Drawn in white gold and white diamonds, the ‘Roc’ necklace is a collar-sized, choker-style necklace designed by Valérie Messika. The collier is part of ‘Terres des Contrastes’, a new Messika high jewellery collection that pays creative tribute to the landscapes of Botswana.

‘“Roc” is a piece about strength, structure and movement,’ says Messika, creative director of the modern jewellery maison she founded in 2005. Her inspiration for ‘Roc’ was far from Paris: the necklace’s dramatic shape nods to the Organ Pipes, a group of columnar vertical basalt pillars that formed 150 million years ago in Namibia. ‘I loved the idea of translating this raw geological power into a jewel,’ says Messika. ‘What fascinates me about “Roc” is the tension between its graphic rigour and its fluidity. At first glance, it feels bold and sculptural, almost like a piece of architecture. But once it is worn, it moves with the body and becomes incredibly alive.’

The necklace was unveiled earlier in October 2026 in a Messika show held at the Grand Palais in Paris. For this, Messika partnered with Carine Roitfeld. ‘I love this necklace because it sits like a choker, which immediately gives it a more modern, contemporary feel. I really like this way of reimagining diamonds and making them easier to wear every day,’ the seminal fashion editor enthuses.

If ‘Roc’ was hers, how would Roitfeld wear the statement piece? ‘I would keep it as simple as possible, with a black or white T-shirt and jeans,’ she says. ‘I think it’s much chicer not to wait for an evening out or a special occasion to wear diamonds. I love the idea of wearing them naturally, every day, with very simple pieces.’

At the centre of ‘Roc sits an emerald-cut diamond of 5.02 carats. There are roughly a further 20 carats of white diamonds set across the necklace. Are diamonds a Parisian gem? Roitfeld says yes, and states her case. ‘I think diamonds bring a special kind of light: they illuminate the face and instantly make us feel more beautiful. And I think there is something very Parisian about wearing diamonds during the day, effortlessly, without needing a special occasion. It’s precisely that contrast between something precious and a very simple look that I love.’

One of the many legends that surround the launch of the Royal Oak – Audemars Piguet’s pioneering foray into the luxury sports watch market – is that the initial sell-through in 1972 was sluggish.

One reason was a lack of availability: its designer, Gerald Genta, had ensured that one of its ground-breaking features would be an elegantly supple, fully integrated bracelet that required each of its 154 different elements be individually fashioned and finished before assembly.

Befitting a designer who trained as a jeweller before switching to watches, Genta expected a similar exactitude in its execution. However, by substituting more malleable gold with the Royal Oak’s landmark use of satin-brushed and polished steel, the bracelet’s elaborate yet distinctive construction put considerable pressure on those charged with creating that first run.

History records it was worth the wait; besides inventing an entirely new category of timepiece, Genta introduced the sublime to the hitherto utilitarian nature of ‘tool’ watches in a manner that established the Royal Oak – in the words of Audemars Piguet’s CEO, Ilaria Resta, as ‘beyond an icon’, defined, she says, as something that ‘can survive the test of time; the test of materials and taste, and can live forever.’

More than half a century on, evidence of the Royal Oak’s tenure at the top table of all-time great designs can be found in the new high jewellery collection from Audemars Piguet that takes as its starting point that emblematic bracelet, at the same time it explores some of the signature style moves it’s made along the way. This started with Jacqueline Dimier’s design for a smaller model, launched in 1976, which debuted the use of precious metals in the collection, joined more recently by Frosted Gold, an ancient Florentine technique launched in conjunction with jeweller Carolina Bucci to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Dimier’s first creations.

Along the way, Audemars Piguet has offered collections of jewellery designed to complement its model range, helping to forge a link back to the early days of the company when, besides creating its own decorated examples, it supplied movements to jewellery houses keen to introduce a novel functionality to their pieces.

In this regard, the Royal Oak has presented a particularly beneficent design, sharing its characteristic octagonal bezel and distinctive ‘petite tapisserie’ dial pattern across bracelets, earrings, cufflinks and the like. However the new Royal Oak Joallerie collection is a step out and up. Designed in-house and destined to be sold at private trunk shows, it comprises one-of-a-kind and customisable pieces that enshrine the artistic attributes of their source while – in the use of texture, material and colour – embedding them in the region where the Royal Oak was born. Thus the Dream of Joux line seeks to conjure the frozen lakes, clear skies and deeply wooded landscape that surround Audemars Piguet’s home in Le Brassus, in the Vallee de Joux, as a series of one-of-a-kind 18-carat white, yellow and pink gold cuffs set with diamonds, sapphires, spessartites, tourmalines, amethysts, tsavorites and topazes. A matching tie necklace and drop earrings set features anodised blue titanium links set with blue sapphires.

Capturing the night sky above the Risoud Forest, which flanks the western edge of the Vallee de Joux, is the Risoud Eclipse collection. This offers a necklace and matching cuff in black PVD titanium into which has been set brilliant-cut diamonds surrounding central sugarloaf emeralds. Finally, a series of cuffs and necklaces in 18-carat white, pink and yellow Frosted Gold, accented with mirror-polished studs and polished chamfers, summon a sensation surely familiar to Genta, who, in a 2011 interview, recalled seeing light ‘singing’ on his bracelet.

‘The truth is, Geral Genta created an iconic watch,’ says Resta. ‘But even more, he created an iconic statement bracelet. And that's why we truly wanted to give homage to one of the assets that belong to Audemars Piguet, and give meaning to a bracelet that can live on its own.’

See the full collection

Launching this week, Solange Azagury-Partridge introduces a new collection of jewellery inspired by Mary Shelley's monster. Across many rings, pendant necklaces, earrings, plus a cuff bracelet, Frankenstone is a creative take on gem facets, cuts and shapes.

A 50:50 ring in yellow gold takes the shape of an emerald-cut gem, albeit broken in two and dotted with white diamonds. 'The Split idea was about taking a traditional shape and cut, severing it in a way that created additional facets and then setting these facets. Almost like seeing the inner workings of the gem,' Azagury-Partridge explains of a yellow gold and diamond design. 'Or, imagining it being very precisely bitten in two'.

A group of Frankenstone pieces are carved from rock crystal. 'The reason I chose to work with rock crystal is its transparency,' says the British designer, who is based in London. 'I wanted to create an effect of ‘solid light’. As the light hits the stone, it intensifies.' Cue Azagury-Partridge’s Rockstar Vial, a pendant necklace worn on black thread, its vessel filled with diamonds and gold leaf. A Rockstar Cube and Pouch necklace are set with white diamonds. Each can hold loose gemstones, which are optional.

Hololith rock crystal rings are carved in the shape of either a brilliant or marquise cut, their see-through construction detailed with diamonds.

'The addition of diamonds enhances the effect,' Azagury-Partridge explains of her precious light traps.

solange.co.uk

Now in its 14th year, the Watch Art Grand Exhibition is a large-scale, roving celebration of fine watchmaking and rare handcrafts hosted by Patek Philippe, Geneva’s last remaining family-owned independent watch manufacturer.

Starting in Dubai in 2012, each event has summarised the achievements of the 187-year-old company through displays transported from its own museum on the Rue des Vieux-Grenadiers along with special editions created exclusively to mark its presence in the host city (Munich followed Dubai in 2013, after which the event has travelled to London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo). These one-of-a-kind and limited pieces often combine the various metiers for which Patek Philippe is renowned and, together with the current collection on display, contribute to a total of 500 of wristwatches, table clocks and pocket watches on show in Milan.

This year’s installment, open 2-18 October, is the largest yet, and occupies 2,900 square metres within the art deco Palazzo delle Scintille – renamed the CityOval in recognition of architect Paolo Vietti-Violi’s elliptical dome – where Milan itself appears in cartographic form, commemorated in an intricately mapped table clock that features the Duomo picked out in golden silhouette. It’s one of a 25-piece series of site-specific editions celebrating Italy’s most famous regions.

Using Patek Philippe’s renowned mastery of techniques – including enamelling, engraving, gem-setting and wood marquetry – each piece creates a vivid voyage around Italy and, in the case of four wristwatches, nods to one of its most cherished modes of transport with depictions of Fiat’s lauded Cinquecento. Included on the grand tour are Rome, for which a Dome clock has been decorated to resemble the capital’s architectural wonders by night; Tuscany, recognised in ten Golden Eclipse wristwatches, their dials capturing its vivid sunsets in dials using wood marquetry; and the Amalfi Coast, where Neapolitan summers are brought to life using enamel and miniature painting on three Calatrava watches.

Other artisanal skills rendered in horological form include two Calatrava wristwatches celebrating the craft of lace-making found on the Venetian island of Burano; Murano glass, in the form of a small Dome table clock, and Florentine mosaic, its signature stone marquetry reproduced on the dial of a gem-set Calatrava Minute Repeater using grand feu cloisonné enamelling and painted enamel.

Besides celebrating the culture and craftsmanship of its host city, the Watch Art Grand Exhibition also serves as a launch pad for fresh innovation – on this occasion, a chance to mark 85 years since Patek Philippe first united perpetual calendar and chronograph functions in a wristwatch. The latest version of Patek’s emblematic high complication is equipped with a new calibre capable of advancing all four date windows (day, date, month, leap year) simultaneously and instantaneously: the moment at midnight lasting just 30 milliseconds. Limited to 120 pieces, all in platinum, Reference 5978P-010 occupies a groundbreaking position in the history of Patek Philippe, while building on the innovations of the past – an important statement for a company that chooses to forego the more tangible benefits of partnering with celebrities and sporting events to focus on its own, meticulously staged live events (a nine-metre-tall recreation of Geneva’s famous Jet d’Eau, using 2,028 glass ‘droplets’, serves as a centrepiece).

According to Thierry Stern, the fourth generation to run the business since his family acquired it in 1932, the idea sprang from his father’s urge to go further following the opening of the Patek Philippe Museum in 2001, in Geneva: ‘For my father, one of the most important tasks was to rebuild the history of Patek Philippe. And after that, I think he decided to see how he could bring it to the whole world; because not everybody is able to come to Geneva.’

That the last iteration of the Watch Art Grand Exhibition, in Tokyo, attracted 74,000 visitors – around the same number of watches Patek Philippe produces each year – suggests Philippe Stern, who died aged 86 in June this year, was on to something. In Milan, the moment has grown again, with 15 themed areas dedicated to explaining – and thus advocating for – the perennial appeal of mechanical watchmaking, illustrated in the various crafts and disciplines long mastered by Patek Philippe that underpin its continued relevance.

Yet, in an age when ‘experiential’ has become a buzzword applied to even the lowliest of IRL opportunities, the challenge is to renew with each edition. Accordingly, in Milan – which is open free to the public – more space has been given to exploring the company’s rich archive, a new area dedicated to research and development explains the inner workings of its latest calibres (and the growing importance of after-sales), and a special audio-visual presentation places particular focus on its famed chiming watches.

‘I think to keep it fresh, you’re always trying to innovate a little bit,’ says Thierry Stern, ‘Not only the product, but the philosophy of the brand. So you have to add something, and you have to educate people with something concrete. They like to see, they like to touch, you know, so you have to really give them this.’

Watch Art Grand Exhibition – Milan 2026 runs from Friday 2 to Sunday 18 October 2026, at CityOval, previously known as the Palazzo delle Scintille, in the CityLife quarter.

At the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, the legacy of designer Jean Schlumberger is currently in the process of being future-proofed. In partnership with The Tiffany Archives, the French cultural institution has set to (where needed) restore, conserve and digitally capture roughly 5,000 drawings and a further 5,000 archival documents. Among them are Schlumberger’s sketches for Bird on a Rock gems – the maison’s winged mascot since tastemaker Bunny Melon acquired the first of its kind in 1965 – and personal ephemera such as a paper notecard received from his friend Christian Dior. Alongside them sits Schlumberger’s book of collaged press clippings.

'His creative process was quite extraordinary,' says Tiffany & Co chief gemmologist Victoria Reynolds. 'It's like stepping into the mind of a genius.' A genre-defining designer, Schlumberger dreamt up his creations on paper, before they evolved into three-dimensional small treasures, realised in partnership with craftspeople including a modelmaker and a gemmologist. 'You can see his way of thinking. You can understand his process,' says Reynolds.

Schlumberger, previously a maker of visually striking buttons for Elsa Schiaparelli, had been operating his own jewellery salon for about ten years when, in 1965, Tiffany & Co. president Walter Hoving asked him to design for the marquee brand. Given creative carte blanche, Schlumberger brought colour to Tiffany & Co, in the form of vibrant gemstones stored in the company’s fabled safe, alongside humour and whimsy. Exotic birds, sea creatures, flora and fauna – all lend shape to precious gems in Schlumberger’s sketches. Jackie Kennedy fell for Schlumberger’s work, as did many others, including Babe Paley and Elizabeth Taylor.

The preservation project ensures that Schlumberger’s world – not only the finished jewels, but the ideas and experiments behind them – remains accessible to future generations. In doing so, Tiffany & Co and the Musée des Arts décoratifs are keeping his imagination alive as a resource for future creatives.

On view at Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery until 10 November 2026, ‘Between Ruin and Root’ is the first solo exhibition of Joy Bonfield-Colombara (aka Joy BC). Comprising more than 20 pieces, the show introduces six new creations that Bonfield-Colombara created specifically for her debut with the London gallery. All sit somewhere between jewellery and sculpture. ‘My pieces oscillate between jewellery, sculpture and talisman,’ the Italian-British artist and goldsmith explains. ‘As humans, we like to categorise. But an artwork can be many things at once, a mycelium of emotion, material, and form. Whether it’s a composition, a dance, a ceramic, a film, or a painting. For me, it gets interesting when there is cross-pollination.’

Born and raised in London, Bonfield-Colombara is an alum of the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Working with master artisans in both Italy and Japan, she is trained in metal casting and rare techniques such as Japanese urushi lacquer, for which natural tree sap is applied to a variety of bases. ‘London, Glasgow, Tokyo, Kyoto, Umbria and Rome. These are the places, striations of craft and the cultures that have influenced my work the most,’ Bonfield-Colombara says when asked about her globetrotting education. ‘My practice is a love letter to materiality, storytelling and craft. Head, heart and hands working harmoniously in tandem.’

At Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, pieces such as the 2025 ‘Precious Tear’ ring – a bust fragment in blackened silver with one gold-set old cut diamond for a tear drop – or a new recycled yellow gold torque necklace, named ‘Demeter (Parched Earth / Rain)’ after the Olympian goddess of agriculture, grain, and the harvest, draw from ancient Greece and Rome. ‘My grandfather described me as an old soul, and young at heart,’ says Bonfield-Colombara. ‘I see time as all interconnected – past, present and future – akin to the Andean Cosmovision, rather than Western linear timelines. Narratives that were explored in ancient civilisations are still completely relative now. The materials we have been drawn to continue to be seductive – especially gold, and bronze, which has been used in objects of ceremony, magic, celebration and venerating stories and beauty, across continents and epochs.’

‘Gérald Genta was such an unlikely person to change and save the watch industry,’ says Alexia Genta, the watch designer’s daughter and co-founder of the Gérald Genta Heritage Association. ‘I think that can really inspire people today.’

Alexia, alongside her mother Evelyne Genta, attended Watches & Wonders 2026 earlier this year to mark the 50th anniversary of one of Gérald Genta’s most famous watch designs, the IWC Ingenieur SL.

