It’s been an absolutely stellar year in the watch world. Whether you’re passionate about haute horlogerie or accessible watchmaking, it would be fair to say that 2024 represents a bumper crop across the many and varied categories that make up this exciting corner of the luxury space.
At a time when watch sales and vintage watch valuations are on the slide, the industry has knuckled down and returned to the basics: reeling out showstopping pieces that even the most patient collectors are desperate to get their hands on.
There are many stories that have persisted in 2024. We’ve witnessed an emerging trend for art and design-focused pieces, which lean away from the practical hardware-heavy watches of previous years and instead celebrate a return to artistic expression on our wrists. To acknowledge this, we bring you our brand-new Art & Design award, which celebrates these flair-laden timepieces, as well as the immense craftsmanship that helps make them. At the top end of the market, incredibly complex (and expensive!) creations continue to buck the trend against diminishing sales and have proven immensely popular. The watchmaking titan of Audemars Piguet has once again flexed its muscles this year and as a result has become the first recipient of our Brand of the Year category.
But the final word perhaps deserves to go to Piaget which has marked its 150th anniversary with a triumphant salvo - and in doing so has taken home two of our most prestigious awards.
A heartfelt thank you must go to our expert judging panel who continue to ensure that our winners are selected through their many decades of collective knowledge and experience.
With that said, it’s time to reveal this year’s winning watches and brands…
Watch of the Year + Heritage Watch of the year
Piaget Polo 79
Piaget has marked its 150th anniversary with one of its most impressive years in a long while, but nowhere has it shone brighter than in the release of the glitzy Polo 79. A revival of the influential Polo watch from 1979, this contemporary reimagining adds Piaget’s in-house 1200P1 automatic micro-rotor movement and scales up the proportions to an era-suitable 38mm, but it’s the overall execution that is so masterful. Our judges were unanimous in electing it not only 2024’s Best Heritage Watch, but also their Watch of the Year. It’s “true to the original design”, they remarked, and “celebrates design and luxury in a way that should seem flashy but manages to have so much taste”. Piaget was always a trendsetter – whether it was its ultra-thin pieces or stone dials – but the Polo 79 is a return to its pomp. As one judge concluded, “The Polo 79 embodies the mood of the year – a defiant, perhaps foolish commitment to opulence and excess – and is without a doubt the poster-watch for the resurgence of interest in 1980s design.”
Brand of the year
Audemars Piguet
New for 2024, the Brand of the Year award is dedicated to the watch brand that has made the biggest splash in the last 12 months; a watchmaker that has reached outside of its closed circle of collectors and enthusiasts, and made a genuine cultural impact. Among particularly tough competition from the likes of Piaget, TAG Heuer, and Omega, it’s Audemars Piguet that ultimately won our judges over with the sheer consistency of their overall output. “New CEO Ilaria Resta picks up right where François-Henry Bennahmias left off,” our judges said, bolstering its impressive ranks with brand-new renditions of the Royal Oak and a dizzying number of collaborations – including its latest Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon, designed in tandem with pop art visionary KAWS [pictured]. But perhaps it’s the “most un-AP of APs”, the [Re]Master 02, that the brand will be remembered for in 2024. Its brutalist design language was a bold and brave release that could have easily backfired, but it’s definitively paid off.
Art & Design Award
Patek Philippe Rare Handcrafts
Another new award, the Art & Design category celebrates the invention and ingenuity that remains at the beating heart of horology’s craft. We’ve seen a host of striking designs hit the market this year, but our judges concluded that Patek Philippe’s Rare Handcrafts division was most deserving of the award. This specialised team is dedicated to preserving the artisanal skills that have been used to decorate timepieces for centuries – skills like the extraordinary micro wood marquetry on display in “Morning on a Beach” Ref. 5089G-129 and “The Guitarist” Ref. 5278/50R-001. The latter features 170 small wooden veneers combined across 31 inlays to create the stunning artwork you see pictured above. That it isn’t a painting is mindblowing. As one judge noted, “How conservative of me, picking a Patek Philippe metiers d’art limited edition over something more accessible, more avant-garde or more à la mode. The truth is, however, Patek Philippe’s craftwork is simply joyous to behold.”
Collaboration of the Year
Tudor x Inter Miami Black Bay Chrono ‘Pink’
Collaborations are nothing new in the world of high-end fashion, but for many years the idea of allowing an ‘outsider’ to have creative control over a watch design was met with considerable hesitation from the great and good of horology. How times change. Over the last few years a flurry of collaborative watches have hit the market from all walks of life – from art and fashion, to sport and entertainment. The best watch collaborations are more than simply good branding, or even a ‘synergy of ideas’, they’re about breaking through to a brand-new audience who may have never considered a luxury watch before. Enter: the Tudor x Inter Miami Black Bay Chrono ‘Pink’, an ingenious partnership between the Swiss watch brand and David Beckham’s MLS football team. Our judges were impressed with one of the most talked-about watch brands “tying into the very compelling Inter Miami story”. One was even more definitive in their praise: “It’s so good, I bought it!”
