Our friends at The Watches TV had a chance to see the Hermès watches for 2020 – and they (and we) were in luck to also hear from La Montre Hermès CEO Laurent Dordet. Host Marc André Deschoux goes through the new Hermès pieces one by one, beginning with the 2020 L’Heure de la Lune, the first version of which launched in 2019, which he thinks is “A super-hot watch.” Things go seriously wacky from there.
The GPHG Calendar and Astronomy category emphasizes astronomical and/or calendar complications included in men’s watches. Sorry, ladies’ watches, you don’t seem to count here. The six nominated watches cover quite a wide gamut of styles, complications, and price categories. And our panelists’ picks for winner cover a rather wide gamut as well.
The Paulin Watches Neo is fully designed and assembled in Scotland. The dial – the most important part of this watch – was also handmade in Scotland. And those are not the only great things about the affordable, reliable, and well-designed Neo.
In the GPHG Chronometry category, we find mechanical watches that contain at least one tourbillon, and/or a special escapement, and/or another development improving precision timekeeping. What we don’t find, though, is much hard data regarding precision like timing test results or in most cases even a second hand. Precision watches without a second hand? Despite that, our panel predicts a clear winner.
The Watches TV visited Vacheron Constantin’s Geneva boutique to talk with the brand’s style and heritage director Christian Selmoni, who provided the story of the new Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin Skeleton, which you can watch in this aesthetic five-minute video.
Elizabeth Doerr recently had the pleasure of celebrating with Nomos all that the city of Glashütte has accomplished in 175 years. The star of the informative day for her, though, was the set of three celebratory versions of the Lambda in a new (and very appropriate for this year) stainless steel case.
The Iconic category emphasizes men’s or women’s watches from a brand’s emblematic collection, meaning one that has had a lasting influence on watchmaking and its history as well as having been on the market for more than 20 years. Our panelists have mixed feelings about the Iconic category and are (nearly) split down the middle on picking a favorite.
In perusing the names of the 2020 jury of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, two distinct things became obvious to former jury member Elizabeth Doerr: that the entire jury is based in Switzerland and that it is far less diverse than it has been over the last decade. Here she breaks down why that is and provides some commentary and background on the new members.
The GPHG foundation describes the Men’s Complication watches as remarkable in terms of their mechanical creativity and complexity. But many of our panelists are scratching their heads as the perennial question “is a tourbillon a complication?” comes up yet again.
Van Halen was the catalyst kicking off Elizabeth Doerr’s lifelong passion for rock music as the first band she stumbled across in this genre (but most certainly not the last). One cursory listen to “Eruption” and she was hooked on rock for life. With the sad news of Eddie Van Halen’s passing on October 6, 2020, she therefore takes a look at three tasteful and fun watches the guitar god owned and wore.