To celebrate the occasion, IWC is releasing the Ingenieur SL in two limited editions (a 35mm and a 40mm), distinguished by their elegant brushed silver-plated dials, which draw inspiration from a rare variant of the Ingenieur SL.

‘Design came first for him,’ Alexia adds. ‘He was not somebody who was ever looking at other watch brands, simply because he didn't care what they were doing. That's why he was always such a visionary, always bringing new things and shocking the industry. He was following his artistic vision.’

Genta (1931-2011) created the original Ingenieur SL, Reference 1832 in 1976, midway through a decade that saw the emergence of luxury steel sports watches with integrated bracelets, a form Genta mastered with his streamlined, ergonomic design.

‘A Gérald Genta design could be manufactured,’ says Evelyne. ‘Sometimes designers are very wild and very unusual – you give the products to the factory, and good luck! My husband designed what could be done, and this is an incredible quality. Giving it to a factory, he knew how thick it needed to be, so he would design the profile. You have to be perfectly clear and exact with a watch design, and he knew that.’

For David Seyffer, head of archive at IWC, the new editions mark a full circle moment. ‘When the Ingenieur first appeared in 1955, it was considered more of a tool watch,’ he says. ‘When Gérald Genta reinterpreted it [in the 1970s], it became a completely new design. He was a really free spirit. He always considered himself as an artist, not as a watch designer, and he brought this artisanal aspect into his designs. It's always interesting to see this transformation from the watch it was in 1955 to this very design-led watch.’

Thanks to this freedom of vision, the Ingenieur SL is a watch that has endured. ‘He was notoriously quite audacious,’ Alexia adds. ‘He was always bringing out visionary designs that shocked the industry. But if you think about them, they were always elegant and wearable. He was not trying to shock people on purpose, he was just creating something that was elegant but also pioneering.’

iwc.com

Vacheron Constantin marks the anniversary of its Overseas collection with a new version of the much-quoted model. The Swiss Manufacture first launched its Overseas collection of timepieces in 1996. With a utilitarian design detail – bezel fitted to a flat case with visible screws – as its signature, the Overseas collection was introduced to follow the 222, the 1977 Vacheron Constantin launch sketched by designer Jorg Hysek. It was the 222 and the 1975 Chronomètre Royal, that established the Swiss watchmaker’s contemporary style as sitting somewhere between sporty casual and pared-back elegance.

The Overseas collection continued in a similar vein and the 1996 launch inspired subsequent iterations. In 2004, Vacheron Constantin introduced Overseas watches with integrated bracelets, the shape of their links nodding to the Maltese Cross, the brand’s longstanding emblem. There also appeared bejewelled Overseas wristwatches, and models fitted with complications. The Overseas’ third generation was launched in 2016; chiefly among the updates was a quick-change strap system. Today, each Overseas watch comes complete with a set of straps (typically three straps, made from leather, metal and rubber) that can be added to or taken off, no tools required.

This autumn, Vacheron Constantin celebrates three decades of Overseas watches with a new model. The Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin has been issued as a limited edition of 200 pieces. Fitted with a moon phase disc and moon in white gold, a lacquered dial in azure blue, a dial colour that Vacheron Constantin first added to its repertoire in 2016, is matched with a white gold case. A satin-finish white gold bracelet consists of links in the shape of a half Maltese cross; other strap options include white rubber and denim blue rubber. The white gold case of the Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin measures a mere 8.11mm in thickness; it houses the Calibre 1120 QP/1, a self-winding mechanical movement that has been developed and manufactured by Vacheron Constantin.

vacheronconstantin.com

For makeup artist Pat McGrath, collaborating with jewellery brand, Pandora was an easy decision to make.

‘We share this belief that creativity and self-expression should be something everyone can participate in,’ she says, on why the partnership felt like a natural one. ‘I have spent my career taking colour, texture and adornment and transforming them in unexpected ways, and jewellery offers that same freedom. I loved the idea of creating beautifully crafted pieces that people could collect, layer and make completely their own. Luxury to me has never simply been about exclusivity. It is about artistry, emotion and the pleasure something gives you.’

The collection sits at the intersection of beauty and jewellery, encompassing 17 charms and rings in familiar motifs, from lipsticks to hearts, glossy lips and tubes of make-up.

It is a personal curation for McGrath, who draws from her own visual language for the symbols she has chosen. ‘Lips and lipstick have been part of my visual language for decades, and then there are crystals, hearts, colour and the words and mantras that have grown around my work. But I didn't want simply to miniaturise beauty products and call them jewellery. The excitement was in taking these familiar symbols and transforming them through Pandora's craftsmanship so that they became objects with their own character and meaning. Then the wearer gets to decide what each one means to them.’

The collection is designed to be layered, mixed up and worn in a clash of metals and styles. ‘Nothing should feel too precious to play with,’ McGrath adds. ‘Beauty has always been joyful for me. Even when I am creating something incredibly precise or dramatic, there is experimentation and play behind it. I wanted the jewellery to have that same energy. The majorness begins when someone takes what we created and wears it in a way we never imagined.’

The collection is released on October 8th globally, across Pandora stores and at pandora.net, with prices ranging from €39 to €199

This season, a bold theatricality reigns in high jewellery, as a host of brands embrace unusual cuts or stones and experiment with styles and silhouette.

Results can be striking, or sensuous. Take Louis Vuitton, who stud an earring with an LV Monogram star-cut diamond on an ear piece that curls around the ear. In Bulgari’s shimmering pink gold necklace, carré, step-cut and pavé-set diamonds are juxtaposed, bringing a contemporary cool to a traditional form, while in Boucheron’s ring, part of the Human Being collection, pink gold and platinum cradle sapphire glass and morganite, part of the Human Being collection, by Boucheron.

Diamonds become elongated spikes in Hermès white gold ‘Clou de Forge Lumière’ necklace, and are interspersed with bold red rubies in an elegant collar from Chopard. In Buccellati’s intricate ‘Serenissima’ yellow and white gold pendant earrings, diamonds become a precious lacework, delicately placed at the intersection of jewellery, art and design. In Messika’s ‘Amanzi’ white gold necklace and earrings, contrasting cuts make for ultra-modern adornments.

In Van Cleef & Arpels joyful ‘Promesse Souveraine’ white, rose and yellow gold necklace, loops of diamonds are interspersed with vivid oval-cut pink sapphires, while a bright jadeite takes centre stage in Boghossian’s ‘Queen Seondeok of Silla’ yellow gold earrings.

A version of this article appears in Wallpaper’s October 2026 Guest Editors’ Issue, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Glenn Spiro has impeccable taste, with an eponymous jewellery brand – at the intersection of art, jewellery and design – celebrating unique avant-garde silhouettes and unexpected materials. It is no surprise, then, that the London boutique is a haven of eclectic style, uniting antiques with bespoke pieces and curating an intimate, welcoming atmosphere.

Glenn and son Joe Spiro worked on the space, at 26 Bruton Street in Mayfair, with Venezuelan designer Valerie Name Bolaño, who takes Wallpaper* behind the design…

Wallpaper*: Where did you begin in translating the richness of Glenn Spiro jewels into a new atelier?

Valerie Name Bolaño: I began by researching the building and understanding its history and context. It was once the atelier of Sir Norman Hartnell, where Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret would have their gowns custom-made. Looking through archival imagery of how the space was used, and seeing the gestures within the original interiors, made me want to preserve some of that essence, but reinterpret it in a contemporary way that would represent the language of the house.

Glenn and Joe's pieces have this extraordinary richness and intricacy. They have an incredible talent for finding rare antique stones and unusual elements and transforming them into these intimate objects. I didn't want the space to compete with that, or to feel like a conventional jewellery boutique of course. Timelessness was essential.

Instead, the idea was to create an intimate salon, somewhere you could have tea and a conversation. The materials and objects are layered and collected. We designed some pieces specifically for the space, but we also sourced antiques and objects of curiosity so that it didn't feel as though everything had arrived at once.

Much like the jewellery, there is a sense of discovery. You don't necessarily see everything immediately. There is preciousness, but also intimacy and a certain slowness to how the space reveals itself.

W*: There is a wealth of materials and textiles here. What especially were you drawn to incorporating?

VNB: I was very drawn to materials with depth, things that become more interesting and beautiful the closer you get to them.

The materials needed to have richness, but they also needed to remain quiet enough to allow the jewellery to speak. We used heavy weaves, cast glass, antiqued metals, stone and beautiful woods – materials with texture and irregularity that absorb and reflect light in different ways.

We also created what we call the Green Room, with a vision of quite literally walking into a Glenn Spiro Jewel box. So we translated that very recognisable object into an entire room: dark, intimate and enveloping, with only a few carefully placed spotlights illuminating what matters.

It houses a special display of new pieces and gives clients somewhere private to try on the jewellery, sit down and have a conversation with the designers. I love that something as small and personal as the jewellery box became the starting point for an entire spatial experience.

W*: What aesthetic and atmosphere was it key for you to cultivate? What are you proudest of here?

VNB: I wanted it to feel residential, intimate, sensual and slightly unexpected, more like a conceptual living room, surrounded by layers of memories and objects collected over many years.

Nothing is there simply to announce itself. You discover the materials, the objects and eventually the jewellery in layers. Much of the atelier follows a monochromatic palette of creams, which we felt would create a beautiful, quiet canvas for Glenn and Joe's creations. Against it, individual objects and materials are allowed to speak.

What I am proudest of is perhaps that balance. The space has a very distinct identity of its own, but ultimately it knows when to disappear and allow the jewels to become the protagonist.

There are also much more subtle connections between their world and mine throughout the atelier. I often begin projects by having conversations with clients about the symbols, objects or memories that carry meaning for them, and then finding ways of translating those into architectural or decorative details.

For example, [my studio’s] signature ceramic buttons were reimagined here using a motif taken from the materials of the Old World Collection. We cast it in bronze and incorporated it into pieces of furniture almost as though the furniture itself were wearing jewellery.

I loved that exchange of scale: taking their language of jewellery and allowing it to become part of the furniture and the room. It became a way of quietly weaving Glenn Spiro's world into mine.

Glenn Spiro's boutique at 26 Bruton Street, London W1J 6QL

glennspiro.com

‘A watch unites many aspects of thought,’ says Jeff Koons. ‘What does it mean to be alive, what defines our existence? Time comes into play quite quickly when we start to think philosophically of defining experience.’

Jeff Koons, who has partnered with Hublot on a new series of watches, has more in common with the brand than may first appear. Both share a preoccupation with a rich materiality and meticulous engineering, putting craft at the heart of creation. Both, too, share a beginning – Hublot was established in 1980, the same year Koons staged his first exhibition. Since then, Koons has gone on to establish a distinctive artistic identity, encompassed primarily in his translation of quotidian, everyday items – toys, basketballs, vacuum cleaners, balloon dogs – into large-scale, mirror-polished artworks.

It is the Balloon Dog sculptures, part of Koons’ Celebration series begun in the mid 1990s, which inspire the gleaming Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog watches. Available in three versions – mirror-polished stainless steel or polished anodised aluminum in bright red or blue – the watches appear to breathe and sigh, the result of a softening of their elements, from the screw heads to the sapphire crystal. Their sculptural cases and padded metallic leather straps appear as if puffed up by air.

‘The watch presents itself in a manner that I think is dignified to the balloon dog,’ says Koons. ‘I have to pinch myself a little bit, but I think it's relatively fair to say that a balloon dog is an iconic, defining sculpture for this part of the 21st century that we live in. The watch has that playfulness of the idea of a balloon dog, but at the same time, it has the seriousness of the conceptual part. It shows how a balloon dog not only represents an optimism for the moment, but it also refers back to the image of a balloon dog through time, and there is the realisation it is also tied to the profound.’

For Koons, the balloon dog acts as an analogy for what it means to be human, its inflated surfaces a nod to the act of inhaling and exhaling which keeps us alive. It is a philosophy that becomes more poignant when it takes its squishy and anthropomorphic horological form. ‘If we think of a balloon dog, the puffiness, it's an interface to the external world. And as a human, our interface is skin. A balloon dog is normally in latex, or in my sculpture and the watch, in stainless steel. If you think about that form and inflation to our internal organs, it’s tied to this. It has both this external optimism, but also this profoundness and the mystery of being.’

The collaboration process was a pleasure for Koons, who also enjoyed an insight into Hublot, he adds. ‘The scale of the company is unbelievable, as is being able to achieve this type of craftsmanship within milling, using all the technologies today. There is also the commitment to training all these new young people, in order to maintain this history of craftsmanship and to be able to realise the watches. These timepieces depend on all this human engineering. I was very moved by it. To be able to meet with people to see what they felt challenged by, and feel challenged in return – it's not a conscious process, but it's one that happens naturally within an individual and also in collaborations. You push each other to take it a little further.’

To stay updated on the releases, register interest with Hublot here

hublot.com

A version of this article will appear in the November 2026 Art Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 8 October in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

In the late 1940s, Rolex introduced the reference 8171 watch, nicknamed the ‘Padellone’ (or ‘large frying pan’, translated from the Italian) thanks to its wide, flat case and unusually elongated proportions for a watch of the era. Now, this early piece, which was available through to the 1950s, is the inspiration for the new Perpetual Padellone watch.

The new watch is the second to join the Perpetual collection, which launched in 2023 with the 1908 model, and maintains the elegant silhouette of its predecessor. Measuring in at 39mm, it features traditional design accents throughout, from the bezel with a domed upper part and a fluted lower section, to a grained finish on the dial.

An instantaneous annual calendar, requiring only one adjustment a year, provides aesthetically pleasing efficiency in the change of day, date and month; they flip simultaneously at midnight, a process that takes a fraction of a second. A moonphase, on a clearly visible blue enamelled disc, features the full moon and a new moon crafted in meteorite, the latter of which is also treated with a dark blue PVD coating. A face on the moon nods to a similar detail on the original 8171 watch.

Three versions of the Perpetual Padellone watch are available: in 18ct Everose gold with the seven-link metal Settamo bracelet; in platinum with a blue dial and black matt alligator leather strap; and in 18ct Everose gold with a brown alligator leather strap.

rolex.com

In 1976, Chopard released the ‘Happy Diamonds’ collection, originally composed of two watches that saw diamonds move freely across their black onyx dials. The collection has grown over the years to encompass watch and jewellery designs that have this playful fluidity at their heart. To mark the series’ 50th anniversary, Chopard returns with a new ‘Happy Diamonds’ campaign, reintroducing loved classics from the ‘Happy Diamond Heritage’ collection – two watches, a signet ring, cufflinks, a tie pin and a pendant – alongside new ‘Happy Sport’ watches and ‘Happy Diamonds’ pendants.

‘What I love most about “Happy Diamonds” [pieces] is the emotion they create,’ says Chopard co-president and artistic director Caroline Scheufele. ‘A diamond is beautiful on its own, but when it is free to move, it comes alive. It dances with the light, follows every gesture, and seems to have a personality of its own. I have always loved the idea expressed so beautifully by my mother, when she saw the first prototype back in the 1970s: “Diamonds are happier when they are free”.’

For Scheufele, this sense of joy is what has made the collection an enduring one. ‘For me, “Happy Diamonds” and “Happy Sport” have always celebrated women who are authentic, confident, and free-spirited. Fifty years later, that message still feels wonderfully relevant.’

