THE HOME OF WATCH CULTURE

It’s been a big year for watches: here were some of the best watch moments of 2024

It’s been a big year for watches: here were some of the best watch moments of 2024

Jamie Weiss

As trite as it is to say, 2024 has been a massive year for the watch industry, but it’s been particularly monumental for us here at Time+Tide. So, as a departure from our usual Friday Wind Down fare, I thought it might be nice to take a quick look back at The Year That Was in watches, and reminisce on some of the highlights of the year, going month by month. This could very well end up being a 10,000 word article, so I’ve tried to keep things succinct – if there’s anything I’ve missed, please forgive me: I’m half-made of Christmas ham right now.

January – Time+Tide 10

Without being too up ourselves, our 10th anniversary celebrations at the start of this year were definitely one of the highlights of our 2024. For us, and our Melbourne watch community, it was five days of back-to-back events, focused around the release of three limited editions: the Baltic x Time+Tide Hermétique Night Mode, the Furlan Marri x Time+Tide Outback Elegy, and the Studio Underd0g x Time+Tide Hand Delivered “pizza watch”, the last of which we reckon became one of the break-out watch stories of the year.

February – Hamilton x Dune

Lisan al Gaib! You could very well argue that Timothée Chalamet was one of the biggest watch influencers of 2024, with the American-French actor leading the charge of famous men embracing smaller, traditionally feminine watches. However, we at Time+Tide felt his impact most with the release of the Hamilton Ventura Dune Limited Editions, two funky watches connected to one of the biggest blockbuster movie franchises in recent memory. We even got to play around with the actual prop watch from the film in our hands-on review, which was a pretty special opportunity.

March – Snoopy MoonSwatch mania

2024 has seen Swatch and Omega continue to double down with MoonSwatch releases, leading many in the watch community to feel a sense of MoonSwatch fatigue. However, in March, the hype around the Swatch x Omega MoonSwatch Mission to Moonphase – better known simply as the “Snoopy MoonSwatch” – was spectacular to witness. I had the unique fortune of being the first journalist in the world to try the watch on, with myself, Borna, and Alex invited by Swatch into their Melbourne boutique ahead of the launch to film the watch (while a long line of punters snaked down Collins Street outside). I wonder how many new MoonSwatches we’ll see in 2025…

April – Watches and Wonders, and Bremont’s surprising rebrand

For both watch collectors and journalists alike, April is always a particularly mental month as it’s when Watches and Wonders – which has firmly cemented itself as the pre-eminent new watch moment of the year – takes place in Geneva, Switzerland. Of course, there were myriad new watches to get excited about in April (watch our Kiss, Marry, Kill video above for a reminder), but the biggest watch news of April 2024 was Bremont’s total rebrand, which took many by surprise.

May – Sylvester Stallone’s watch auction

2024 proved to be the year of the celebrity watch auction, with the collections of stars including Elton John and Tom Brady going under the hammer. However, one of the most interesting was Sylvester Stallone’s, which was announced in May and saw the first Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime 6300G ever hit the auction block. That watch ended up selling for an eye-watering US$5.4 million the next month, which was US$400,000 over the estimate of US$2.5 million to US$5 million. Talk about a knockout…

June – IWC Eternal Calendar gets a Guinness World Record

The IWC Portugieser Eternal Calendar will almost certainly go down as the best watch release of 2024, boasting a perpetual calendar that’s accurate for 400 years and a Double Moon display that’s accurate to 45 million years – it’s bonkers stuff. In November, it would go on to win the Aiguille d’Or Grand Prize at the 24th Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, the Oscars of watchmaking, but in June, it received more mainstream recognition, securing the Guinness World Record for the most precise lunar phase wristwatch.

July – in with TAG Heuer, out with Rolex for Formula 1

Rolex formula one f1 racetrack feature

In July, rumours emerged that Rolex would be ending its 11-year global sponsorship of Formula 1 – rumours that would get validated later in the year with LVMH confirmed to be taking over one of the most coveted sponsorship opportunities in international sports in a new 10-year partnership, with assumptions TAG Heuer will take the position of title sponsor. TAG Heuer is the motorsports watch brand and already sponsors the Monaco Grand Prix – so it makes total sense – it will be weird to see racetracks without green and gold Rolex branding when the 2025 F1 season resumes in our hometown of Melbourne in March.

Of course, the other big F1 news from TAG Heuer this year was the re-release of the original Formula 1 watch through a collaboration with NYC streetwear brand KITH. While the “KITH Heuer” didn’t get quite the same amount of pop culture cut-through and hype as the MoonSwatch has, it was nevertheless one of the year’s most notable releases.

August – the Olympics with Omega

2024 was an Olympic year, with the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad taking place in Paris, France in the first properly post-COVID Games. Paris 2024 was widely considered a success, but one of the Games’ big winners was its official timekeeper Omega, which not only had multiple cool watch releases for the Games but also managed to get plenty on the wrists of the world’s biggest stars, with athletes like Armand Duplantis and Noah Lyles even wearing Omega watches while competing.

September – Studio Underd0g x H. Moser & Cie

HMoser 1800 1200 Endeavour Perpetual Calendar StudioUnderd0g 03PFB 03SERIES Passion Fruit Lifestyle light flat passion fruit cut

Geneva Watch Days 2024 proved to be a particularly interesting edition, but the highlight was Studio Underd0g’s unexpected “Passi0n Fruit” collaboration with H. Moser & Cie. We might sell Studio Underd0g and be thick as thieves with its founder Richard Benc but he kept this one well under wraps – it was a coup for a microbrand like his to be recognised with an established, high-luxury independent like Moser, but their team-up is also emblematic of the growing cultural capital, mainstream acceptance and unrestrained creative autonomy of micro- and independent watch brands.

October – the Cubitus controversy

patek philippe cubitus collection

No matter how you feel about it, Patek Philippe’s first new watch collection in 25 years, the controversial Cubitus, has to make the list of the biggest watch moments of 2024. The Cubitus’ release was notable not just because of the watch itself, but also because of the way that Patek Philippe President Thierry Stern handled criticism around it. Much has been said about the Cubitus, and how it might be the final straw that put off Patek customers for good… On a lighter note, we opened our second-ever Discovery Studio in London in October! That’s something we can all get behind, right?

November – Sundowner

Yes, we’re horribly biased, but the Time+Tide x TAG Heuer Aquaracer Solargraph ‘Sundowner’ certainly felt like the highlight of November 2024. We’ve been fortunate enough to pen numerous collaborative watches over the years with brands, but this TAG is in many ways the biggest yet for us. While we’re proud to be a champion of independent and microbrands, there’s perhaps no watch brand that resonates more with Aussies than TAG Heuer; the brand’s just massive here. To be able to collab with them on a watch – and have our logo on the dial – means the world to us. As did having all of these sell out almost instantly.

December – Omega ends on a high

Lastly, it feels weird to talk about December when we’re still in it (the year’s not over yet!) but Omega have definitely made a big impact this month, ending out the year with a surprise flurry of very hot new watches: the two greyscale Omega Seamaster 300M Divers on mesh bracelets, their green and Bronze Gold sibling, the highly unexpected Speedmaster Pilot and a turquoise Aqua Terra. Saving the best till last, were we?

Anyway, that was a taste of the year that was. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and Happy New Year!

Jamie and the Time+Tide Team