Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Edition - December 2017

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DECEMBER 2017 businesstraveller.com

A

s the year’s end approaches, we

look back at the changes and

trends in the watch world,

before giving credit to those

that really stood out.

From an industry

perspective, Swiss watch exports rose

steadily over the summer, and the Chinese

marketwasresurgent,upmorethan20per

cent year-on-year.

Cautionhasbeenthenameofthegame

for many watch brands in 2017; the result of

cutbacks over the past two years was that this

year’s crop of watches focused on aesthetics

rather than technical developments, as well

as lower prices. The cause may be uninspiring

but the watches have been refreshingly

simple – maybe the market had become

bloated from complicated watchmaking.

This relative austerity has helped create

the dominant trend for trawling the back

catalogues for designs to revive. This has only

intensified, bringing with it standout watches

such as Blancpain’s Tribute to Fifty Fathoms

Mil-Spec, as well as less well-known reissues.

TELL

TIME

WILL

The bulk of new watches may have

little that’s new inside them, but instead

of the kind of “innovation” we were

used to when business was booming

(ever-more intricate and arcane whirligigs

foroligarchs)weareseeingahandful

of brands modernising the basics of a

mechanical movement. Panerai’s Lab-ID is

one such project, boasting ground-breaking

reliability, and there have been similar

efforts from Zenith with its Defy Lab. A

little commercial pressure is no bad thing.

ABOVE:Blancpain

Tribute to Fifty

Fathoms Mil-Spec

LEFT:Panerai

Lab-ID Luminor

1950 Carbotech

Business Travellerlooks

back on the finest

watches of 2017 – and

makes a few predictions

for the year to come

WORDS CHRIS HALL

Relative austerity has inspired a trend for

trawling back catalogues for designs to revive