10 watch and jewellery moments that dazzled us in 2025
From unexpected watch collaborations to eclectic materials and offbeat designs, here are the watch and jewellery moments we enjoyed this year
It has been an exciting year for watches and jewellery, defined by both a strong spirit of experimentation and generous collaborations. Here are 10 of our favourite moments from 2025.
Coreen Simpson’s fabulous, jewellery- and art-filled world
Coreen Simpson’s self-made career has been propelled by her fabulousness, curiosity, porous approach, and entrepreneurial ingenuity. In 1976, her photographic debut was based on her insistence that she trusted only herself to take interesting images to pair with articles she was writing for the now-defunct publication called Unique NY.
In the 1980s, Simpson constructed a makeshift studio on Wednesdays at the Roxy – a roller disco/nightclub hybrid in Chelsea, NYC – and set up backdrops and lighting in order to photograph the amazing ensembles sported by clubgoers. As Ethiopian-American artist Awol Erizku writes in ‘The Aesthetics of Defiance’ (his essay about her 'landmark body of work: one that celebrates the hip-hop aesthetic and preserves its essence for posterity'): 'Style is never just style: it’s history, it’s rebellion, and it’s self-definition.' The subjects were impertinent peacocks: 'They weren’t passengers blending into the flow of the city, they were curating a spectacle.'
Marty McFly’s calculator watch
Forty years ago this month, Marty McFly met the DeLorean time machine, and cultural history changed forever. As fans gear up to celebrate Back to the Future Day on 21 October – the date that Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrived in the future (in Part II, having leapt from 26 October 1985 to 21 October 2015) – Casio is marking the anniversary with its own recycling of time, by bringing back the classic calculator watch that McFly wears throughout.
Chanel’s dazzling haute jewellery collection
It’s 1930, and the American film industry, along with the entire economy, is struggling in the reverberations of the stock market crash of 1929. A new mood of escapism and glamour is needed, decides celebrated Hollywood film producer Samuel Goldwyn, who calls the person he believes is the only one who can introduce chic to Hollywood: Gabrielle Chanel. He offers her one million dollars.
Emma Witter's jewelled items
On a rainy day in June, in mid-lock down 2020, the artist Emma Witter was wrestling with romantic heartbreak and wondering how she was going to pay the rent on her Hoxton apartment as the pandemic took hold. A number flashed up on her phone from Gallery Fumi, the Mayfair space founded by Sam Pratt and Valerio Capo, who then visited her and bought a Bone Nest – a wall hanging of intricately arranged chicken feet bones. 'That call was a bright light on a really grey day,' recalls Witter.
Yinka Ilori's collab with M.A.D. Editions
British-Nigerian designer Yinka Ilori has turned his colourful lens to the world of watchmaking for the first time, creating three watches in collaboration with avant-garde watchmaker M.A.D. Editions.
The partnership began when Maximilian Büsser, the founder of M.A.D. Editions (the accessible, parallel brand to the out-of-this-world MB&F) was on the hunt for a future collaborator. While he was on holiday in summer 2023, he flicked through a magazine and landed on a feature on Ilori, and reached out. Six days later, the designer was in Geneva.
A collection from Ara Vartanian and Swizz Beatz
Brazilian jeweller Ara Vartanian first connected with American artist and producer Swizz Beatz on Instagram. Swizz was taken with Vartanian’s distinctive triple finger rings, later getting back in contact in search of emeralds for his wife, the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys. The duo struck up a friendship, which was cemented when the couple wore his jewellery to the Grammys.
Watches rejecting roundness
When Patek Philippe launched its Cubitus two years ago, there were many concerned with its distinctive shape: depending on who you asked, it was too square, or maybe not square enough. 'The entire point of the watch is to have a recognisable case shape,' one Reddit user noted – that, after all, is a key factor in what makes a watch iconic, at least eventually.
Those complainers may wonder why the watch has since become a best-seller anyway, with grey market values topping three times the retail price. Perhaps, in part, it’s because any deviation from the traditional round form – which is said to account for at least 90 per cent of the watch market – stands out, gaining attention as consumers get used to the idea. Cartier’s wonky Crash (featured in Cartier's current V&A exhibition) and Audemars Piguet’s octagonal Royal Oak – designed by Gerald Genta – met similar disaffection at first too. Might, indeed, they be considered the pathfinders, with unusual shapes a key trend for 2025?
Panconesi’s sensuous design objects
Marco Panconesi’s first series of design objects are as deliciously otherworldly as we would hope for, used as we are to the chic sensuality of his jewellery. In nine new pieces, including vases, a wine glass, a lamp, an ashtray, a clock and an incense holder, Panconesi traces the offbeat proportions of his jewels, here translated into functional pieces for the home.
Gabrielle Greiss whimsical animal jewellery
When a fashion collection has good storytelling behind it, it’s usually a successful one,’ says fashion-turned-jewellery designer Gabrielle Greiss (whose allegorical debut jewellery collection we highlighted in 2024). ‘It’s not every season that you find a coherent story, because lots of times you have ideas you like, but you don’t really know what you want them to say. You need time. And then, sometimes, things just fall into place.’
It’s an evolution echoed in Munich-born, Normandy-based Greiss’ own path. After a career in fashion – which saw her working with Martine Sitbon, Sonia Rykiel and Alber Elbaz, followed by an eight-year tenure at Chloé – Greiss took a pause, considering a change in direction. ‘When I stopped working at Chloé, I wanted to take some time for myself,’ she says. ‘I was doing a lot of afternoon classes at Beaux-Arts de Paris, and sculpting was something that felt easier for me than painting or drawing. I started to do animals – although, I’m not an animal person. I do have a cat now, but I didn’t choose her. She just moved in, so you observe.’
Marc Newson and Ressence’s watch collaboration
Marc Newson had been aware of Ressence, the Belgian watch brand founded in 2010 by industrial designer Benoît Mintiens, since its early days. ‘It’s not easy in the watch world to create something truly new and innovative – but Benoît did,’ says Newson. ‘For me, his very first watch was reminiscent of some of the work that I’d been doing at Ikepod [the watch brand Newson co-founded in 1994], and it was very welcome. I was really happy to see what he’d done – it felt like a lovely evolution.’
