TREND: 5 Trends to look our for at SIHH and Baselworld 2015

Felix Scholz

It’s the season of the watch fair – where we get to see the direction of horological style and fashion. We thought we’d dust off the crystal ball and make a few trend predictions ahead of Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) in Geneva which kicks off in a few days and Baselworld 2015, in mid-March.

Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso — What about this picture doesn’t scream luxury?

1: Brown

No colour says refined, masculine luxury quite like brown. Less common than black, brown is evocative of warm leather and rich textures. Plus it’s the perfect colour for the ongoing vintage revival – we can expect to see swathes of tropical inspired dials and warm faded feeling accents.

montblanc-smart-strap — Wearable smart-tech that still allows you to wear your real watch. Well played, Montblanc.

2: Smart

2015 is the year the Apple watch drops. It will also be the year the Swiss watch industry decides to seriously engage, for better or worse, with smartwatches. The best examples, like the Montblanc Timewalker Urban Speed e-strap are all about changing the conversation around smart wrist-tech. It’s not about smartwatches ‘killing’ high end mechanicals, but rather about integrating them in a mutually beneficial way. We’ll also see better designed smartwatches, like those of Withings, that move smartwatches away from the geek ghetto.

cartier-rotonde-de-cartier-Astrotourbillon-Skeleton-1 — With skeleton dials, less is more.

3: Skeletons

This will be the year skeletons seriously come out of the closet. In the last few years we’ve seen a lot more skeletonised dials, most notably from powerhouse luxury brand Cartier. But this year we suspect many of the brands will be vying with each other to see what they can take away from watches rather than add. This trend has till now been most prevalent in the ‘show-off dressy’ section of the market (yep, we just made that up – but trust us, it’s a thing), but this year we’re going to see skeletons popping up all over.

Tudor-Heritage-Chrono-Blue — The Tudor Heritage Chronograph from Basel 2013, accessibly priced, highly prized.

4: Accessible luxury

Accessibility is a relative term, and if we’re perfectly frank what the luxury watch industry considers ‘accessible’ often isn’t. But in the last decade or so there’s been a noticeable trend of price-creeping, where brands that are traditionally lower down the price point food chain start slowly increasing their prices, with varying degrees of legitimization. But recently we’ve seen a bit of a change. We’re now seeing big, mainstream brands (hello Montblanc), make high end watches that are quite aggressively priced. We’re also seeing big pushes (cue massive crowd enthusiasm) from brands at lower price points (hello Tudor). We’re hoping that this trend is one that’ll be around for a while. After all, who loses in the democratization of luxury watches?

Louis-vuitton-worldtime — From the traditional to the funky (like this Louis Vuitton) expect to see more world time complications.

5: World Timers

Complications come in and out of fashion. This year will be the year of the world timer. Perhaps it’s an anachronistic nose snub at smartphones, or perhaps it’s because the world timer is the ultimate stealth-snob piece as it implies you are important enough that you need to know the time anywhere in the world at a glance, or that you travel so often, resetting your watch becomes a hassle. Whatever the reason, 2015 will be the year of the world timer.