The new pieces pay tribute to the design codes of the originals, from the cushion-shaped cases of the heritage pieces to the fluidity of the diamonds themselves, which follow their own path. Revisiting the original was an emotional exercise for Scheufele, who designed the original ‘Happy Sport The First’ watch in 1993. ‘I wanted to remain very faithful to the original watch, which is particularly close to my heart,’ she adds. ‘Although the changes are very subtle, every single detail has been refined.’ She notes that the watch’s being crafted in Chopard's proprietary steel, Lucent Steel (made with at least 80 per cent recycled material), is the biggest change.

‘I also wanted to bring back the rectangular design for the pendants we introduced in 2006 and to give them a lighter, more contemporary expression. We opened the space around the diamonds so they could move even more freely. I especially love watching how they dance and catch the light. We also introduced a new setting on the diamond-set versions that creates an almost seamless line of diamonds. These are very small details, but they change the emotion of the piece. In the end, that is always what I look for: a creation that feels alive.’

chopard.com

Nothing sets off the austere curve of a black tie like a sprinkling of diamonds, and Cartier’s tempting bunch of yellow gold, platinum and diamond coffee beans will bring a buzz to the party. The ‘Grain de Café’ jewellery collection, created by Cartier creative director Jeanne Toussaint in 1938, epitomised her fascination with translating everyday symbols into precious high jewellery.

One of Cartier’s most enduring collections, it has cemented its place in an elegant cultural history, loved and worn over the years by the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. It includes rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets, but it is this delicious brooch, with its carefully worked and richly textured leaves, which zings into life when set against a foil of restrained tactility. A black wool and mohair tuxedo by Caruso is just the ticket.

A version of this article appears inWallpaper’s October 2026 Guest Editors’ Issue, available from 3 September, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The watch world has long has strong associations with the automotive one, from ties to Formula 1 to models named after famous races and tracks – most famously Heuer with Carrera, Monaco and Monza – to collaborations the likes of Jacob & Co and Bugatti, or, launched earlier this year, Breitling and Aston Martin, and Bianchet and Maserati. Both worlds celebrate the mechanical, typically also cross-fertilising notions of high luxury and extreme performance.

But spare a thought for the less high-profile, more arcane collaboration. Take, for example, Seiko’s new tie-in with Honda. Not the Honda of the NSX or the S200 but of the Motocompo, the 49cc, petrol-powered folding scooter-cum-mini-motorcycle manufactured by the Japanese car giant for its home market and just for three years in the early 1980s.

Seiko’s 8000-piece limited-edition Seiko 5 Sports Field model could hardly reference the Motocompo more bluntly, sharing the scooter’s bright yellow colour scheme, accented with bold black lines and a Honda-branded dial, while the nylon strap echoes that used to secure the scooter in the boot of Honda’s City car. Seiko offers the model as a collector’s piece 'celebrating two legends of Japanese design' – though it speaks to the potency of the Watchmaking Automotive Industrial Complex that in its selection Seiko should make such a localised and arcane reference.

'The fact is that car nuts are just that – very knowledgeable about the most esoteric history. They would know about the Motocompo,' argues Michael Benavente, managing director of Bulova, which has just released its own limited-edition Shelby Racer chronograph – with aluminium case and mirror-polished dial – to mark the 50th anniversary of the aluminium-edition Shelby Daytona Coupe, an iconic design in the US, but less so further afield.

Carroll Shelby was the visionary racing car designer who engineering and helped style not only the Daytona but the AC Cobra and the Ford Mustang. He was, in fact, the only person to win Le Mans as a driver team manager, team owner and race car manufacturer, doing so twice with a Ford GT. Indeed, some may know the Shelby name from 2019’s movie Ford v Ferrari: that’s Carroll Shelby, played by Matt Damon. Many, though, won’t know his name at all.

'I think the movie helped the Shelby name find more of a place on the international stage, but what works is that there’s an authenticity to Bulova, as a US brand, collaborating with a name in US automotive culture,' adds Benavente, who notes that the watch brand was the first timekeeper of NASCAR in the 1950s and was worn by Shelby, according to his estate. 'As much as I love the cars, it wouldn’t make sense for Bulova to work with the likes of Maserati, for example. But it’s remarkable how much watches and cars speak to the same kind of people.'

Certainly less obvious, and more left-field, watch car collaborations are on the up. Casio too has teamed up with Honda to celebrate the Honda RA272, while German brand Stowa has just launched its second of its World Rally Championship collaboration watches. In January Seiko also releases a chronograph inspired by the anime character Keisuki Takahashi and his beloved Mazda RX-7 - with a triangular 12 o’clock marker inspired by the car’s signature rotary engine. This relationship cuts both ways too: Porsche may be a household name, less so the watch micro-brand Aera, though the two companies are now working together.

Jewellery designer Shaun Leane is marking a change in his decades-long jewellery practice, with the launch of a new commission-only atelier which will create only twelve pieces a year.

The shift in focus, to a considered and slower pace, is reflective of Leane himself. He began his career 44 years ago while still in his teens, as an apprentice in Hatton Garden, alongside Lee Alexander McQueen who was working as a tailor on Savile Row. The bold, strong pieces Leane created for McQueen defined a career notable for its blend of avant-garde aesthetic and rich celebration of craft. In 2019, Leane began spending more time in rural Ireland, and in 2024 left his flagship boutique in Mayfair.

It has been a culmination of events which have triggered a new direction for Leane, who is working at the antithesis of repetition and the mass market with his new atelier, 12. ‘Luxury, to me, has always meant rarity. Not only the rarity of materials, but the rarity of time and attention given to a single object. That belief is central to my approach with 12,’ he says.

The peace and solitude he enjoyed in rural Ireland enabled a period of great introspection, he adds. ‘12 represents a return to how I started – creating works with the highest levels of craft, passion and responsibility. By making just twelve pieces a year, each work is given the time it deserves, allowing me to create objects that are deeply considered, deeply personal, and made to become the heirlooms of the future.’

Leane’s first piece for 12 has been an incredibly personal objet d’art – a stone headstone in commemoration of his late father, embellished with intricate flora and fauna, and accompanied by a cat cast in bronze.

Other works, including a couture sterling silver collar commissioned by Daphne Guinness, unite heritage techniques and rare materials, and draw on skilled craftsmanship from goldsmithing and silversmithing to engraving and archive photography.

12creations.com

‘There is still quite a narrow visual language around men’s engagement jewellery,’ says Rachel Boston, on the eve of the launch of her collection of ten men’s rings. ‘I wanted to create something design-led and timeless, but with our own design signatures. Rings that feel substantial and masculine, where the interest comes through proportion and form rather than decoration for its own sake.’

London-based jewellery designer Boston, who has made a sculptural sensibility her own, has created wedding bands and bespoke pieces for men before, but felt now was the time to create a collection for men. ‘Relic’, encompassing ten engagement or statement rings in 18ct gold or platinum, distills ancient Roman inspirations into edgy, modern silhouettes.

‘I’ve always loved the forms and heft of Roman signet rings. There’s a sense of permanence to them; the strong proportions and sculptural band shapes have always caught my eye on museum visits,’ says Boston.

‘Roman signet rings would traditionally have been set with carved gemstones such as onyx, garnet and carnelian, but I loved the idea of taking these ancient forms and setting them with modern-cut white diamonds instead. There [seemed] something quite fitting in that combination, the permanence of these forms alongside the diamond, with all its associations with longevity and marriage. It allowed us to reference something ancient while making the pieces feel unmistakably contemporary.’

Boston considers every detail, including the way the diamonds sit in their gold bands, with several of the designs referencing a historical Roman setting technique which outlines the stone in an architectural profile. ‘The starting point was to take these recognisable ancient forms and strip them back. I wanted the historical reference to be felt rather than for the rings to look like replicas,’ Boston adds. ‘It was also about bringing in elements of our own design language. Some pieces incorporate our signature knife-edge setting, giving the metal a sharper and more angular profile around the diamond, while the white diamonds themselves bring a brightness to these heavier gold and platinum forms.

‘That contrast runs through the whole collection: weight and lightness, ancient and modern, something that could feel almost excavated but at the same time very precise. I wanted the rings to carry a sense of history without belonging to the past.’

rachelboston.co.uk

Geneva Watch Days debuted in 2020 as a decentralised alternative for a pandemic world, in a ‘Phygital’ form when the halls of Palexpo stood empty. Six years on, it has become a must-visit event, and for many is seen as the industry's most collegial gathering.

Geneva Watch Days 2026 (2-6 September) spreads across the city, at the Pavilion at the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc, Hotel Beau-Rivage and the boutiques of Rue du Rhône. Last year's record of 70 brands is beaten with this year’s event, which hosts 71. Jean-Christophe Babin, Bulgari's chairman and the event's instigator and president, calls it an incubator as much as a showcase, where independents share billing with LVMH's biggest names. Run as a nonprofit by volunteers, the event offers intimate conversations with CEOs in hotel suites, symposia, breakfasts and a chronometry contest supporting Geneva's watchmaking school. From independent to big brands, here are a few watches being revealed today.

Ming 57.05 Comet

Ming marks nine years with the 57.05 Comet, a worldtimer built around a patent-pending fix for daylight saving time. An unusual design sees the usually minimal ethos replaced by stepped art deco lugs and a small centre dial that resembles early Patek Philippe world timers of the 1940s and 1950s, framed by a wide bezel. Click the outer bezel 15 degrees, and only the DST-observing cities jump forward, while the rest stay untouched. The watch has a British connection, being named after the de Havilland Comet, the first jet airliner. At its centre, a multilayered blue dial called Comet Tail shifts with the light, making this a charmingly retro take on Ming’s world of horology. Limited to 200 pieces, from CHF 6,950.

ming.watch

Bremont Terra Nova Jumping Hour

Bremont extends its Terra Nova Jumping Hour with five new pieces, headlined by an all-new 35mm case, the collection's first dress-watch scale. A rich burgundy joins the established pink as Bremont's second British colourway, offered across both the new 35mm and the original 40.5mm. It is a shrewd move by CEO David Cerrato, as the jumping hour and guichet trend remains strong, and both male and female collectors still eschew large sizes in favour of compact chic. Each version keeps the jumping hour's bold montre à guichet display and BC634 calibre, switching the hour disc in under a tenth of a second. In steel and pink, this dressy number rounds out the family with a shimmer that’ll catch the eye of many collectors.

bremont.com

Bulgari Octo Finissimo Dual Time

Spearheaded by the never-ending creativity of Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Bulgari builds its Geneva Watch Days presence around a titanium manifesto. The Octo Finissimo Dual Time marks its first outside collaboration, reworked with Vianney Halter into retrofuture territory between Jules Verne and precision engineering, and limited to 30 pieces in titanium and ten in warm pink gold.

With external displays framed by studded dive-bell-esque rings, the contrast to the clean-cut symmetry of the Finissimo is striking. The Octo Finissimo Dazzle takes the opposite route, with a case laser-engraved into a camouflage pattern. The finish draws directly from a technique used by automotive manufacturers to conceal a vehicle’s true silhouette during road testing, by wrapping its bodywork in fragmented geometric patterns that confuse the eye, blurring the boundary between Finissimo and abstract art.

bulgari.com

Zenith Chronomaster Solo Sport

Zenith strips the chronograph away from Chronomaster for the first time with the Solo Sport, giving the collecting community the simple three-hander dive watch with a 1950s vibe that has been missing from the brand catalogue. It was built to carry the El Primero's high-frequency identity without its usual stopwatch complication, and comes with a more traditional sweeping logo at 12. The 3620 calibre beats at 5Hz, in a 40mm steel case with a ceramic dive bezel, while a high-tech ceramic dial carries a repeated 45-degree Z motif. It’s a strong move from the brand, the dial pattern a graphic translation of frequency itself, finished with a shark-tooth minute track from Zenith's archive. In black, white and brown, fitted with the new Zenclasp bracelet, it will be available from CHF8,900 (£8,113).

zenith-watches.com

Renaud Tixier Monday Organica

Renaud Tixier is the result of a long collaboration between watchmaker-slash-inventor and sensei Dominique Renaud, and the artisanal skills of Julien Tixier. This year the two have completed its Organica triptych with Monday Organica Black and Bordeaux, the final two colours after last year's sold-out Blue. Its organic, almost botanical dial might look like pure art nouveau ornament, but is actually drawn from the curves of three RVI2023 calibre components. There are two evocative dials, including a grand feu enamel, notoriously hard to fire flawlessly, and the warmer tones of Bordeaux, in 5N rose gold. Seven pieces of each will be made, price on request.

dominiquerenaud.ch

Daniel Roth Extra Plat Rose Gold Gilt

Daniel Roth, revived in 2023 by LV’s La Fabrique du Temps, pushes further into its Montre Objet d’Art philosophy with the Extra Plat Rose Gold Gilt. On the dial, the Roman numerals and brand name are negative shapes cut through a masking varnish, revealed as bare gold once the surrounding surface has been built up black. Beneath it all sits a pinstripe guilloché, hand-cut on a rose engine by a single artisan, with the black surface shifting with the light and housed in the brand’s signature double-ellipse case. Made from a warm 5N rose gold with a wearably slim 38.6 x 35.5mm size, it runs on the manual-winding calibre DR002. This has 143 components, 65 hours of reserve at 4Hz, and is developed by industry and Gerald Genta veterans Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini. Priced at CHF55,000 (£50,100).

danielroth.com

Mauron Musy MU05 nO-Ring Origin

Mauron Musy marks a decade of nO-Ring, its unique and patented gasket-free sealing that holds to 300m with metal alone against sapphire. The architectural, almost industrial case, was fittingly offered in a limited collaboration with Italian architect ArturoTedeschi earlier in 2026, but the MU05 nO-Ring Origin goes back to the foundation of the brand. The charming move here is the open-worked dial, where actual fragments of founder Christophe Musy’s handwritten development notes and calculations are visible in crisp print within the dial, unedited and unresolved, and no two watches show the same scrawled theories. It’s a rare instance of an engineering brand taking us behind the scenes, and the 44mm grade-five titanium case houses the skeletonised MM01-SK calibre, visible through sapphire on both sides. All 26 watches come with a strap laser-engraved with the same handwriting, so the reasoning runs off the dial and around the wrist, marking an independent anniversary, at CHF34,000 (£29,170).

mauronmusy.com

For Art Smith [1917 - 1982], jewellery was an extension of sculpture, a philosophy that took shape in the sensual way his modernist pieces were worn on the body. Smith, who moved to New York City from Cuba as a toddler, studied sculpture before opening his own jewellery shop in Greenwich Village in 1946.

There, Smith established a distinctive aesthetic, drawing on an eclectic array of references, from dance to jazz and pan-African regalia, to create fluid and unique pieces. Smith delighted in unusual combinations, pairing semi precious stones with metals and wire which encircled the neck, or curled around the fingers. For Smith, rings were ‘hand decorations’ and necklaces ‘neck pieces,’ and their role was to enhance and celebrate the body.

Smith’s considerable impact is the subject of a new book paying tribute to his life and career. Revered in his lifetime - Smith made work for a rollcall of high clients, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Duke Ellington - Smith’s legacy has since established him as a definitive voice in modernist jewellery design.

