Blow your bonus on the best watches from Baselworld 2015

It takes confidence – and not a little watchmaking skill – to create a timepiece with so many visual quirks in a body so elegant it should be given a modelling contract. Yet Breguet has made an artform of the exposed, classically styled watch with its Tradition Collection, and the new 7097 is no exception. With a white gold case, off-centre dial and self-winding movement with retrograde seconds (that’s the cutaway scale at ten o’clock), the 7097 is an exercise in flaunting what you’ve got with understated ease.

£24,000; breguet.com

Do you have a yacht to master? If the answer to that question is ‘yes’ (and, frankly, even if it isn’t), you should be very excited about the launch of Rolex’s newest Yacht-Master. Now with an 18ct Everose gold case, black Cerachrom bezel-insert (with raised numerals you won’t be able to stop touching) and an Oysterflex bracelet combining the look and feel of rubber with the robustness of metal. Hello, sailor!

£16,650; rolex.com

As British power couples go, the automotive-horological tag-team of Jaguar and Bremont is right up there. The Henley-based brand launched two watches inspired by the partnership at Baselworld, each a tribute to that ageless icon, the E-type. The MKI uses Bremont’s own automatic calibre, while the MKII [pictured] has a chronograph function and a dial layout that echoes vintage Jaguar instruments.

 £4,950; bremont.com

It was the Lotus Cars founder, Colin Chapman, who said: “Simplify, then add lightness”. And while Graff’s Mastergraff Structural Tourbillon Skeleton isn’t exactly simple in name or engineering, its striking cutaway design – they call it ‘excavated facets’ – is as much about what isn’t there as what is. A diamond-set version is available, too, if you’re more about adding brightness than lightness.

£POA; graffdiamonds.com

The tourbillon you’ve no doubt heard of; the carrousel, possibly not. Both mechanisms are designed to negate the effects of gravity, and each does it in a slightly different way, though the carrousel is a rare beast. To find both together in the same watch, then, is more unusual still, but Blancpain’s L-evolution Tourbillon Carrousel doesn’t hide itself away behind a subtle design. The angular lines, Manga-style numerals and satin-brushed platinum case make as bold a statement as the technical wizardry inside.

£258,700; blancpain.com

Things sure ain’t what they used to be – which is good, because we’ve got much better at an awful lot, including making watches. But that isn’t to say we can’t take the best of the past and meld it with the best of the present, as Breitling has done with the achingly stylish Transocean 1915. The watch features a single chronograph pusher at two o’clock – just like the one first introduced by the brand in 1915. New old-school class.

£6,790; breitling.com

If the dial – with its galvanised matte finish and Super-LumiNova markings – carries more than a hint of pilot’s watch about it, the true inspiration behind Glashütte Original’s Senator Observer is the maritime deck (or ‘observation’) watch. The whole design’s been updated for 2015, with Arabic numerals and improved readability in the dark thanks to that bold, green luminance and an uncluttered black dial. 

£7,800; glashuette-original.com

The Swiss brand’s collaboration with Google and Intel (to produce an as-yet unseen luxury smartwatch) may have made the biggest waves outside the fair, but among the watcherati there was plenty of talk about the new Carrera Calibre 01. With a few stylistic nods to TAG Heuer’s LVMH stablemate (and former home of CEO Jean-Claude Biver), Hublot, the Calibre 01 will set the tone for Carreras to come, inside and out.

£4,000; tagheuer.co.uk

If you’re a proper diver – the kind who hangs around under oil rigs and tracks giant squid – Oris makes watches just for you. However, if you’re the kind of diver – our kind of diver – who likes the idea of being Jacques Cousteau but would rather keep your feet on dry land, you’ll be more interested in the brand’s retro-flavoured Diver Sixty-Five. Based on a 1965 model, it’s a genuine looker that stays true to the original.

