10:00 AM: Just outside the Raymond Weil booth
The first of 12 meetings today is in the books. Looking at my schedule, I realize I’m in for a brutal day. It’s not the number of meetings, really, but the fact that they are essentially nonstop with no breaks in the mid to late afternoon.
Raymond Weil is a great meeting. I met with the CEO, Elie Bernheim, who walked me through a bunch of nice looking new Millesimes (their enthusiast breakthrough hit from last year) and a new watch, the Toccata, in a thin oval case with a quartz movement. It’s nice, a sleeper, and will be out in September.
12:30 PM: Between JLC and Lange
Back to back meetings that were essentially walking tours of the elaborate and impressive booth spaces these brands use. First, Piaget. This meeting just happened to be scheduled during what must have been the busiest period of the entire show (it felt like it, anyway). Sometimes, things at these events just don’t go according to plan, and unfortunately Piaget was our first little hiccup. Due to a lack of available meeting space, rather than a sit down one on one where we’d have a chance to go hands-on with the new watches, we were given a tour of the booth and shown the novelties through their displays. Honestly, this was perfectly fine – the booth was incredible, one of the best at the event. The watches were beautifully presented and our PR contact there has a deep knowledge of everything she showed us.
JLC always has an elaborate and impressive booth space as well. This meeting was specifically designated as a booth walk through, and, for me, it served as a nice precursor to the Touch & Try session I’d be attending later that day. I’m impressed with how well organized this tour is, and I wonder how long it took the multiple brand reps giving tours to groups in different languages, hitting different areas of the booth at exactly the right time to give us a good look at whatever we were supposed to be shown, to perfect such a complicated dance. You could say the tours are conducted with the precision of a Swiss watch, but it would be a little on the nose.
1:00 PM: Lange
I wish all meetings were exactly like this one. Three novelties (four watches), one very easygoing brand rep, and the Worn & Wound team. Of course the most casual meeting of the week is the one with a $750,000 perpetual calendar minute repeater (in platinum, obviously) and a $100,000 honey gold Odysseus AND beer AND pretzels. More meetings should have pretzels.
2:00 PM: Parmigiani
Things are getting hectic. Kat and I met with Ulysse Nardin, which is always a highlight. They are in the habit of bringing just one watch to the show, and the presentation is a fun deep dive into that piece.
Parmigiani is immediately after and this is another example of how a meeting should be run. Unlike Lange, this was a large group of English speaking press, run quickly and efficiently with the goal seemingly to get watches into our hands (and in front of our cameras) as often as possible. Plenty of watches to go around, succinct explanations (there’s a recognition here that we all have the press release and have done our homework). Special shout out here to the perfectly diffused lighting. Note to brands: do what Parmigiani does with your lighting set up. Photographers will thank you and your watches will look better.
One of the other nice things about this meeting is that, like a bunch of brands, Parmigiani arranges a specific session for a big group of media that all speak a common language. That means I know a lot of people in this meeting. I see Worn & Wound contributor Cait Bazemore on the other side of the room (it’s the only time I’d see her all week!), and Matt Hranek is there, along with Stephen Pulvirent, and Andy and Felix from the OT Podcast. Andy snaps a photo of me trying on a watch that he’d post to Instagram later. I’m not mad though because like the watches, I’m perfectly lit.
2:13 PM: Zenith
I’ve got Zenith next, followed by Oris, Bremont, JLC (again), and Van Cleef with no break. Cool.
I have forgotten to eat lunch.
4:30 PM: JLC
It becomes clear that JLC is running late when we have about 10 minutes left and haven’t handled a single watch yet. I will be missing Van Cleef for sure, but the JLC meeting is a lot of fun and filled with people I know in the American watch media world. I snap a terrible photo of RedBar CEO Kathleen McGivney’s GRØNE Manueel One. It’s impressive, better than you’d think from my terrible iPhone pic – my first time seeing one.
On the way out I look through my vast collection of new tote bags filled with brand swag hoping to find some chocolate or literally anything else to eat. To my amazement, I find a protein bar with the Ulysse Nardin stuff. I’m so happy I could cry.
5:00 PM: Tables at the Carre
Wall to wall meetings since noon, and I finally have a chance to sit down, order a Coke Zero, and check my email, Slack, and IG messages. I respond where I can. Unbelievably, I have emails from watch brands not involved with Watches & Wonders or anything happening in Geneva this week. Do they think I will have time to read and respond to their messages? I will not. If it doesn’t involve Watches & Wonders (or, dinner plans) I do not have the bandwidth for it today.
6:45 PM: Main concourse, outside Tudor
My final meeting was with H. Moser, a casual session with a group of European(?) media that I don’t know. I gather from eavesdropping on the conversation that they are style editors and writers. I’ve noticed that style editors tend to take notes the old fashioned way, with a pen and a notebook – and they take lots of notes, seemingly jotting down every detail and spec word for word during the presentation. So there are lots of questions as they catch up on whatever it is they miss – What was the size? The movement number? The strap’s made of what? Ostrich leather? OK.
These particular editors are also taking their photos with cell phone cameras, so it’s the exact inverse of most watch editors, who don’t take notes at all, and walk around with a mix of mirrorless Leicas, Sonys, Canons, and so forth. More than once, our Moser brand rep has to remind these editors to place watches on the leather padded trays, and not the surface of the composite tables.
I leave the meeting feeling like I might have seen some of my favorites from the show at Moser just now, and I start transferring photos from my Leica’s memory card to my phone to see if any of them are passable. I am relieved that some are in focus.
12:00 AM: 9Hotel Paquis
I’m back in my room, after a long, leisurely meal with the Fears team. Nicholas Bowman-Scargill is one of my favorite people in the industry, and he and his team are doing some really creative things. Their new watch, which I’d get a better look at tomorrow at Time to Watches, is the Arnos Pewter Blue, and it’s one of the best things I’ll see all week. It’s refined and elegant, and an exciting first watch in a new Fears collection.
We ate at an Italian restaurant on the other side of the lake and I ordered a pizza called the Sophia Loren. I just wanted to consume as many carbs as possible.
I sleepily write up the Mosers I saw that afternoon and make a note that I’ll need to reread whatever gibberish I wrote in the morning because my brain is simply not functioning properly at this point. I briefly check the New York Times and see panicked headlines about tariffs, and think how glad I am to be far away from the black hole of American news, in a place where surely over the next two days the focus will be squarely on watches, and watches only.
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