‘The story of jeweller Art Smith has long radiated through the intertwined histories of American modernism and African diasporic expression, yet only in recent years have some of the most expansive contours of his life and work come into view,’ says Michelle D. Commander in the preface to Bodyworks: The Jewelry of Art Smith. ‘Smith's jewelry-fluid, organic, and unyieldingly modern-remains among the most distinctive contributions to midcentury design. But beyond the brilliance of form and the beauty of the objects lies a deeper resonance: Smith's work points to the ways Black makers have shaped the artistic landscape of the United States, often without the recognition they deserved.’

smithsonianbooks.com

For Vacheron Constantin, craft is a medium that extends beyond horological borders, a philosophy encapsulated in its ‘One of Not Many Crafts Programme’. The project, which encourages innovation in the future of watchmaking, has now invited six artisans outside the industry to present their interpretation of what this could be.

The six concept watches, all inspired by the animal kingdom in some way, celebrate a diverse selection of crafts, from gold embroidery to feather work, wood marquetry, glass sculpting, paper sculpting and micro-origami.

For Christian Selmoni, Vacheron Constantin legacy and style director, collaborations play an essential role. ‘In the design, it was vital to consider the importance of innovation within tradition and the many ways in which miniature mastery celebrates nature’s beauty,’ he says. ‘We wanted to highlight each artisan’s craft and foster horological craftsmanship in a new modern way while remaining true to the heritage and savoir-faire of Vacheron Constantin.’

Featherwork by Julien Vermeulen, glass sculpting by Simone Crestani, micro origami by Anja Midori, gold embroidery by Laura Baverstock, paper sculpting by Marianne Guely and wood marquetry by Anna Le Corno make for a considered celebration of craft throughout the centuries.

Adds Selmoni: ‘It is important for us as a maison to continually expand and enrich our creative expression and Métiers d’Art. Collaborating with unique artisans is part of our “One of Not Many Crafts Programme”, which encourages innovation and new forms of expression in watchmaking. It is about bringing new artistic disciplines to life, while creating a dialogue between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary flair.’

vacheron-constantin.com

For many people of a certain age, Casio was the creator of the original smart watch. The Japanese electronics giant, which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, ventured into timepieces back in 1974 with the strikingly futuristic Casiotron QW02. It wasn’t the world’s first digital watch – that honour goes to the Hamilton Pulsar P1, with its red LED screen – but it included an automatic calendar for the very first time. A reissue, launched to mark the QW02’s fiftieth birthday, joins a huge array of designs old and new – the Casio website lists over 600 different watches.

In amongst this panoply you’ll find collaborations, tie-ins and special editions, honouring everything from Pac Man to Stranger Things and Back to the Future. Models like the A168 and F-91W have remained essentially unchanged for decades, with tens of millions of units sold.

The smarts came in the form of calculators, data banks, thermometers, barometers and tide graphs, bringing hitherto unprecedented levels of information to the wrist. For those still not convinced by the sensor overload of the modern smartwatch and their unpleasant habit of keeping track of every calorie and heartbeat, Casio have now given their timeless aesthetic a quiet contemporary makeover.

This is the new F-B100W-1A, a watch that blends the style of the F-91W with the addition of Bluetooth and an accelerometer. The latter makes the new watch a low-tech way of tracking steps and setting targets, while simple smartphone connectivity adds a simple layer of data collection. Available in black, green and silver, with a choice of plastic or metal bands, the F-B100W-1A has a two-year battery and all the regular Casio functions like stopwatch and multi-alarms.

Some might see the Casio as a downgrade from a Pixel or Apple Watch, but we think it’s a welcome step back from a world drowning in data and the obsessional tracking of health metrics. It’s also sure to become another cult classic in the manufacturer’s line-up of quiet modern icons.

Casio F-B100W-1A digital watch, £55, Casio.com, @CasioWatches_official

Will the Swiss watchmaking industry remain dominant, as it has, arguably, for the last 40 or so years? Jean-Christophe Babin, appointed last year as the CEO of LVMH Watches - after stints as CEO of Tag Heuer and then Bulgari, both brands in the LVMH stable - suggests that it should not assume as much.

For one, he says, there is the rise of Chinese watchmaking, once focused around cheap knock-offs, now increasingly developing its own watch brands with distinctive designs and imported Japanese movements. And then there is the constant need to offer something more than function, which perhaps giant Japanese makers the likes of Casio and Seiko are, he suggests, too focused on.

So what will keep Swiss watches ahead? Story-telling, he suggests. 'Yes, a luxury watch today needs to be founded on a strong brand reputation, or have iconic models - Rolex and Cartier are, for example, the only brands that have the Ballon Bleu or the Daytona,' says Babin. 'Yet even icons have to evolve. The latest Finisssmo from Bulgari, for instance, is a more balanced watch, a different kind of Finissimo, with proportioning that means it can be worn every day, which it wasn’t perhaps before.

'But the Swiss watch ideally tells a story too - and not one necessarily that comes as a result of just being on the market a long time,' stresses Babin, who is also president of Geneva Watch Days, the event he co-founded during Covid, when watch fairs looked to be all but dead. It brings dozens of brands together across Geneva to show their wares and, critically, do so to the public, for free. 'Bulgari’s Serpenti watch, for example, has only been on the market since 2010 but looks to the kind of bracelets worn in Rome 2000 years ago. Creating that kind of narrative that puts a watch company in a much stronger position than a one that’s just been launched, without yet either resources or history.'

Nor is finding such an arresting story the only challenge. Babin concedes that for the big brands the volume market - which he suggests is for watches priced around €2000 to €8000 - is going to get increasingly tough, both because it’s only economical if it sells a lot of watches, and because new start-up brands are now offering consumers more affordable rival options often made with the same components. 'Keep in mind too that even big brands have small market shares,' he warns.

He would also like to see these brands take a bolder, more radical stance when it comes to design, both because that’s way to carve out a strong market position - it was Babin who drove Tag Heuer’s move towards developing luxury connected watches, a segment it now commands - but also because the industry tends to underplay the notion that most watch customers fall in love with a look, not a movement.

'The engine,' he says, 'has to be mobilised for the design. The aesthetic comes first. We have to invest more in desirability so purchasing a watch in that price bracket isn’t a once in the lifetime event but perhaps one that happens every few years, so those people who didn’t plan to buy a watch at all will do so. If that sector wants to survive long term there are few other options. For me the job is about encouraging brands to be more ambitious.'

Not that Babin thinks that the Swiss watch industry is on some kind of precipice. He has, after all, been here before: 'My career has gone through five or six financial crises, the pandemic, wars, and I think as an industry will see more and more of those kinds of challenges,' he says. 'But if I was reasonably successful it was because I never accepted that events meant the brands I managed wouldn’t remain strong and profitable, even if they didn’t [always] grow.'

The seventh edition of Geneva Watch Days will be September 2nd to 6th. See gva-watch-days.com

Innovative Japanese craftsmanship lies at the heart of Seiko, which celebrates its designers’ creativity with an annual event in London. The Power Design Project – this year titled Passionately and Obsessively Crafted Watches – returns to Japan House, inviting Seiko’s in-house designers to play with the conventions of the traditionally uniform watch design.

The components of the watch itself are considered by the designers here, from the dial textures to the hands and watch surfaces, elements which are often overlooked but require intrinsic artistry and great care.

‘I told the designers, ‘We welcome ideas that go all out!’’ says Grand Seiko design director Shinichiro Kubo on the first Power Design Project relaunch in 2022. ‘Usually, when working on regular products, we design with clear goals and boundaries in mind and, for better or worse, we become accustomed to that way of thinking. So I reassured them that even ideas that might make them wonder – ‘Is it really OK to release something like this?’ – were acceptable. But I also emphasised that it had to be a full-swing effort – no holding back.’

This year’s watches are both playful and surprising, replacing traditional hands with cats, creating a textured maze instead of the usual bar indices and replacing the day indicator with positive text-based messages.

‘People have long asked, ‘Why do we still need watches in this digital age?’’ says Hisashi Fujieda, manager of the Seiko R&D Department. ‘In some countries, more and more people are unable to read analogue timepieces. That’s why I hope, through exhibitions like these, we can continue to showcase the beauty of analogue technology and help people rediscover the unique appeal of watches.’

Kubo adds: ‘Before we began these projects, watch exhibitions mostly appealed only to watch enthusiasts. But this time, we managed to engage people who had never shown much interest in watches before. That, for us, was the most rewarding part.’

Seiko’s ‘Passionately and Obsessively Crafted Watches’ exhibition from 27th August – 15th September 2026 at Japan House London. Free admission

japanhouselondon.uk

Jewellery designer Nikos Koulis specialises in the offbeat and the precious. His jewellery is distinctive for its subversion of classic design, a philosophy expressed in unconventional cuts, clever engineering and surprising materials.

When he announced the opening of his first boutique outside his native Greece, we expected a lot. Koulis has gamely risen to the challenge, opening his Paris flagship to reveal a haven of good jewellery and good design.

Greek-born, London-based architects Bureau de Change worked closely with Koulis on the boutique, located on rue Boissy d'Anglas, with an understated design that respects the clean lines of the original building, erected in the 1700s.

Inside, the jewellery sits among classics of design, from a midcentury Kalmar glass chandelier, mirrors by Gio Ponti , and art from Koulis’ personal collection and objects from his own line, including a series of candlesticks. ‘I wanted to create a gentle and inviting space, to reflect not only my work but also my world,’ Koulis says.

‘The jewellery speaks for itself, but I wanted to propose my way of creating, my way of living, my way of looking at things,’ he adds. ‘The overall aesthetic with my personal choices in the design pieces, the artworks and even the flowers we change every week brings my own sensibility to the space. [There are] layers of intimacy, flair and depth as I wanted to subvert the jewellery boutique rules and codes.'

Out of all the objets d’art in the new space, what are his favourites? ‘I keep changing my [mind about] favourites, it's in my Gemini nature! From jewellery, I would currently choose the ‘77’ necklace. From [my] ‘moNO’ [series of objects and furniture], two candlesticks: the feminine and the masculine, a nod to a very human journey with different traits, free imagination, and constant flux.’

nikoskoulis.com

Alec Doherty’s work flits between mediums. Known best for his work in sculpting, painting and drawing, the English artist is also drawn to the more personal, a cornerstone of his contemporary jewellery design.

Like in his studio-based practice, Doherty’s jewellery is born from a careful consideration of form and material, an essential nature which runs throughout his new fine jewellery collection, Ceremony. The six diamond rings which make up the collection are born from a simple concept – why save something special for one day only?

My dad wore a silver snake chain that had been soldered permanently around his neck by an old friend,’ says Doherty on where the idea came from. ‘I remember wondering why anyone would want to wear something forever. Looking back, I think it marked something important to him. It was a kind of ceremony. We memorialise moments with the things we wear. When I thought about making a celebration ring I naturally ended up at diamonds. Ceremony is my take on something really traditional, but I’m not a traditional designer.’

Doherty rethinks the traditional diamond ring by choosing a lab-grown diamond to sit in the 9ct gold band. ‘Natural diamonds have an incredible history. Lab diamonds start with none, and that really appealed to me. Their story begins with the person who wears them,’ he adds.

The rings are ripe for interpretation, eschewing fussy ornamentation for clean and simple silhouettes which put the focus on the diamond. For Doherty, they are a continuation of his artistic practice, rather than separate to it. ‘Drawing, sculpture and jewellery are all ways of working with material to understand or describe an idea,’ he says. ‘Usually the material feels as though it chooses itself. What I love about jewellery is that it doesn't stop with the maker. Once it's worn, it becomes part of someone else's life and takes on meanings I could never predict. That feels like a very special thing.’

alecdoherty.com

Maurice Lacroix has a deserved reputation as a maker of mechanical watches. And yet one of its latest models, the Pontos S chronograph, takes an unexpected tack: its quartz movement is Swiss but it’s also solar-powered, a first for the collection. Solar means a battery change only every 10 years, and five months autonomous running at full solar charge. The solar power also illuminates the two colour Superluminova display.

'A lot of companies choose to stay focused on where their know how is strongest - in mechanical watches, with quartz seen as an entry level product before you progress to a mechanical watch,' says Samuel Guelat, Maurice Lacroix’s international marketing manager. 'But the fact is solar is so efficient now there’s no worries in presenting it as a reliable timepiece. Undoubtedly there’s appeal to a timepiece you don’t have to worry about for a decade, and especially to younger people who appreciate the ecological angle in that too. It’s not a new tech [for watches], but there’s definitely a trend for solar again now.'

Frederique Constant, for example, has recently released its Classics Moneta Solarmetre, the first reference from the maker to be equipped with a solar movement, specifically the FC-120 solar-powered calibre from La Joux-Perret. That this specialist company was acquired by LVMH Watches last year perhaps hints at further investment in solar-powered watches to come. Like Maurice Lacroix’s watch, the Moneta addresses the two obstacles that have, for some decades, been off-putting to some consumers considering solar-powered watches: insufficient slimness in form and darkness of dial.

Solar-powered watches, though much slimmer than there were a decade ago, tend to be on the chunkier side - the Seiko Astron GPS is, as 12.4mm, the slimmest to date, with Seiko launching a limited edition in crystal green earlier this year. And, as Seiko’s head of marketing Faye Lovenbury says, 'making the tech even more ‘invisible’ is an important area of development too.' Patterned, smoked - as with the Pontos - and engraved or grained translucent dials - as with the Moneta - are now more commonplace. They appear solid but allow the light to pass through.

If solar-powered watches wore their technology a little too much on their sleeve, increasingly it’s hidden away. This year Tag Heuer expanded its solar line-up with solar versions of its Aquaracer and Formula 1 pastel models, though you wouldn’t know it to look at them.

'For a long time it’s been the case that the dial needed holes, or couldn’t be too dark, but the watch industry has worked around this - look at the latest solar-powered watches and there’s no way you can tell,' says Guelat. 'In the future you can imagine that it will develop other ways of taking in the sunlight that perhaps doesn’t involve the dial at all. Certainly I expect to see fewer purely quartz watches and more solar-powered ones.'

Tissot is one such company already exploring others means - last year its PR100 Solar unveiled a ground-breaking ‘Lightmaster’ tech that fits the light-harvesting photovoltaic panel not below the dial, as is standard, but packs it into the sapphire crystal itself, allowing light to be more easily collected. Even artificial light will do - an idea pioneered by Citizen with its proprietary Eco-Drive solar tech, 50 years ago this year.

'As solar energy becomes increasingly recognised as reliable and sustainable, it’s naturally strengthening the appeal of solar watches. But this new tech represents a significant step forward because it opens up a much wider range of finishing possibilities and greatly expands our design potential,' argues Tissot’s CEO Sylvain Dolla. 'We’re now actively working on a number of developments in this space. I think recent innovations improving both performance and design is giving a momentum that’s positioning solar watches as modern, relevant and increasingly desirable.'

The next challenge may be to up the power, to make solar suitable for watches with several complications, suggests Lovenbury. 'It’s about balancing efficiency and integration - continually improving the energy harvested from light to power increasingly complex watch functions, while maintaining attractive design,' she says.

As light rain and a gentle mist rolls over the Arrochar Alps towards the small village of Tarbert on Loch Lomond, writer and now curator Kate Matthams is huddled in a café preparing for an epic trip around Oban, Mull, the Western Highlands, Glasgow and finally Edinburgh, where her first exhibition, ‘Terrane’, will be opening at Ætla gallery during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Exploring the relationship between landscape, identity and jewellery with 11 artists assembled for their innovative use of materials, craftsmanship and narrative, this is her first curation and the gallery's first use of an external curator.

'The idea for the exhibition started with materiality from the landscape, like a kind of topography of memory,' says Matthams of how the events and physical materials we encounter in life, connect us to places we inhabit as a central theme for the show.

