Rolex Day-Date Emoji Puzzle
This year’s most talked about watch was undoubtedly Rolex’s Jigsaw ‘Emoji’ Day-Date, which debuted at the end of March 2023. Why? Because no one anticipated finding such insouciant whimsicality at a classic and timeless brand like Rolex. And certainly not on a model we thought we knew so well. (The Day-Date has been around since 1956, after all.) But, instead of a ‘normal’ dial, with this one you get a colourful jigsaw puzzle crafted using highly complex champlevé enamelling, which requires an artisan to first carve into the metal and then fill the cavity with powdered glass. That’s not all though, as Rolex replaced the days of the week on the watch’s 12 o’clock display with seven different words that can help brighten your mood – Happy, Eternity, Gratitude, Peace, Faith, Love and Hope. And finally, in place of the magnified date, they added 31 quirky emojis, including a Magic 8 Ball, a panda, a ladybug, and a smooching face. It’s not difficult to see why this is the most unexpected watch to ever come of Rolex’s catalogue then. While we love it, so too does everyone else unfortunately and, as a result, it’s impossible to buy one. In fact, we’ve noticed that the only people who have managed to get their hands on an ‘Emoji’ are high-profile cool cats like John Mayer and Tom Brady. But, are those two separate cases of precious, unpaid celebrity endorsements? We hope so.
Van Cleef & Arpels Ludo
Up until the 1940s, it was considered rude for a woman to wear a wristwatch to any kind of formal event, as it conveyed the message that she either had little time to give or had somewhere better to be. To get around this, high-end watchmakers started creating secret watches that were essentially pieces of jewellery (rings, bracelets, necklaces, even clutches) that subtly hid a watch face beneath a bejewelled cover. Somewhat of anachronism today, they’re still sought after and top brands love making them as they get to combine their know-how in jewellery setting with micro-horology. A magnificent new example is Van Cleef & Arpels’ new Ludo, which is a gorgeous 18-karat pink gold bracelet featuring either a pink sapphire (151,000 USD) or diamond-set (162,000 USD) figure of eight ‘belt-buckle’. It won’t show time until you press the buckle’s outer edges, which reveals the dial below.
Trilobe Une Folle Journée
We’ve been fans of Trilobe, a novel French watchmaker, ever since they launched in 2018 because their original take on telling time with no hands works well and looks great. But, what started as a two-dimensional idea encompassing three rotating discs morphed, last year, into a three-dimensional one beneath a domed crystal with Trilobe’s Une Folle Journée (“a wild day” in French). This year, they gave that watch a sparkly ‘Diamant’ makeover featuring 150 baguette-cut diamonds invisibly set into its three suspended rings. Apparently, the weight of those diamonds obliged the brand to ditch titanium and find a lighter alloy for the rings, which they found when they combined aluminium, silicon, and magnesium. They then commissioned a miniaturist painter to hand-paint the hour numerals on top of the diamonds. Set within a 40.5mm rose gold case, it looks fantastic but costs 170,000 USD.
Chanel Mademoiselle Privé Lion
Sautoirs necklace watches are quite possibly the most delightful way to unite jewellery and watchmaking, and they made an unexpected comeback this year with examples from several houses like Piaget, Van Cleef and Jaeger-LeCoultre. But, at the very top of our wish list is this example from Chanel, a brand that has long history of finding new and creative ways to present time. It’s called the Mademoiselle Privé Lion Sautoir, and it features one of Coco Chanel’s favourite design motifs – the lion, due to the fact it is the symbol of Leo, her astrological sign.
MB&F HM8 Mark 2
Maximilian Büsser certainly loves his cars and while his first HM8 (launched in 2016) took inspiration from the Can-Am series racers of the 1960s, he has updated the watch with a Mark II version that takes a fresh automotive direction, this time from the Porsche 918 Spyder. You can see that most clearly from the angle of the speedometer-style dial, whose twin scoops evokes the Porsche’s integral carbon fibre roll over hoops.
Piaget Limelight
created a massive buzz this year among female watch collectors with these impressive, half concealed, oval-dial, Limelight High Jewellery cuff watches. Now, even though they don’t contain the most glamorous of innards (they’re equipped with the brand’s 356P manufacture quartz movement), their individually, hand-made exteriors are ultra-glamorous, featuring silhouettes that draw references from jewellery creations and techniques pioneered by Piaget back in the 1960s and 70s. Chief among those is a method for engraving gold called ‘Palace Décor,’ which sees artisans meticulously carve numerous irregular grooves into gold in order to create a unique relief and thickness, such as the wood-like texture (in 18-karat pink gold, set with brilliant-cut diamonds), above, or a snow decoration (in 18k white gold), below. The watches are priced upon request.
Louis Moinet Savannah
Remarkably (given how long it takes to develop a new watch), Rolex wasn’t the only brand to release a jigsaw dial this year, as Louis Moinet (which makes only around 500 products a year) also came out with three, 155,000 USD, ‘Savanah’ pièces uniques. Composed of 81 individual puzzle parts, positioned on four levels (unlike the Rolex one, which is on a single flat surface), each Louis Moinet jigsaw is hand painted as a complete puzzle, before it is then fully disassembled so the artist can paint the edges of each individual component as well. Then the pieces are reassembled to form the final puzzle dial. This outstanding bit of micro-art is accompanied by a flying tourbillon at 6 o’clock and framed by an 18-karat 5N pink-gold 40mm case, and a domed sapphire crystal.