£1,150; oris.ch

No-nonsense tool watches are what Tudor’s about (just like big brother Rolex), and that was true in the 1950s, when members of the British North Greenland Expedition wore the brand’s Oyster Prince in temperatures as low as -50ºC. The North Flag, inspired by this icy heritage, is powered by Tudor’s first in-house movement – it’s COSC-certified, too, which is nice to know, even if you’re more Northern Line than North Greenland.

£2,500; tudorwatch.com

Harry Winston’s Histoire de Tourbillon series is an hommage to the prized mechanism, and this sixth edition is a watch of two halves. On the left is a tri-axial tourbillon and conventional time display, while the right-hand side operates independently of it – there’s a carrousel and time display that can be stopped and started, so it can function as a chronograph or even a second timezone. Our kind of history lesson.

£POA; harrywinston.com

In 2011, Hublot announced it had created something called Magic Gold – certified at 18cts but so hard it can only be machined by diamond. (So almost as hard as us. Almost.) The Big Bang Unico Full Magic Gold – as you can probably guess from the name – has a case made of the clever substance, along with a flyback chronograph movement that, sadly, is self-winding rather than powered by magic.

£25,300; hublot.com

The problem with being Batman (existential torment and subterranean accommodation apart) is finding accessories to match the outfit. So we – sorry, he, whoever he is, definitely not us – will have been pleased to hear eccentric Swiss brand Romain Jerome has created the Batman-DNA with the Caped Crusader in mind, complete with glow-in-the-cave bat-sign. Now if Jimmy Choo could get a move on with those shoes… 

£12,500; romainjerome.ch

The Japanese brand’s advanced-watchmaking wing has done a nice line in reinventing its back catalogue in recent years, and 2015 is no different. The 62GS of 1967 was Grand Seiko’s first automatic watch, and this recreation model remains faithful to it, down to the four o’clock crown and sleek, bezel-free construction. There are also two ‘reinterpretation’ models (stick with us here), which take inspiration from – rather than follow – the original design, and use two of the brand’s most advanced calibres.

£3,000; seiko.co.uk

In 2013, Omega launched the all-ceramic (and all black) Dark Side of the Moon version of the legendary Speedmaster chronograph – a sort of icon within an icon, if you like. So successful was that watch that, two years on, there are four new pieces to get Speedy collectors drooling: Sedna Black (with Sedna-gold accents), Pitch Black (with Super-LumiNova markings), Vintage Black [pictured] and Black Black (all pink, obviously). 

£8,205; omegawatches.com

We’ve always subscribed to a less-is-more philosophy (through necessity rather than choice, admittedly), so we love the new Slim d’Hermès. Everything about it is pared-back, from the uncluttered dial – and those avant-garde Arabic numerals – to a wafer-thin movement just 2.6mm thick. What le Slim doesn’t cut back on, however, is style, which is exactly what you’d expect from Hermès. Again, just like us – honestly.

£11,400; hermes.com

They say the two best days of boat ownership are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Here’s a third: the day you (and your boat) get a Pontos S Regatta. Designed with yacht racing in mind – there’s a ten-minute countdown so you can time your start perfectly – the Regatta S has a super-tough forged-carbon case and large pushers you can operate with gloves on. If you don’t own a yacht, it’ll still work perfectly well in the bath.

£5,800; mauricelacroix.com

Last year’s Nomos Metro was kind of a big deal – not only did it have an in-house escapement, but it was sensibly sized (37mm), sensibly priced and looked like a piece of beautifully thought-out modern product design (which it was). With a healthy disregard for if-it-ain’t-broke thinking, Nomos has tweaked the Metro for 2015 – giving it an ‘Urban Grey’ dial and a slightly larger diameter. We like. A lot. 

£2,200; nomos-glashuette.com

Zenith’s El Primero automatic chronograph movement, born in the 1960s, is one of the watch industry’s genuine heroes; high-frequency, super-accurate and blessed with a cult following. In fact, it seems almost a shame to tuck it away inside a watch, though when it’s behind a dial as handsome as that of the El Primero Chronograph Classic, we’re sold. The whole thing’s so 1960s it probably hung out with JFK and wore mini-skirts.

£6,100; zenith-watches.com