Alice Cicolini’s hand-carved ebony cuffs with landscape agate set into jasper illustrate this nicely with the combined and equal value of maker’s skill, unconventional materials and landscape. Inspired by India with its spicy milieu of 'cow-dung fires, red dust coming off the heritage buildings, kites circling gardens and the mist…', her pieces are rich with the transformative energy of her experiences there since she began visiting in 1999.

Lola Fehirst's ‘Celestia’ cocktail ring in indigo aluminium with Afghan Lapis and cognac diamonds refers to the Kofar Mata dye pits of Kano in northern Nigeria, where indigo twigs, potassium and ash were used to dye fabric sold to the Tuaregs, also known as the blue men of the desert. Now based in Paris, Fehirst draws a parallel between both places, saying 'there is something exquisite about the reverence around the craft of jewellery making in Paris that is echoed in Kano, and which has an element of the sacred about it’.

Castro Smith employs a hammer-and-chisel technique he devised while studying in Japan under Hiroshi Suzuki, Kenji Io and National Living Treasure Mamoru Nakagawa, combined with hand-pushed engraving to create his solid silver signet ring. The ring is a palette cleanser to his usually brightly coloured ceramic pictorial engravings and is one of the few pieces in the exhibition with no gemstones. Ruth Tomlinson’s pieces, in contrast, all feature sapphire clusters from Sri Lanka, where she visited mines and connected with artisanal cutters and miners.

From the textured beauty of Ellis Mhairi Cameron’s Scottish kilt pins in yellow gold studded with baguette diamonds to the Scottish agates and French sapphires used by Sarah Madeleine Bru, the abstract mother of pearl employed by Melanie Georgacopoulos and the NHS X-ray silver combined with SMO gold by Emefa Cole – material culture profoundly connects each artist to an individual time and place in this exhibition. Nada Ghazal’s enamel dome-shaped blossom rings are inspired by her eternal muse, the city of Beirut, which has weathered so much but continues to be, in Mattham’s words, ‘her absolute beacon and guiding light’.

Inesa Kovalova’s white gold, Akoya pearl and diamond ‘Link’ earrings and ‘Carré’ ring celebrate her upbringing in the Donbas region of the Ukraine, which is now near the front line, and the idea that in jewellery, your roots, home and identity can be carried with you in hard times. True value is in the message, and the materials, however valuable, are simply tools.

'They really got under my skin,' Matthams says of the artists, gathered for the first time as a group for the exhibition. 'I wanted to use something other than words to tell their stories in a different way.'

'Terrane' runs from 7-31 August 2026, at 17 St Stephen St, Stockbridge, Edinburgh EH3 5AN

edfringe.com

For its second collaboration with Team Ikuzawa and Bamford Watch Department, TAG Heuer has tapped into the graphic clarity and analogue romance of Japanese motorsport of the 1970s and 1980s.

The Carrera Chronograph x Team Ikuzawa takes its cues from a vintage Roadmaster stopwatch, discovered while Team Ikuzawa’s principal and creative director Mai Ikuzawa and Bamford Watch Department founder George Bamford were looking through Bamford’s collection of timers and chronographs from the period. ‘It was a eureka moment,’ says Ikuzawa. ‘The simplicity and restraint of the design was just full on.’

The base for the project is TAG Heuer’s 39mm Carrera Glassbox, which was chosen because the bezel-free construction preserves the immediacy of a handheld stopwatch. That was also the rationale behind the white Clous de Paris dial with black printed numerals and sparingly deployed red accents; details that recall Team Ikuzawa’s famously stark racing liveries. Powered by TAG Heuer’s automatic TH20-10 calibre, the watch dispenses with running seconds, leaving room at six o’clock for the Team Ikuzawa signature, in the same manner with which the team and sponsor logos were once applied to racing chronographs. In addition to its seven-row steel bracelet, the watch has a perforated white leather strap with red stitching and a red-and-white textile alternative.

Ikuzawa, a Central Saint Martins-trained graphic designer who grew up between the racetracks of Japan and Britain, describes restraint as central to both her Japanese heritage and the team’s visual identity. ‘You’re stripping away a lot of the noise, but what makes something really beautiful is the attention to detail,’ she says. Achieving that apparent simplicity was less serene: Ikuzawa recalls a lively WhatsApp group and a design process in which ‘there was no compromise’.

It’s not all stark simplicity, though; there’s a playfulness that comes with the presentation. The watch and straps come in a toolbox alongside a travel pouch and Team Ikuzawa charms, details that reflect Ikuzawa’s ability to connect with her audience (also seen in her 2024 collaboration on clothing with Daniel Arsham).

The first TAG Heuer x Team Ikuzawa watch appeared exclusively in Japan in 2023. This globally available sequel is limited to 150 numbered pieces and priced at £8,850. More than another motorsport-themed collaboration, it demonstrates why Ikuzawa’s family heritage can speak credibly to a younger audience whose introduction to motorsport is more through Netflix and TikTok than the sports pages. ‘We want to bring a little bit of sexiness back,’ she says.

tagheuer.com

Since 1950, the Dallas Museum of Art has quietly been building a collection of contemporary jewellery. Many of the pieces, spanning various mediums, have rarely been seen, something that has now been addressed with a major exhibition presenting more than 350 wearable artworks.

‘Constellations: Contemporary Jewelry from the Dallas Museum of Art’, on show at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia, is now displaying what amounts to one of the USA’s most significant jewellery collections. Encompassing hundreds of pieces from over 230 artists, from 41 countries, the collection speaks to the breadth of creativity among artists focusing exclusively on a wearable medium.

‘More than a survey of contemporary jewelry, “Constellations” celebrates artists’ ability to expand the boundaries of wearable art through innovation and creativity,’ says Mark A Castro, director of curatorial affairs at the Chrysler Museum.

Works here are occasionally playful, from crowns of gold that appear to be cardboard, to an embrace of unusual materials such as photographs, wire and plastic. There are brooches shaped like toast, rings of nylon and a composting collar, created from egg box cartons. The jewellery artwork, divided into four themes – Zones of the Body, Archetypes, Signals and Play – invites visitors to trace the history of jewellery as an eclectic form of artistic expression.

Adds Castro: ‘The exhibition invites audiences to embrace the full range of the medium’s potential – to engage serious issues while also fostering playfulness and delight.’

‘Constellations: Contemporary Jewelry from the Dallas Museum of Art’ is on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, until 3 January 2027

chrysler.org

The independent watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin had mulled over all the options. He could make all of his proposed watch’s components thinner, but then some would not work as well as needed. He could make the case very strong to compensate – that was an idea worth pursuing. Gold wouldn’t be durable enough. A tungsten nickel alloy would work, although it alone would take two months of machining – and he would need to use the rare, non-magnetic variety typically used in the development of space technology.

He could also rearrange the movement’s architecture, effectively splitting the mainspring barrel – a mechanical watch’s power source – into two parts, and integrate parts of the movement directly into the caseback. The winding of what would remain a very delicate instrument would need to be outsourced to a separate, dedicated device. But it could be done.

And, in fact, it has been. Chaykin recently unveiled the result: the production version of his ThinKing mechanical watch, the world’s thinnest, at just 1.65mm deep. 'Making a watch that thin was a real challenge, but life would be very ordinary without it,' says Chaykin. 'Why do it? Because it’s like a magic trick: you know it’s there on your wrist, but you can’t feel it. Now we’re just waiting for the next guys to try to beat our record.'

Chaykin’s watch beat the record previously held by Bulgari, which in 2025 also released the world’s thinnest tourbillon movement, the Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon (among our pick of the year's statement watches), at 1.85mm thick – again achieved by using the caseback as the movement’s manipulation. This, in turn, unseated Piaget’s Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon, at a positively chunky 2mm.

But why this arms race for an ever-more barely-there mechanical model? After all, it’s one which, arguably, has been in play since the master watchmaker Jean-Antoine Lepine reimagined the pocket watch way back in 1765, doing away with the movement’s traditional sandwich of plates and pillars for a greatly thinned-down timepiece, with Jacques-David LeCoultre, in 1907, and Audemars Piguet, in 1938, both further revolutionising movement architecture to produce, respectively, a 1.38mm-thick pocket-watch movement and a 1.64mm-thick wristwatch movement (not including the case). Since the 1950s, Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Piaget, Audemars Piguet and, latterly, Bulgari and Richard Mille have led the competition for ever more thinness.

'For watchmakers, thinness is something of an obsession, because to achieve it you have to reimagine the components and produce them in different ways, using different materials. And for the collector who understands the technical aspects, a very thin watch is a point of difference,' explains Bulgari’s product creation executive director Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani. 'For me, honestly, thinness alone adds nothing to the functionality of a watch – if it’s not automatic and robust enough for everyday life then it’s more a prototype. And we’re at a place where we could make an even thinner prototype watch, but you wouldn’t be able to touch it.'

Indeed, Stigliani adds that pursuing thinness in a watch is always a matter of compromise: you take something away here, you lose something – like a useful level of power reserve, reliability or enough rigidity – there. Further problems of functionality include, he suggests, how to attach a strap or bracelet to a very thin watch, and, invariably, its aesthetic. 'Sometimes an ultra-thin watch just looks too flat, too fragile,' he says.

These various complications are why, Stigliani suggests, makers of ultra-thin watches belong to 'a club with only a few brands for members' who like to be able to 'show the market something completely new and [for whom an ultra-thin watch] is a bit of a technical show-off too. It’s a wow moment. And the record [achieved] is another form of advertising campaign.'

Perhaps, then, we’re close to peak thin – at least until some new wonder material comes along. Chaykin says he’s working on various ideas that would allow for an even thinner mechanical watch, but concedes that 'like breaking a record in sport, each new record gets harder to beat, and tends to take much longer'. And he agrees with Stigliani that breaking records is one thing, 'but making a watch that’s wearable is something else'.

But that’s not to say that more thinness – if not of the ultra kind – doesn’t have its uses. Thomas Van Straaten, founder of VPC Watch Co, for example, has recently launched its Type 39VM, recognised as the thinnest 200m automatic dive watch on the market, at 9.34mm total thickness. He argues that, beyond the cliché of a thin watch sitting nicely under a shirt cuff ('though actually that’s quite nice’, he says), thinness does make for a more comfortable watch to wear.

'The interest in thinness now isn’t a fad,' he adds, 'but fits with a growing appreciation for the ergonomics of watch design, which is also behind the greater number of smaller watches too. And thinness has to be in balance with the rest of the design. I’m not a fan of thinness for its own sake. We could have made the Type 39 thinner [albeit at some cost to water resistance] by using a printed dial instead of one with raised indices, but it just didn’t look as good. And that matters.'

konstantinchaykin.com

Breitling has announced three limited-edition timepieces that celebrate its partnership with Aston Martin, the first watches since the two companies announced their collaboration back in February 2026.

Available in three finishes, the watch has a sufficiently epic name, the Top Time B01 Chronograph 41 Tribute to Aston Martin DB5. It does, of course, reference the bellwether of all things Aston Martin, the 1963 DB5 grand tourer that has become one of the most iconic and recognisable car designs of all time. It would almost be unnatural if Breitling were to kick off such a partnership without acknowledging this car.

According to Georges Kern, CEO of House of Brands, the umbrella company that oversees Breitling along with the brands Universal Genève and Gallet, ‘the Aston Martin DB5 is one of those rare designs that never fades. It still feels as relevant today as it did in the 1960s. With this Top Time, we capture that sense of timeless style.’

The trio of watches make direct reference to the forms and materials introduced in the DB5, a rich palette of leather, wood and metal that continues to the benchmark for luxury sporting automotive interiors. The watch itself is also period correct, described by Breitling as its own ‘unconventional chronograph, created for a new, youthful, speed-driven audience’.

Happily, there’s another direct Aston connect, one that drives straight through the most prominent cultural waypoint of all, James Bond. In 1965’s Thunderball, a Breitling Top Time ref 2002 was worn by Sean Connery. This was the second on-screen appearance of Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 (first seen the year before in Goldfinger) and the first time that a watch took a starring role as a MacGuffin in the series (Q had equipped it with a Geiger counter).

In the hands of Breitling’s team, this special edition of the Top Time B01 Chronograph 41 might not be able to detect radiation, but it has been given a level of detail and elegance that befits the Smiths dials and leather-clad ambience of a DB5.

Elements like the cushion-shaped case, grooved corners, and mushroom pushers are all deliberate evocations of the 1960s chronograph; automotive gauges were also the direct reference for the form of the two ‘squircle’ subdials.

The leather strap pairs especially well with the wooden inner ring, adding a level of grain and detail that’s rarely found on a watch face. ‘This chronograph blends form with true function,’ says Pablo Widmer, Breitling’s head of product design. ‘As with the Aston Martin DB5, its beauty lies in its lines, materials, and finishings.’

Three distinct editions are available. The stainless steel finish, with silver dial, is limited to 1,022 pieces and represents the closest match to the original 1960s Top Time ref. 2002. There is also a 315-piece edition of a steel and platinum finished watch, with black lacquered dial.

Finally, Breitling is making just 250 individually numbered examples of an 18ct red gold edition, complete with dial cut from natural onyx stone (a first for Breitling).

The new editions use the Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01 chronograph movement with 70-hour power reserve that supports extended wear. The movement is clearly visible through the open sapphire-crystal caseback, finished with a dedicated Aston Martin–engraved rotor in rhodium-plated or 18ct red gold (depending on the edition).

‘These editions represent something truly distinct from anything we’ve created before,’ says Aston Martin’s CCO Marek Reichman. ‘The collaboration with Breitling brought together two brands with a shared appreciation for timeless design, craftsmanship, and innovation, allowing us to exchange ideas in a way that felt both natural and ambitious. The result is a watch that feels contemporary today, yet timeless for generations to come.’

Breitling Top Time B01 Chronograph 41 Tribute to Aston Martin DB5 is available with a sunray silver dial (£8,650), sunray brushed black lacquered dial (£14,400) and an 18ct rose gold and onyx dial (£35,100)
Breitling.com, @Breitling, AstonMartin.com, @AstonMartin

Swedish jewellery house Englebert, founded in Stockholm in 1920, is defined by a clean, minimalist style honed over four generations. Collections, including Legacy Knot, Loop and Drop Link, eschew ornamentation to cut clean, fuss-free silhouettes drawn in reassuringly heavy 18-carat gold.

Many of the brand’s classical pieces have now taken their place in the wider conversation of Swedish design, placed alongside Swedish ceramics in a photo series by Sophie Kirk in collaboration with Paul Jackson of Jackson Design.

A vast number of the Swedish and Scandinavian studio ceramics and bronze belong to Englebert’s private collection. Pieces – including a sculptural Argenta vase from the 1930s, a Tapio Wirkkala bronze and a Friberg vase – embody a rich materiality when paired alongside the jewellery.

For Oscar and Giovanna Engelbert, the series is a celebration of beautiful form across both mediums. ‘What drew us was the silhouette. The neck of a vase, the line of a link, the curve of a stone; place them together and they stop being ceramic and jewellery and become one language of form. That is what this series captures.’

It is the latest step for Engelbert in a long-standing championing of Swedish design. The brand, which began in Stockholm in the same decade Swedish designer Wilhelm Kåge joined porcelain specialist Gustavsberg, has alluded to this parallel before, including vintage Kåge ceramics in their Beverly Hills showroom.

