, including emphasising its high watchmaking capabilities with the 2022 launch of pieces such as the Plasma, which uses lab-grown diamonds, and a new take on the Monza watch (first launched in 1976) in the TAG Heuer Monza Flyback Chronometer. With a skeletonised dial to that reveals a chronograph counter at 3 and the permanent second at 6 o’clock, it’s a piece Arnault was particularly proud to launch at this year’s LVMH Watch Week.
“I’m proud of all the products,” he says. “I think they’re all amazing, but if there’s one to choose it’ll be the Monza. Because it’s very daring to relaunch a shape; it doesn’t happen very often. It’s not just a new material, or a technical upgrade. It’s really a new design, a new shape that we had that we decided to modernise and relaunch. I think it’s quite special. It’s recognisable, unique.”
Bulgari’s Antoine Pin says the opportunity for the Roman jeweller, known for its bold and exuberant creations, lies in “the exceptional.” However, he says digital devices can also serve as inspiration to seek out something different. He notes that while there has been an extension of the very high-end segment of the watch market, there has also been a reduction at the entry level; for $1-2K, he reasons, you would naturally pick up a digital watch. The opportunity then is to entice people to trade up, or to have a digital watch and a mechanical watch.
“I think the beauty is that the more people wear digital devices, the more they’re used to having something on their wrist, so at least this education of the wristwatch is there. It’s just for us to sell them – okay, you’re good [for] daily, it’s nice, but what are you going to wear while you’re going out, when you are having a good time? Do you really want to be followed by the chip that tells where you are with the time? Don’t you want to be free sometimes, but still enjoying something that is really special?”
Bulgari novelties launched at LVMH Watch Week included additions to the Diva’s Dream collection that take their inspiration from the shape of the ginkgo leaf, a motif found on mosaics seen in Rome’s Baths of Caracalla. Another stand-out was a new take on the Serpenti Tubogas Infinity watch that allowed for diamonds to be set along the bracelet, following the body of the maison’s beloved serpent, for the first time.
Technology, says Pin, is the way Bulgari can maintain its recognisable style while continuing to create, and innovate. It’s something that he says is as important in the brand’s horological feats in the world of super-thin watches, such as the 2022 World Record breaking Octo Finissimo Ultra, as it is finding new jewellery techniques to reimagine a motif dear to the house.
“Technology allows us to reinterpret … to be very loyal to the initial idea but a new evolution,” says Pin. If you are too out of the box, he says, you risk being unrecognisable. At the same time, you always want to surprise. “We should hear you saying sometimes, ‘Ah, I did not expect this, but it’s so Bulgari.’”
Playing with expectations was the MO for Swiss watchmakers Hublot at LVMH Watch Week too, with the brand launching new sizes and a reimagining of its slim Classic Fusion Original watch.
The timepiece was launched in 1980 with the then unheard of combination of yellow gold with a rubber strap. Its sporty chicness has a particular allure now with vintage inspired timepieces resonating among both collectors and watch fanciers. It’s something Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe, who was appointed to the role in 2012, says speaks to the way tastes continually evolve.
“When we relaunched the brand in 2004/5, we stopped the Classic at that time. That was when we came with the Big Bang, and we relaunched everything. We gave a shock to the brand, to be able to have success, you know? But now it’s almost 20 years since we did that. I think it’s a moment. Every cycle, a generation, is around 20 years, so I think it’s time to come back to our origins at Hublot and to reinterpret the Classic presented in 1980. The watch was revolutionary at that time. I didn’t want to do a copy… we have tried to reinterpret it. There are many details of quality this watch didn’t have at that time. I think there is a trend to come back to more sophisticated, more sport-chic watches; we believe this is an evolution in the design of watches.”
The Classic Fusion Original comes in a 38mm size and a teeny (for Hublot, at least) 33mm, which also speaks to what Guadalope sees as an evolution in preferences.
“The size is always an evolution in watches,” he says. “You know, when I started in 1988 the trend for men was 30mm. I said at that time, 33mm is too big. Can you imagine? After we moved to 40, when we did Hublot 44 and we went even to 48mm, that was too bulky, I would say. And we see that there was a trend to come back for men to around 42mm. And for women, there is a kind of no-gender approach between 38 and 40mm.”
Guadalope says the brand has seen growth among female customers – up to 27 per cent last year on 20 per cent the previous year. His goal is a 40/60 female to male split.
Novelties for Zenith launched at LVMH Watch Week speak to a desire for colour, as well as a burgeoning interest among watch connoisseurs for pieces that merge heritage with boundary-pushing technology. This included 36mm additions to its Defy Skyline range with coloured dials ranging from pink to mint green, and a Defy Skyline Skeleton which includes, among other details, a 1/10th of a second counter visible through the open dial. Its design nods to the original Defy watch launched in 1969.
This piece is particularly exciting for Julien Tornare, CEO of Zenith, not only because it’s what clients had been asking for, but because it expresses what is helping to drive new audiences to appreciate watches, watch history and watchmaking.
“I think we’ve seen more and more interest in watches in general, but more and more interest in brands that have both heritage or history and are very authentic, but that are living and developing products of the 21st century,” he says. “[It’s] not because you have a long history that you cannot be innovative and creative. They don’t go against each other because innovation eventually becomes tradition.”
