Dispatch: Watching The Watch World Reset
A week in Switzerland in search of substance; 5 half-baked thoughts on the watches (Pt. 2)
In Switzerland, the mood is mixed: plenty of beautiful watches, but also a sense that the industry is figuring out what’s next. After one week on the ground, here’s one more dispatch from Geneva:
A peek inside Franc Vila’s studio (along with a few bottles of wine).
Updates from Berneron, Xhevdet Rexhepi, and the first woman to join AHCI.
Five more half-baked takes on new releases from Cartier, IWC, Zenith, and Bremont.
The booths are still big, champagne flows, and there’s no shortage of new watches under glass. But beneath the surface, the mood in Geneva was part celebration, part recalibration. Everyone’s smiling, but wondering: what’s next?
The Unpolished archive is online and the best way to explore old newsletters. If you missed it, here’s all Watches and Wonders coverage:
Early in the evening on my last day in Geneva, I somehow stumbled into watchmaker Franc Vila’s studio after a couple glasses of Swiss white wine around town. The studio is on the top floor of a nondescript apartment building, with a ladder that goes out to a roof you’re not supposed to go up to.
Franc is a Spanish watchmaker who’s been making watches for 20-plus years. In 2006, he founded his eponymous brand, which made watches that look like they’re from 20 years ago—as if Franck Muller or Roger Dubuis went to Burning Man for a weekend.
Half-drunk bottles of wine sat next to prototypes and random watches from Franc’s collection—vintage Rolex, Vacheron, and Jaeger-LeCoultre. One wealthy collector who’d flown in that day sat passed out in the corner, some combination of wine drunk and jet-lagged.
A few years ago, Franc founded his second brand, FVF Geneve (for “Franc Vila Founder”) after being booted from his first brand. FVF is gearing up to roll out its second watch, the FVF Time-Day with a retrograde day indicator. The innovative technical bit is its “Unibody” construction—the movement plate also acts as the midcase, made of a single block that’s laser cut and then hand-finished. It’s a crazy mashup of tech and craft, unlike anything else.
Sipping wine and talking watches with Franc and a few collectors was a refreshing end to the week.
This is watchmaking, I thought.
‘They’re literally playing Monopoly over there’
It felt a long way from Watches and Wonders, where bright lights and beige walls barely papered over a slow year. Where I was told an average booth costs ~$5 million. Officially, visitors were up 12 percent compared to last year, though the mood was down. Unlike last year, the muted mood aligned with market reality. I heard various sour notes:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Unpolished Watches to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.