‘There is a clear language shared between the objects and the jewellery,’ agrees Paul Jackson. ‘Both also belong to the broader continuum of Swedish ceramics and Swedish grace, where elegance was achieved through proportion and material quality rather than excess.’

Adds photographer Sophie Kirk: ‘Across the four palettes – moss green, beige, black and white – the gold and the objects read differently against each one. Their individuality made every frame a world of its own.’

engelbert1920.com

Hermès originally opened its doors in 1837 as a harness workshop in Paris, rapidly establishing itself as an authority in the crafting of leather saddles and bridles. Founder Thierry Hermès created pieces for the nobles of the era, demonstrating a commitment to craftsmanship that expanded and developed over the decades.

These equestrian roots have always been central to Hermès, and are reinterpreted now in the new high jewellery collection from the creative director of Hermès Jewellery, Pierre Hardy. ‘Into the Horsescape’ encompasses a collection of pieces where the horse is suggested, rather than represented.

‘I implicitly tell Hermès’ story, its relationship with time and materials, before drawing on the imagination to transform them into an adornment,’ says Hardy, of why he felt it necessary to eschew a literal representation of the horse. ‘We take mundane items and turn them into something sublime, whether by creating pieces inspired by boots and lassoes, or by finishing a blacksmith’s nail in gold and diamond; transforming it into a sun that illuminates one’s face. This collection journeys between the abstract and the narrative, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.’ (The new Hermès ‘Clou de Forge’ bag takes a similar approach.)

Throughout, equestrian symbols are given a high-jewellery spin. The curves of a lasso are spelt out in baguette diamonds that twist their way around the neck, while an 18th-century miniature saddle is worked into a satin-like black titanium bracelet that sits delicately on the wrist. The arch of a horse’s hoof is finished in gleaming black jade on a minimalist necklace and ring, while the iron nails used to attach horseshoes to a horse’s hooves become raw spikes of a diamond necklace.

‘It’s the broader view that moves me: one’s silhouette, one’s movement, the way one exists within a space, one’s style,’ Hardy adds. ‘Style comes from taking ownership of a garment or a piece of jewellery; from a way of being, rather than through an effect.’

hermes.com

Handcrafted in her studio in Taos, New Mexico, Anna Sheffield's newest works are difficult to categorise. They feel both ancient and contemporary: pieces whose function is not immediately obvious, but whose presence is difficult to ignore.

Sheffield calls them simply ‘objects'. The word gives them space to exist between categories. They are sculptures that participate in daily life. A vessel might hold a feather collected during a walk. A bell might mark the transition between one moment and another. A carved form might rest in the palm of a hand, inviting a few seconds of reflection. ‘The greatest luxury is to have anything in your life that makes you feel like you're slowing down and actually being present,' Sheffield says.

She jokingly describes the pieces as ‘witchy Carl Auböck', referencing the 20thcentury Austrian designer whose objects transformed everyday tools into moments of pleasure and attention. A bowl, bell or letter opener remained useful, but function was only the beginning. Auböck understood that objects could carry qualities more difficult to measure: humour, personality, memory and the small rituals created through use.

This relationship between material, meaning and daily life has shaped Sheffield's work for more than two decades. Before becoming one of the defining voices in contemporary fine jewellery, she studied sculpture in San Francisco. Jewellery unexpectedly became the place where her sculptural training, material knowledge, and personal sensibility became a livelihood. After moving to New York in 2002, she launched her ‘Bing Bang' line, translating those instincts into accessible pieces: tiny sculptural symbols, charms and declarations designed to be collected and layered. The response was meteoric, becoming what Sheffield describes as a ‘Barneys fashion moment', with the line finding audiences from New York to Tokyo and leading to collaborations with Marc Jacobs and Target.

In 2009, Sheffield started a collection under her own name, embracing the traditions of fine jewellery while bringing her own sensibility. Her rings honoured classic forms, but introduced unexpected stones, unusual colours and combinations that reflected a sculptor's attention to material, composition and emotional resonance. Jewellery offered a powerful education in the emotional life of objects. »

A ring arrives with centuries of human behaviour already attached: promises, commitments, inheritance and memory. Eventually, Sheffield began questioning whether that same emotional power could exist within the quieter rituals of daily life.

However, after years of building a brand and a recognisable language within jewellery, Sheffield began to question where she fitted in creatively. ‘I'm not an artist anymore,' she remembers saying. ‘I'm a designer. I'm a brand. I'm a marketer. I'm an entrepreneur.'

During the pandemic, an artist residency at Pocoapoco in Oaxaca allowed Sheffield to confront these issues, returning her to sculpting and the physical process of making. Around the same time, her centre of gravity shifted from New York City to Taos, bringing her back to New Mexico, where she grew up, and to the landscape that had long shaped her understanding of materials. ‘New Mexico has always been my true north,' she says. Taos offered her a different kind of knowledge. The region has long attracted artists, creative types and experimental thinkers drawn by the possibility of living outside conventional systems of value. Its vast landscape and distance from traditional centres of culture created space for different ways of making, thinking and being. For Sheffield, it nurtured another part of the same imagination: the slower, stranger, more intuitive relationship with materials that had been the foundation of her creative life. The surrounding desert contains many elements that have appeared throughout her career: quartz, turquoise, copper and volcanic stone. The move was not a rejection of one life for another. It was a place where different parts of herself could finally exist together.

The works that emerged could only have been made after everything that came before. They carry the precision of jewellery but follow a different logic: one shaped by earth, intuition and the slow accumulation of meaning. Stones no longer wait to be set into rings. Metals no longer need to announce their value. Materials that once marked life's largest ceremonies are invited into quieter, daily exchanges. Sheffield speaks about the works with a mixture of seriousness and play. After years creating objects for the ceremonies we inherit, she is now exploring the rituals we create for ourselves.

The artist that Sheffield thought she had left behind was never separate from the designer, marketer and entrepreneur she became. They were different expressions of the same imagination, shaped by different landscapes. New York taught her how to build worlds around objects. Taos returned her attention to the mysteries that made those objects matter in the first place. The diamond and the obsidian were never opposites. They were different forms of the same alchemy: earth transformed by the human desire to give it meaning.

annasheffield.com

This article appears in the August 2026, Creative America issue of Wallpaper*, available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Karel Bachand, mechanical engineer-turned-Nasa-systems-designer-turned-watchmaker, doesn’t get it either: why has the watch industry not yet produced a mechanical wristwatch designed from the ground up for use in space? It’s been over 60 years…

For one, it’s a matter of industry dynamics. 'Space is such a wild west right now and while it’s a huge trillion-dollar industry that’s unfolding, there’s no way for companies to address every bit of hardware,' he says. 'Who’s designing shovels for use in space, for instance? Instead, the focus is on the big challenges – food, water, shelter – and smaller tools are underserved right now.'

But, he adds, it’s also a matter of politics: the more established space industry – of government agencies – is one of 'bureaucracy and deep relationships that go back many years', he says. That makes it hard to break into what is a tiny market – for now – dominated by a handful of brands, these in turn dominated by Omega. Descendants of its ‘flight qualified’ Speedmaster – selected for, rather than designed for, early Nasa space missions – remain an astronaut’s go-to models.

Bachand, however, didn’t want to wait for an established watchmaker to wake up the potential of designing a watch for life in space, let alone the mission-critical need to provide a mechanical fail-safe, given solar radiation’s unfriendliness to electronics. Indeed, his California-based company Barrelhand might well claim to have created the first such watch, with its recently launched Monolith.

Six years in development, the model, the case of which is 3D-printed in a modified aluminium alloy, not only meets ISO aerospace standards, Nasa materials guidance and EVA/spacewalk testing protocols, but directly addresses each of the extreme environmental challenges of space (much, he notes, as established brands used to do in supporting deep-sea and polar exploration).

Most stark is the need to insulate the movement against temperature variations of -246ºC through to +120ºC – achieved by hollowing out the case to create air pockets all around it, while fine-tuning tolerances and using compatible materials to allow parts to expand and contract. This also drastically reduces the Monolith’s weight, to just 31g. In spaceflight, it can cost $5,000 to get 1kg just into low Earth orbit, so every gram saved counts.

The movement is mounted on a shock-absorption system, theoretically capable of withstanding a force of 3,000 Gs. Since much over 10 Gs will kill its wearer, that seems sufficiently covered. The watch is also assembled without glues – the internal structure of brass plates is welded with Torx screws, chosen because they’re accessible using International Space Station (ISS) tool sets, should servicing the watch while in space be required.

The Monolith has already been worn in space, on a Blue Origin mission, with Barrelhand now working on getting one onto the ISS for third-party testing, while also seeking contracts. 'When we talk to people responsible for tool acquisition or astronaut training [within space agencies or private space companies], the response is very positive – they get what the Monolith offers,' Bachard enthuses. 'The people who matter just want the best shit for the job.' Since the Monolith is an open-source design, they’re welcome to chip in with ideas too.

They no doubt also appreciate the name. Monolith may sound inappropriate for a tool watch that wears its presence very lightly but it is, of course, a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey. That in part derives from Bachand’s romantic vision that 'someone or something discovers this tool on the surface of the moon or Mars one day as signal to the cosmos that we were here' – and since each watch’s case-back is embedded with a holographic disc containing samples from 1,000 years of human culture, they’ll get more than a curious object. But it’s also more literal. Each of the Monolith’s indices is proportionately the same as the big black slab from Kubrick’s film.

Although it may be the first true space watch – the Gagarin of space watches, if you will – the Monolith will likely not be the last, with Bachand expecting established brands eventually to see the value of designing for this burgeoning market too. Providing, he suggests, that they can see space as a market, rather than as just a storytelling opportunity.

'The identity of so many brands is built around luxury and heritage now, such that to build an actual tool watch again would be almost counter-cultural, even if they have the money, people and ability to do so,' he suggests. 'But there’s clearly a need here.'

barrelhand.com/monolith

In October 1950, a new weekly comic strip, Peanuts, debuted in seven newspapers across the United States. Created by American cartoonist and writer Charles M Schulz, it followed the exploits of Patty, Shermy, Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy.

Born in Minneapolis in 1922, Schluz grew up during the Great Depression, serving in the United States Army during the Second World War, before embarking on a career as a cartoonist. Once remarking that the army ‘taught me all I need to know about loneliness’, Schulz infused this melancholy into the character of Charlie Brown.

His dog, Snoopy, was the result of Schulz’s observation of the relationship between children and dogs, noting the particularly high levels of tolerance a dog has for children’s games, a patience that became the foundation of Charlie Brown and Snoopy’s alliance. Schulz, who had wanted to name the series Li'l Folks, based Snoopy on his childhood dog, Spike, originally drawing the animal as a very ordinary-looking black-and-white beagle who walked on all fours.

Over the years, Snoopy transformed, beginning to walk on two legs, and conducting a sly and playful inner monologue that readers accessed through his thought bubbles. Schulz simplified his drawing style, with Snoopy developing long ears and expressive dots for eyes. By Schulz’s final comic strip, in 2000, Snoopy’s form had been reduced to the essential, a distinctive mix of clean lines and abstract shapes.

Snoopy’s idiosyncrasies – sleeping on top of his kennel, experimenting with endless identities – meant both adults and children found him relatable. Snoopy imagined himself as everything from a First World War flying ace to a lawyer and a scout leader, and was usually preoccupied with themes of friendship, hope and disappointment.

The simplicity of his design made Snoopy both instantly recognisable – even at very small sizes – and adaptable. Snoopy moved easily from newspaper strips to toys, products, advertising campaigns and fashion collaborations.

Snoopy’s appeal transcended comics, extending into fashion and popular culture around the world. At its most popular, Peanuts was translated into 21 languages and syndicated in more than 2,600 newspapers across 75 countries. Notably, Nasa was particularly taken with Snoopy, using him as a safety mascot during the 1960s and introducing the Silver Snoopy Award, which was presented to those who make significant contributions to mission safety. The lunar module for the Apollo 10 mission, meanwhile, was dubbed ‘Snoopy,’ and the command module was called Charlie Brown.

The fashion industry, too, has embraced Snoopy, and he has appeared in collections by brands including Gucci and Lacoste, and on everything from sneakers to watches. Timex, which adopted Snoopy’s form in 1965, was one of the first brands to obtain licences for the use of the Peanuts characters, resulting in watches including the Peanuts x Timex Marlin Automatic Soccer.

Throughout its 50-year run, Schulz kept sole and complete creative control, personally penning every strip himself. It was a habit he maintained until his final strip, which appeared on 13 February 2000 – one day after his death.

This article appears in the August 2026, Creative America issue of Wallpaper*, available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

As its first watch, the original 1988 Monterey watch marked the beginning of a new path for Louis Vuitton. The only watch designed by Italian architect Gae Aulenti, it made for a striking choice for Louis Vuitton's watch debut. We saw it resurface in 2025 as a collector's heirloom, limited, pebble-smooth and making eighties Monterey values soar. Today it is back in techy ceramic as a runway charm.

The lugless gold pebble that Gae Aulenti sketched for the house set the tone for Louis Vuitton's watch language and proves that architectural watch design ages the way a good building does. The 2025 re-edition set the tone, but upscaled in spec from its eighties namesake, in 18-karat yellow gold. The Monterey was sized to 39mm and finished with a white grand feu enamel dial framed by red and blue railroad tracks, faithful to the original down to the crown perched at twelve o'clock rather than three. Aulenti positioned it there deliberately, borrowing the grammar of a pocket watch, and the result has always looked slightly foreign among conventional watches, setting the tone for Louis Vuitton and making it a cult favourite.

Now the Monterey has crossed into fashion. At Pharrell Williams's S/S 2027 men's show in Paris, Louis Vuitton unveiled two ceramic versions of the watch, one in glossy black, one in a bold green. They were presented not on wrists but as charms tied to the runway looks themselves, the latest sign that pocket and fob watches are making a return. The watch can be worn as an accessory, or as seen here, insouciantly dangle from a belt hoop.

The lugless case and the crown-at-twelve silhouette carry over unchanged, so the ceramic Monterey inhabits a quirky pocket watch silhouette, but that pocket-watch inheritance is not incidental. From Daniel Arsham’s teardrop Hublot to plastic Swatch Audemars Piguet collaborations, we see mechanical watches drifting further from the wrist and into the territory of decorative objects worn on chains and clipped to bags. Louis Vuitton, a house built on trunks and travel rather than horology, is unusually well positioned to make that case.

The ceramic editions arrive in stores from 26 September

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Jess Hannah Révész, founder and designer of fine jewellery brand J Hannah, creates jewellery in antithesis to the mass market. Her pieces, made in Los Angeles, encompass a slower, more ethical way of creating, a mindful philosophy brought to life in the new JH Editions collection.

The ongoing series of hand-created pieces marks the designer’s return to the bench – after having seen her time taken up with running the business – a move triggered by her desire to again experience the physicality of the process. ‘I don’t know that there was a singular moment so much as a gradual realisation that I missed making things,’ Hannah says. ‘Over time, my role shifted from fabricating jewellery myself to designing collections, managing production, marketing, and running a business. I genuinely enjoy those parts of the work (most of the time!), but they’re very different from sitting at a bench and the meditative experience of making something.’

The new pieces are created using the wax process – lost wax casting – where the jewellery form is first carved into wax before taking its final metal shape, here in 14ct and 18ct gold, studded with antique diamonds and reclaimed sapphires.

Hannah tells us how the new collection came to life.

