Last week saw Dubai Watch Week, an event that is becoming increasingly important to the watchmaking world.
For years now, so many watch lovers, collectors and industry experts have been coming to the heart of the Arab Emirates to share their passions, knowledge and experiences. Seminars, workshops and conferences offer an unparalleled opportunity to interact with watchmakers, designers and brand representatives, opening the door to in-depth discussions on watch engineering, materials and the latest innovations in the industry.
Dubai Watch Week is also an opportunity to celebrate the rich history of watches by showcasing rare and historic pieces from world-renowned private collections and museums.
In addition to this, in this setting, the maisons present their novelties, and this year there were so many and very interesting ones. We have collected some of them.
H. Moser & Cie. - Streamliner Small Seconds Blue Enamel
As every time, one cannot fail to mention Moser has returned to impress with the Streamliner Small Seconds Blue Enamel with a 39mm case.
In this case the classic smoky dial of the Streamliner has been replaced with enamel work.
This is achieved by starting with a gold base with a hammered surface, on which three different color pigments are washed, finely ground, then applied one by one to create an ombré effect and fired twelve times to achieve the characteristic smoky finish.
In addition to the fantastic workmanship of the dial, the other major innovation lies in the new caliber adopted.
Previously this collection consisted only of models with 42.5mm or 40mm cases, to make the size decrease even further a new smaller one was needed, hence the need to add a platinum micro-rotor thus realizing the new caliber HMC 500, the movement is the smallest of the Maison entirely produced in-house.
As H. Moser's CEO Edouard Meylan explained, "We spent a lot of time optimizing the dimensions and that's why we decided to integrate a micro-rotor for the first time in our history."
The result is truly excellent and marks another step forward both for the Streamliner collection, which is becoming increasingly successful, and for Moser, which always manages to innovate and surprise us each time with something new.
MB&F HM11 Architect
If the Streamliner took inspiration from the high-speed train design of the 1920s and 1930s, in this case we must marry a few decades.
Indeed, the HM11 Architect celebrates the architecture of the 1960s , a period when visionary architects, driven by futuristic ideas, redefined the boundaries of design.
The Horological Machine series is where Max Büsser experiments with ever more innovative frontiers in watchmaking, pushing even further than MB&F's "classic" concepts.
As you can well understand from the photo and the brief description I have provided, we are dealing with something that is almost closer to a work of art than a watch. And to understand what a work represents, who better to explain it than the artist himself? So I will directly quote Max's words to you about the concept that guided the making of this magnificent object.
"Around the mid to late 1960s, architecture entered an experimental phase, markedly different from the designs of the previous decade. Postwar buildings were pragmatic, rectilinear forms, hastily erected to achieve a purpose. But then a small but responsive movement began to take hold, one that had a surprisingly humanistic approach, though not in the way architectural scholars would use the term.
He was a humanist in the sense that he modeled space around the shape of the human body, the spherical scope of vision as perceived by the human eye, the radial scope of human limbs moving through the air, the roundness of breath that inflates our lungs and creates ephemeral halos of steam on car windows in winter.
These architects, some of whom eschewed this title and called themselves habitologists, built houses that looked as if they had been exhaled from the earth, or as if the earth had flexed its fingers and forgotten to rewind them completely. They bubbled, they undulated, they arched like an elongated spine. And when Maximilian Büsser, looked at one of these houses, he thought, "What if that house was a clock?"
This watch is a limited edition, with only 25 pieces of each color variant. The sale price is set at €207,000.
De Bethune - DBD Evergreen
Always elegant, yet always innovative: in two words, the essence of De Bethune.
With this novelty, the maison does not seem to betray that description this time either, presenting a complication that belongs to the watchmaking tradition but still manages to keep up with the times if not with a futuristic twist.
This is the third chapter in a story that began in 2006 with the first Digital DBS. Animated by a hand-wound movement, it featured a superimposed digital display with triple in-line calendar, jumping hours, and dragging minutes. right from the start, the maison proposed the calendar display on a single uninterrupted line, while instead there was a moon phase display on the case back.
Then in early 2023 the second chapter of this collection, DBD Season 2, a burgundy-colored limited edition, was unveiled. One of the main changes from the historic Digital DBS is that the model no longer features the moon phase indicator on the case back.
We then arrive at Dubai Watch Week where De Bethune presents the green variant, also in a limited edition of 20 pieces.
It was really difficult to select only three watches to talk about, so much of this event was full of new things.
Let's just say this was just a preview that only heightens the anticipation for what will be the most massive release drop within a watch enthusiast's calendar, namely Watches&Wonders.