The Icon Award
IWC Portugieser Tourbillon Day & Night
IWC’s Portugieser has earned its icon moniker after 85 years of heritage. The story goes that in the 1930s two Portuguese merchants commissioned a “large wristwatch with the precision of a pocket watch”. IWC christened the watch Portugieser in their honour and the rest is history. The latest addition to the collection comes in an 18k ‘Armor Gold’ case contrasting against a moody obsidian lacquered dial. There’s a one-minute flying tourbillon at 6 o’clock, but it’s the novel 24-hour day & night indicator – featuring a 3D rotating sphere, with a dark and a bright side, that turns around its axis every 24 hours – that really blew our judges away.
Adventure Watch of the Year
Micromilspec Milgraph
There are adventure watches and then there are watches built for adventure. Henrik Rye left the world of finance to build a watch brand that could be trusted by hardcore military professionals around the world. Nearly five years later and with 40 custom watches for different military units under its belt, the brand has now turned its attention towards the consumer market with the Milgraph. “Out of NOWHERE! These guys are ones to watch,” our judging panel enthused. “A real military piece made available to civilians by public demand – legible, hardwearing and with a great movement. It’s everything you need in an adventure watch.”
Gateway Watch Award
Frederique Constant Classic Moonphase Date Manufacture
There are few watch brands in the market that have maintained their commitment to excellent-value in-house watchmaking as Frederique Constant. It’s the definitive gateway watch brand: the kind that can stoke a lifelong passion for horology. The Classic Moonphase Date Manufacture is a case in point. It features a lovely dial composition, with the moonphase indicator and date complication neatly bundled up at six o’clock. “A very striking watch and another exciting chapter for Frederique Constant in bringing movements in-house,” our judges concluded. “It’s wonderful to see the brand go from strength to strength.”
Technical Innovation of the Year
Konstantin Chaykin ThinKing Prototype
Every couple of years, the watch world is plunged into ‘the thin wars’: a wonderfully silly arms race for the title of world’s thinnest watch. This year a new pretender to the throne, Konstantin Chaykin, has beaten the grand maisons at their own game with the appropriately named ThinKing. As our judges surmised: “At 1.65mm it’s as thin as any UK sterling coin that’s currently in production. You’d have to go back to 1971 to beat it – the early design 1p coins came in slightly slimmer at 1.52mm. It’s an awesome achievement by Konstantin Chaykin, and it’s delivered through a design that’s true to their playful aesthetic.”
Editor’s Choice Award
Biver Automatique
Jean-Claude Biver is a man who has seen it all in the watch industry. A genius salesman and marketeer, his long list of achievements includes reviving the dormant Blancpain watchmaker, bringing James Bond to Omega, and launching (and naming) Hublot’s Big Bang collection. But the influential figure has reserved what may prove to be his most significant contribution to the watch world for the final chapter of his six-decade career, with the launch of the eponymous Biver brand. “I was made not for the [watch] industry but for the artisans. My passion is the watchmakers, not the machines,” he told Esquire earlier this year. And so it shows in the Automatique: a watch that distills Biver’s enthusiasm for the horological craft into a lovingly constructed timepiece. This three-hand automatic has nowhere to hide in its simplicity, but the elaborative decoration and astonishingly finished movement exceeds almost anything else on the market. Monsieur Biver, you’ve done it again.
Readers’ Choice Award
M.A.D.Editions M.A.D.1S
Living up to its name, the M.A.D.1S is easily the most unusual winner in this year’s square mile Watch Awards, both in design and conception, but you voted for it in your droves as this year’s Readers’ Choice. The brainchild of watchmaking genius Max Büsser (the creator of the renowned MB&F brand), M.A.D.Editions was originally launched to offer his suppliers and supporters the opportunity to own one of his brilliant designs without the extortionate price tag. The result was a slightly clunky impractical watch with a Japanese Miyota movement at its heart. While the design was indeed whacky – the time itself read from two barrels on the case edge rather than on a dial – it came off as a bit of a cheap imitation rather than a genuine MB&F-accredited design. That’s all changed with the M.A.D.1S, which now boasts a modified Swiss-made La Joux-Perret G101 movement and a vastly slimmer profile clocking in at an acceptable 15mm. You don’t have to be mad to wear it, but it helps.
Industry Hero
Roger W Smith
Even in the fiercely traditional world of horology there is something so wonderfully anachronistic about Roger W Smith. The sole student of the genius watchmaker George Daniels, the man who quite literally wrote the book on watchmaking, Smith is an extraordinary example of what true craftsmanship looks like. Bequeathed Daniels’ watchmaking tools when he died in 2011, Smith is a subscriber to what he reverently terms “the Daniels method”, a painstakingly fastidious approach whereby nearly every single part and process of creating a watch is done in-house by Roger W Smith himself; the term ‘handcrafted’ a brutal understatement for the skill and labour on show in his breathtakingly ornate handiwork. It’s his dedication to the core principles of watchmaking that explains why Smith produces a mere 12 watches per year – and also why his peers in the industry refer to him simply as the best watchmaker in the world. That he achieves such remarkable horological feats in the Isle of Man of all places, like a monk praying to the watchmaking gods in splendid isolation, is yet another thread in the tapestry of our very deserving winner of this year’s Industry Hero award. A living legend if ever there were one.