W*: Can you tell us what you enjoy about the wax process?

JHR: What I love about wax is that it resists perfection. I originally learned through hand fabrication, where precision is often the goal – wax carving feels different. It's slower, more intuitive, a little less predictable. I usually begin with a loose idea, but the material has a way of steering the process. A slip of the tool or an unexpected contour often becomes the most interesting part of the piece.

The medium lends itself to open-ended outcomes partly because the material itself isn't precious... not yet, at least. With hand fabrication, there's an implicit pressure not to waste gold, which shapes the way you work. Wax removes that. The intention can just be to spend time in the process, without the outcome needing to justify it.

W*: What was key for you to consider in the design of these pieces?

JHR: In a way, the point was to consider design less. In my day-to-day work, design, collections, and market appeal are always part of the equation. With these pieces, I wanted to step away from that mindset and allow the process itself to lead. It was more personal, for me. I just happen to have a studio practice where the output is gold jewellery, so it makes sense to share and sell it too.

Rather than focusing on how a piece might fit into a collection or be received commercially, I tried to follow instinct and just make. Many of the forms draw from jewellery history, which is a constant source of fascination for me – signets, seal fobs, talismans, antique stones – but I wasn’t interested in developing them into a cohesive collection.

Instead, I wanted to explore them freely, fragmenting, simplifying, or reinterpreting them without worrying too much about the outcome.

The challenge was resisting the urge to control everything or evaluate the work too quickly. I wanted the process to remain intuitive and exploratory, and to leave room for surprise and imperfection. There are pieces in the series that I utterly adore and others that I don't. Part of this practice has been learning to make the work, put it into the world, and worry less about whether I think it’s ‘good enough’. The process itself is the purpose.

Oddly, this feels far more vulnerable than releasing a collection. For the past decade, I’ve been presenting work that has been refined, edited, and developed through a larger design process. These pieces feel closer to the source. They’re less filtered, which makes sharing them feel more personal.

W*: What did you find most challenging in the process?

JHR: Probably learning to let the process lead. When you’re designing for a collection, you’re often thinking about cohesion, production, pricing, customer response, and a hundred other considerations at once. This required a different mindset.

Some of my favourite pieces came from abandoning an original plan and following a small accident or unexpected idea instead. That can be uncomfortable because it means giving up a certain amount of control, which is hard for me. The challenge was trusting that not every piece needed a clear vision in order to be worth making.

jhannahjewelry.com

'What I didn’t want to do was one of those collaborations where it’s just a matter of putting another name on the dial,' says Thibaut Guittard. 'For me a collaboration with an artist really has to make sense. If it’s going to be a piece of art in its own right, it has to be meaningful.'

Guittard, one time marketing manager for Audemars Pigeut in France, is the founder of Alto, launched three years ago and the only brand established to create watches specifically in collaboration with artists. Its first collaborative watch, just launched, is with the French contemporary sculptor Bernar Venet, known for his monumental, mathematically-precise pieces in Cor-Ten steel.

Its point of difference? The one-piece dial of the Art 01 - of which only 10 pieces will be made - comprises a micro-sculpture by Venet. The watches don’t make use of Cor-Ten steel - since the resulting magnetic effect would be detrimental to the performance of the movement - but of bronze, patinated in the same way using a process developed in-house by Alto.

The dial is also just 0.8mm deep, enough to register the shifts in light and darkness that Venet’s design requires - 'it’s also the volume aspect of the dial that makes it interesting,' Guittard argues - while keeping the watch’s weight to a minimum, and leaving enough room for movement and hands without the finished watch being too thick.

'It was technically very challenging, but the appeal to Venet was that work at such a small scale was in many ways a different proposition for him, while we look on art as perhaps the second biggest means of collaborative communication after sport,' says Guittard. 'These watches are likely for art lovers first. But since the art world tends to be about excluding people, a project like this is also a way for watch fans to be brought into the art world, to discover the artist.'

Alto is now lining up his next artist collaboration, but will first launch a smaller, thinner skeletonised watch - its second, in-house, 3D dial design - in September. By then it will also have been joined by other watchmakers launching artist collaborations: in August Ressence, for example, releases a watch designed in collaboration with Belgian artist Jules Wittock, who free-hand draws intricate mazes; follow a line from start to finish and it reveals a word.

The dial of Ressence’s Type 9 watch - in an edition of around 80 - will carry one of Wittock’s drawings, across the brand’s signature orbiting discs time display. Only at midnight will the display align to allow the word, written in Super-luminova, to be read in the dark.

'The fact is that a watch collaboration with an artist is always a more interesting thing than a collaboration with a retailer,' Ressence’s found Benoit Mintiens suggests. 'Working with an artist you invariably get something you wouldn’t think to do as a watchmaker, while the artist gets to work on something they wouldn’t normally do either, to work on a much smaller, moving canvas. The result is something different. Many watch collaborations are commercially-driven now. What you still get with an artist is a philosophical dimension to a new design.'

The meeting of these two minds is not always easy to pull off though, Mintiens stresses, not least when 'super-cool artists' fail to understand how their ideas may not be translatable into the parameters of watchmaking. 'It can’t be made at scale, or it would be way to expensive or, you know, they insist that it’s made out of translucent titanium,' Mintiens laughs. 'It can get a bit weird.'

Working with an artist can be a leap of faith, agrees Lewis Heath, founder of British sister brands Anordain and Paulin - 'you’re often not quite sure if an artist’s ideas will really be any good on a watch until you’re at the sampling stage,' he notes. And yet the results do typically stand out, which, in an increasingly crowded market of new watch releases, can be critical.

Paulin recently released watches in collaboration with the multi-disciplinary Glasgow artist John Nicol on a series of dials each hand-painted by him in a vibrant abstract style. Anordain has even worked with the artist Rachel Duckhouse - best known for her etching - on the look not a new dial, but of a new movement, seen through an exhibition caseback. Its next artist collaboration is already underway.

'The best thing about artist collaborations is that the artists tend not to know untying about watches,' says Heath, 'so their ideas don’t come coloured by what’s already out there.'

The annual Cartier Prize for Watchmaking Talents of Tomorrow, spotlighting the best up-and-coming talent in the watchmaking industry, is a savvy indicator of who will be disrupting the industry in a decade.

For the prize’s 2026 iteration, the watchmaking apprentices and technicians were asked to create a watch inspired by the movements of a pendulum as it swings backwards and forwards, for the theme ‘Shifting the balance: Reading and understanding time differently’.

The students, from Switzerland, France and Belgium, took a non-traditional approach to the topic, with the 12 finalists developing their concepts over three months, supported throughout by their mentors.

The final designs were considered by a jury comprising Roy Davidoff, a specialist in vintage watches and co-founder of Roy & Sacha Davidoff SA; Pascale Lepeu, director of the Cartier Collection; Nathalie Marielloni, curator at the Musée international d'horlogerie; Pascal Ravessoud, vice-president of the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, watchmaking specialist and collector; and Kari Voutilainen, independent watchmaker. They selected six winners – three watchmaking apprentices and three technicians – who will receive a Cartier watch, with the first prize winner in each category also offered an internship with Cartier.

Aymeric Peters from Belgium won first prize in the Apprentice Watchmakers category, with the winning design meditating on suspended time. Joint second prize was awarded to Layla Sluysmans and Edouard Nicod, who considered ideas on slowing down and opposites, respectively.

Arthur Choquet won the first technician’s prize, with a creation that intertwined the importance of architecture throughout. Adam Deroche scooped second place, asking what would happen if time stood still, while Adrien Stefenelli took third prize for unpicking the echo.

For Cartier, the award is an essential part of supporting and mentoring young people in their passions. ‘This award is very significant to Cartier, as the maison has always felt it had a responsibility to inspire vocations and nurture talent in order to pass on its vision of watchmaking and its dedication to craftsmanship,’ says Karim Drici, Cartier chief operating officer. ‘It is exciting to see the passion of these young watchmakers: the competition provides a space for free expression and emotional exchange, where technical expertise, creativity, and innovation meet. ‘

Drici adds: ‘The prize, first launched in 1995 by the Cartier Watchmaking Institute and dedicated to young watchmaking students, is a direct expression of that commitment. It allows us to stand alongside those who want to pursue this career and will shape the watchmaking of tomorrow.

‘Through this prize, we want to give young watchmakers the opportunity to express themselves fully, from design all the way through to creating a timepiece. The goal is not only to showcase their technical skills but also their creativity, because both will define the future of watchmaking. Above all, the prize is about enriching their professional training. Observing these young talents makes us particularly confident for the future. Most are around 18-20 years old – and yet they demonstrate remarkable concentration, commitment, and maturity.’

cartier.com

Among the hundreds of dazzling treasures on show at NGV’s ‘Cartier’ exhibition, Pascale Lepeu would, in an emergency, save the Model A mystery clock first. It’s an horological marvel in which diamond-encrusted hands appear to float inside a crystal block with no visible mechanism. For Lepeu, Cartier Collection director, the 1914 timepiece is of ‘perfect proportions, representing all three dimensions of Cartier: the precious object maker, watchmaker and jeweller combined’.

The clock is restrained by the maison’s usual opulent standards, displayed in the most sober of the themed galleries housing the largest Cartier exhibition ever held in Australia. Designed by Rotterdam-based Sabine Marcelis, principal of her eponymous studio, and Paul Cournet of Cloud, the carpeted spaces lead visitors on a colour-coded arc through the evolution of the nearly 180-year-old maison.

Co-curated with the V&A’s Helen Molesworth, the exhibition builds on the original 2025 London show, with a much larger presentation of nearly 400 jewels and timepieces, deepened by a trove of archival material and an original soundtrack by Ai Yamamoto and Erkki Veltheim. Notably, the brutalist-era NGV allows the exhibits more room to breathe, compared to the 19th-century V&A.

A 27m-long glass mirror, progressing in an ombre from yellow to pink and deep red, greets visitors at the entrance. 'It reflects light and introduces you to the colour palette of what’s to come, embodying how my world and Cartier’s collide,' says Marcelis. It leads to the Manchester tiara, an early example of Cartier’s signature Garland style. Made in 1903 for the Dowager Duchess of Manchester, its 1,500-plus diamonds sparkle as it sits solo under the spotlight.

From there, the exhibition sweeps across decades and continents, charting its innovations through the stories of its patrons and heiresses to fortunes – Daisy Fellowes, Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke – as much as the objects themselves. New for Australian audiences is a collection of early-20th-century pieces commissioned by opera legend Dame Nellie Melba, featuring her beloved turquoise and diamonds alongside Cartier’s pioneering use of platinum.

In a bold yellow room, displays trace the Cartier brothers’ world of inspiration, spanning Egypt, India, China, Japan and Iran. Among many highlights is a necklace commissioned by the Maharaja of Patiala, its 2,930 diamonds anchored by a 234.65ct De Beers yellow diamond – lost after Indian independence and rediscovered in 1998, stripped of its finest stones, which Cartier replaced with replicas.

Next, an emerald cut-like volume distils the Cartier style that came to prominence at the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (its centenary recently honoured). It was when the celebrated Tutti Frutti creations emerged, luscious clusters of carved rubies, sapphires and emeralds made possible by Indian coloured gemstones and artisans. 'It was neither Indian nor Parisian. It simply did not exist before and we made something entirely new,' says Lepeu.

The mood shifts in the Obsession with Stones room. Its glass central volume glows at the edges, making visitors 'feel like you’re inside a gemstone', says Marcelis. Among vintage and modern pieces, like a 2015 bracelet with a 189.345ct Australian black opal, space is dedicated to Jeanne Toussaint, creative director from 1933 to 1970, who elevated the panther motif into an icon. A highlight: a clip brooch owned by the Duchess of Windsor, its platinum and diamond cat resting on a 152.35ct cabochon sapphire. 'To create a jewel with an animal that represents power and independence, that was really new and shocking,' says Lepeu, of an era when women were finding greater freedoms.

A metallic-grey Watches and Clocks room acts as a palate cleanser before the shock of green in the Film and Celebrity room, where Elizabeth Taylor’s Burmese ruby and diamond necklace from third husband Mike Todd sits near outré pieces commissioned by Mexican film star Maria Felix, including articulated snake and crocodile necklaces in diamonds and emeralds that show off Cartier’s technical prowess.

The show culminates in a rotunda housing 24 tiaras, including a pair of turquoise and diamond headpieces worn by sisters Lady Nancy Astor and Lady Phyllis Brand, shown together for the first time in decades, and the 1902 Scroll tiara, worn most recently by Rihanna on the cover of W magazine.

Newer pieces sit beside older ones throughout, and a continuous narrative rooted in culture and innovation emerges. Lepeu calls it Cartier’s vocabulary: ‘a new jewel is a new sentence using our words’, a language that remains spellbinding more than a century on.

‘Cartier’ is on display 12 June to 4 October 2026, at NGV International, Melbourne

ngv.vic.gov.au

In 2001, Richard Mille unveiled the RM 001 Tourbillon prototype at Baselworld, raising the bar in the watch industry. The first RM case was tonneau-shaped, in grade 5 titanium, with an open-worked movement visible on both sides, with a tourbillon. Featuring the world’s first torque indicator in a wristwatch, it introduced a shape we today recognise as the brand’s own. In fact, within an industry obsessed with reviving past glories, it has also inspired today’s rise of independent watchmakers eschewing retro for avant-garde, futurist designs.

With Mille, ergonomics and light wearability goes hand in hand with technology, and is always at the forefront of Mille’s output. The architecture of the RM 001 bridges and baseplate appeared to be drawn explicitly from Formula One suspension geometry. Nothing else on any stand that year looked remotely like it, and Mille followed with the 2002 RM 002 Tourbillon, the serial production model of the RM 001 as a 25-piece limited release featuring the world’s first nanofibre baseplate.

Twenty-five years is long enough to establish a brand, and long enough to see whether the founding premise can keep collectors’ attention. For Richard Mille, it did - in the face of changing tastes and tastemakers, Richard Mille seems to inhabit a separate sphere of collectability. With extremely high prices, demand is still outstripping supply. The RM 001 treated the wristwatch as an engineering project first, and with every subsequent reference, Richard Mille’s team has pushed that logic into new territory, with a materials list that reads like an aerospace procurement order: Carbon TPT, Quartz TPT, grade 5 titanium and lithium-aluminium alloy. The brand was also one of the first to endeavour to machine a clear sapphire crystal into a structural watch case.

The brand sensibility is consistent whether the brief originates in a tennis court, a dive bell or a couture atelier, but sport gave the brand its most recognisable chapter, with the RM 006 Tourbillon Felipe Massa opening the doors. This was the first RM model to bear the name of a brand partner, and capable of resisting the G-forces of F1 racetrack conditions. Brand ambassadors, partners in RM speak, is not a new concept, but for Richard Mille the wrists of F1 drivers and top athletes became de facto product test benches. The RM 027, developed for Nadal became a definitive statement of that collaboration: a tourbillon that withstood the centrifugal loading of a world-class serve, with an otherworldy case featuring a Carbon TPT unibody baseplate and watch case. This supported grade 5 titanium bridgework, framed by a bezel and case back machined from organic layers of Quartz TPT® and Carbon TPT®, entirely outside the vocabulary of traditional haute horlogerie. The engineering required to achieve it was akin to motorsport component development, but in miniature.

