Are ‘jump hour’ watches the most enjoyable trend to come out of Watches and Wonders?

The most enjoyable development at the recent Watches and Wonders 2025 in Geneva, to my eyes at least, has been the mini-boom in ‘jump hour’ watches (where the hours and, sometimes, minutes, are shown as numbers that ‘jump’ into place). Presaged, as it turns out, by Louis Vuitton’s Tambour Convergence shown in January 2025, there are watches from Bremont, Cartier, Gerald Charles, Hautlence, Sven Andersen and others that feature what is a curious watch sub-species.

The form first turned up in the wave of wristwatches that appeared in the 1920s as montres à guichets (window watches) – offering both protection for the dial (before crystal replaced glass) and the perfect canvas for that art deco concern with shape and surface – but never quite took off, partly for reasons of reliability (the discs that carry the numbers being far heavier than hands) and partly, I suspect, because it offered less scope for makers to distinguish their watches from others.

Nevertheless, it’s the jump hour is a form that pops up at regular intervals – Alessandro Michele’s first watch collection for Gucci included the nicely period Grip watch (in 2019), a cushion-shaped window watch that the brand claimed to be a product of surf culture.

Leading the way at Geneva’s Watches and Wonders show is Cartier’s new Tank à Guichet, a design that also cleaves closely to the 1920s template, though beautifully finessed in terms of surface texture and colour (and, in one of the four executions, the off-setting of the time windows). Bolder and likely more polarising, Bremont’s round case Terra Nova Jumping Hour was as unexpected at Gucci’s design, but has a kind of logic to it and should look quite striking once the bronze alloy case develops a patina.

Gerald Charles’ version follows the more usual pattern of keeping the minutes indicated by hand on a conventional, fully designed dial. It’s an approach that lends itself to more fully realised designs, whether it’s Gerald Charles’ balance of lapis lazuli and guillochage type treatment on the outer band or Svend Andersen’s ultra-restrained mother-of-pearl.

Jump hours have long featured in more complex watches, whether designers are looking to highlight the hour, as in Hautlence’s new HLXX, or just be a little more creative, as with Harry Winston’s 2002 Opus 3.

With a focus now, in the new jump hour watches, on a clean minimalism that invites the complication to take centre stage, a century-old design is given a welcome contemporary spin.

See more new watches shown at Watches and Wonders 2025