The RM 025 series was the first big lateral move of the brand, adopting a new, DNA-proofed visual language that offers a more circular take on Mille’s vision. Tough dive watches, still sometimes featuring precious metal, and extending Mille’s design philosophy into a deep blue-green world where pressure and darkness replace the heat and vibration of a tennis rally. We all know that most collectors will not take a supercar-priced wristwatch with them cave diving in Mexico, but with a case built to withstand operational conditions at hundreds of meters below the surface, it might still inspire you.

Richard Mille is to many defined by its connection to sport and motor racing, but the surprising chic of the Bonbon collection was a deliberately bright, unashamedly decorative counterpoint. Appealing to both a female and male audience, it offered something fresh, eschewing the idea that technical seriousness required an industrial, often monochrome vibe. In addition to the Bonbon collection, Richard Mille has a strong history of gem-set complexities like the RM 19-02 Tourbillon Fleur, a creation that underlines a solid following within the world of high jewellery and fashion. In this environ, Richard Mille doesn’t compete with other watches, but with couture and gemstones, the creations like the RM 19-02 and the fresh Bonbon pieces function as both product and manifesto for the brand, the latter also unashamedly fun.

At twenty-five, the brand has no 20th-century historical archive to mine or heritage complication to reissue, as Richard Mille and his team look ever forward.

Which makes the latest lithe, manual wind RM 55-01 a fitting place to close. Worn by athletes, including the multi-hyphenate cyclist Mathieu van der Poel, the latest of a long line of partners that’ll put Richard Mille’s wristwear to the toughest of tests. The superlight watch is monochrome and skeletal, the grey version featuring pops of pink, and sits at the intersection of sport, material innovation and open-worked spectacle that has always characterised Richard Mille’s ethos. It is technical, specific, it is recognisable from fifty metres, and takes itself only as seriously as the moment demands. Twenty-five years in, that remains the sharpest summary of the proposition of a watch brand set apart.

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For Sarabande Foundation alumni Martina Kocianova, jewellery is an extension of her passions, and luckily mushroom foraging lends itself well to offbeat and eclectic jewellery pieces.

Kocianova, who grew up in Slovakia, spent her childhood mushroom foraging with her mother. Upon moving to London, she studied at Central Saint Martins before getting into the Sarabande artists programme, which offered her a studio and a raft of new opportunities. ‘I could properly focus on developing my skills and craft and I got much better at stone setting and carving,’ Kocianova says. ‘I built my first commercially successful collection - the peak, though, was Sarah Burton buying a bunch of my jewellery pieces.’

Considering her new collection, it felt natural for Kocianova to draw on her culture and background, epitomised by the mushroom. ‘When I was at Central Saint Martins, I was really trying to find my voice as a designer, and I realised mushrooms are very specific to my experience. They also really connect to being Eastern European, because it’s something so many families do there – it’s part of how you grow up.

‘Once I started researching mushrooms more, I got quite obsessed with how mycelium connects nature together. I started experimenting with mycelium and thinking about mushrooms not just visually, but also conceptually.’

Kocianova’s mushrooms are crafted in gold and set with materials including emerald, jade, red jasper and rainbow moonstone. Each piece corresponds to a star sign, another of her interests. Each is customisable based on Sun, Moon, and Rising, with each mushroom shaped and set using the corresponding stones.

‘As my jewellery resonated with people, I realised mushrooms are actually perfect talismans,’ she adds. ‘They naturally carry ideas of luck, magic and transformation. It just became the symbol of my work. Now people come to me specifically for mushrooms, sometimes even asking me to carve them from their own crystals, which makes it really personal. My aim is quite simple - I just want to be the one people think of when they want a mushroom heirloom. And I’m always trying to find more of those mushroom people.’

martinakocianova.com

Zenith’s new Chronomaster Revival A384 Tropical is aptly named: it comes with an El Primero 400 calibre true to the watch design’s 1969 origins. But the most striking thing about the A384 is its dial: a distinctive, washed-out shade of brown, a PVD coating having been applied to make it look aged, or ‘tropical’.

That’s an effect more typically found on a vintage watch whose dial has been subject to intense heat and humidity over many years. It’s just one of the many fading effects – along with the likes of a ‘ghost' bezel, in which the numbers have disappeared over time – beloved by many vintage watch collectors and for which they will pay handsomely, if they can find it.

'And it’s very hard to find a tropical dial with a homogeneously even fade,' says Romain Marietta, chief product officer of Zenith, which has a second tropical dial model in the pipeline. 'Of all the tropical dials we’ve had in to sell through our vintage programme, we’ve only seen one like that. Is it pretending that the watch is aged? Sure. But it’s not cheating. It’s the flavour of a watch 50 years old without having to wait for it.'

Indeed, if the idea of treating a new dial to make it look old is not a new one º many watch brands have used a yellow/ivory lume paint, for example, this fading from the original white being another indicator of ageing – Zenith too is not the only brand to push this more distinctive tropical effect. Panerai and Tudor, for example, the latter with the new Monarch, have opted for patinated-effect, sepia-tinged dials, while Movado has tropicalised the dial of its latest Field Watch. Nivada Grenchen, which first explored the idea with its Chronomaster, has applied it to its Super Antarctic model.

A tropical effect only works with a model that has a vintage aesthetic – it looks wrong on models that are too modern, argues Guillaume Laidet, chief brand officer for Nivada Grenchen, which introduced its tropical dials precisely to make the look more affordable relative to ‘the real thing’. 'It’s perhaps akin to the jeans market - some people want to buy new and wear them in over time, and others want to have the character that comes with fading and distressing from the start.'

Since even Nivada’s artificially aged dials have to go through a complex and secretive though imprecise method of chemical washes - 'in a machine something like a dishwasher,' says Laidet - even these offer what the naturally-aged ones do: uniqueness. 'You need a repeatable process to develop these dials but it’s one with a lot of wastage - which makes the resulting watches more expensive - and you still end up with each one being slightly different,' he says.

Indeed, while watches in the vintage market increasingly see faked tropical dials - such is the difference in price, around two to three times, that a tropical dial commands - some might balk at the idea of a new watch similarly being given a vintage effect in this way. Isn’t it a challenge to notions of authenticity?

But David Silver, owner of specialist Rolex dealer The Vintage Watch Company, argues that not only is the effect broadly appealing for its warmth and character, but that it will only further enhance the appeal of genuinely tropical pieces. 'There are many people who are into the effect on vintage watches and less into the price,' he says. 'It’s a certain customer that wants to pay for [an authentic] tropical dial - for its distinction, rarity and colour.'

There’s another reason why brands might be tempted to artificially ‘distress’ a dial for this aged effect. Genuine tropical dials are, Silver reckons, set to become increasingly rare over the longer term. Rolex, for example, will recommend a tropical dial be replaced if a watch is sent to it for servicing: it is, after all, a repairable ‘fault’ that has come about through wear and tear.

'And it’s only a matter of time before such signs of aging in a watch are probably lost,' Silver explains. 'You can be sure that in time a company the likes of Rolex - which hates the faded world, and for which it’s all about preserving or enhancing the functionality of the watch - will engineer out the patination process, by using materials that will better fix the colour. That will take the charm out of the aging process.'

For Venezuelan-born, Texas-based Susana Vega, jewellery design is a continuation of the craft she witnessed in childhood. Growing up, her family’s goldsmith workshop shaped a sensual approach to design, resulting in an appreciation of materials and imperfect forms.

Moving to Houston cemented this feeling, Vega says. ‘After leaving Venezuela, design took on a much deeper meaning for me. It’s not the same to be inspired by the nature and women of your country when you’re no longer there, and when you don’t know when you’ll return. There’s a profound sense of nostalgia behind my collections, an amplified love for the places I knew, and a longing for the ones I didn’t get to experience. Even if my collections don’t explicitly reference Venezuela by name, the feeling is always there.’

It is a philosophy encapsulated in the new collection, Soto, composed of hand-crafted wooden jewellery. ‘I wanted to respect the material by keeping the forms simple, timeless, yet sculptural; creating the feeling of a small, wearable work of art,’ adds Vega. ‘This collection was a huge learning experience. I loved discovering how noble wood is; how it allows itself to be shaped, sanded, and polished, how something so raw can be transformed by hand into something refined and beautiful.’

Handcrafted in Guatemala by artisans, the jewellery celebrates the natural character of the wood, keeping the small variations in grain and form, which ensures no two pieces are alike. Its distinct character encouraged Vega to design in a new way, removing, carving and sculpting the material rather than adding to it, and embracing simpler, more organic forms. ‘Understanding that shift, and designing within the virtues and limitations of the material, was both the challenge and the beauty of the process.’

Throughout, Vega pays special attention to a sense of proportion and the golden ratio, which dictates a harmony in design. She adds: ‘Nothing is accidental; everything you see has been carefully thought through to feel balanced, beautiful, and intriguing.’

susanavegajewelry.com

‘While my jewellery is often considered minimalist in style, this is not my intention when designing,’ says Yuta Ishihara, founder of Tokyo-based jewellery brand, Shihara. ‘My work is guided by an interest in reconstructing and refining essential functions. I find that beautiful designs are not always easy to use, and conversely, designs that are easy to use or familiar are not necessarily beautiful.’

Ishihara is seeking that harmonious balance between form and function which defines his clean and conceptual jewellery design. Encompassing long, fluid lines in 18k gold, platinum and diamonds, Shihara’s jewellery is fuss-free, eschewing fastenings and locks and focusing instead on pure silhouettes.

In the new Node series, Ishihara translates the fastening into a decorative element in its own right, with the wearer invited to choose their own ball chains and fastenings, crafted in gold or with mini Akoya pearls, separately. ‘These elements can be combined in various ways, such as attaching a necklace-length or bracelet-length chain to earring fastenings, or combining multiple fastenings with a single chain,’ Ishihara explains. ‘This approach gives the wearer the freedom to customise how they wear each piece, making the jewellery uniquely their own.’

The jewellery may look precise and sharply-cut, but is all made by hand using specialised tools and machinery, and maintaining identical dimensions is challenging. ‘At the same time, discovering new and inventive ways to reimagine function is something I truly enjoy,’ Ishihara adds. ‘It is especially rewarding to see customers interact with the jewellery and appreciate how Shihara introduces new ways of wearing it.’

Shihara is available at Dover Street Market, London

doverstreetmarket.com

TAG Heuer’s Monaco is one of those instantly recognisable profiles that means even quite bold variations sit behind the basic shape – a glance at distance is enough to identify it even in moody black DLC or white ceramic. And with that ID, TAG Heuer’s motorsport heritage jumps to mind – that movie still of Steve McQueen in striped racing overall in particular. What colour the dial is, or whether it is a chronograph, or what side the crown sits, almost always comes a distant second to that shape.

I’m not sure if the new Monaco Speed 12 (launched to coincide with the Monaco Grand Prix) will quite break that rule, but it’s undoubtedly the most striking variation yet. While the titanium case is standard, it’s what is within that catches the eye. The result of collaboration with one of the most creative forces in contemporary watchmaking, La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, the Speed 12 is automotive emotion in miniature, its Spin Time based TH84-00 movement taking on the guise of a 12-cylinder rotary engine - if you can imagine such a thing.

TAG Heuer has quite a history with out-there movement designs. The only other Monaco to look like something else is the belt-driven V4 concept from the early 2000s, and the Speed 12 sits well with that history, though as a 50 watch limited edition this definitely not a concept watch.

The movement is a motorsport take on Louis Vuitton’s signature movement, with each hour ‘piston’ (finished contrasting sand-blasted and polished treatments) spinning in turn to reveal the hour number as the minute hand hits the 12 o’clock position. The centre of the dial is dominated by the grooved engine block that carries the Monaco and TAG Heuer badges, while the red-tipped minute hand and track recall classic dashboard dials, all very Grand Prix appropriate.

tagheuer.com

London jeweller Lucy Delius is bringing a gothic edge to pearls with a new collection which strings oversized black baroque pearls onto knotted silk. Available at Dover Street Market (DSM), the collection marks a step into the theatrical for Delius, who launched her brand four years ago. ‘I wanted to create a bigger, bolder silhouette than I've typically been able to do in gold,’ she says. ‘Something that felt a bit more playful. The idea of these misshapen, inky molten pearls just really spoke to me. It's been amazing to work with a different material. These still carry the wearability that has become synonymous with my brand.’

The offbeat style is a natural fit for DSM. ‘Lucy’s jewellery works so well because it feels considered but never overcomplicated,’ says the store’s director of jewellery, Mimi Hoppen. ‘There is a balance between instinct and intention that sits very comfortably within the way we approach curation.’

Ultimately, this is jewellery made to be worn. Adds Hoppen: There is a real sensitivity and consideration around how the jewellery sits on the body and works with other pieces, but is still strong enough in its designs to be worn on its own.'

lucydelius.co, doverstreetmarket.com

This article appears in the July 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 4 June in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Claude Monet, as the father of Impressionism, was obsessed with light, believing that it transformed the essence of colour as day progressed into night. He painted the same scenes in the French countryside multiple times a day, capturing their transformation and a century on from his study of how ‘envelopes’ of light and air changed our view of the world, an exhibition touching on his legacy will begin in Paris at L’ École School of Jewelry Arts dedicated to American artist Daniel Brush entitled The Art of Light and Line.

Seventy-five of Brush’s paintings, standalone and wearable sculptures will be presented, some of which have never left his New York studio in a body of work that both contemplates and celebrates the freedom of light and movement that Monet articulated in his own work. The exhibition is curated by Olivia Brush, Daniel’s lifelong muse, partner and collaborator and the writer and historian Vivienne Becker, inviting visitors to experience Brush’s vision in a symphony of materials including pure gold, steel, plastic, resin, ink, diamonds and canvas.

Daniel passed away in 2022 and during his career, he rejected the idea that art should be segmented to make it more understandable, denouncing the hierarchy that polarises fine and decorative art. 'This is not easy work,' says Olivia Brush. 'It is important for people to see and understand that an artist does not need to be bound, branded or categorised.' Key works in the exhibition are Maze, a handheld object paying homage to the Byzantine Mosaics of antiquity, Ménagerie Magnétique a selection of animals realised in Bakelite plastic created to be worn via magnets on clothing and Thinking about Monet, a compilation of hand-engraved steel sculptures created between 2015-2020 where light reflects in a dawn to dust cacophony of pinks, oranges and purples.

'Brush’s work is deeply rooted in the past and traditions yet helps us understand our contemporary world through the prism of perfection and contemplation,' notes Lise Macdonald, President of L’ École. An impressive book accompanies the show written by Olivia Brush and Becker with photographs by Carly Leigh Lapidus of his studio in different seasons, different lights and at different times of the day – as Monet might have appreciated it. Intimate portrayals of the work itself are photographed by Benjamin Chelly.

Established in 2012, L’ École with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels, to expand education around the jewellery arts, yet the relationship between Brush and the brand goes back further to the 1980’s when Philippe Arpels began collecting his paintings. In 2012 before an exhibition Brush had at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, President and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels, Nicolas Bos, visited Brush’s studio and from there, exhibitions in Paris, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo followed. A synergy emerged which celebrated Brush’s singular boundary-pushing talent and which amplifies his voice today. Olivia Brush is philosophical. 'Daniel always felt he was writing visual poems – his mind, his voice, his breathing, his heartbeat. There were never any designs or pre-thinking. Never limitations.'

Daniel Brush – The Art of Light and Line runs from June 8^th – October 4^th, 2026, at L’ École School of Jewelry Arts