Sandra‘s Closet

A Return to Time: Notes from Watches and Wonders Geneva

There are few places where time feels as tangible as at Watches and Wonders Geneva. For one day, everything revolves around it, interpreted through craftsmanship, design, and an almost obsessive attention to detail.

This year, the fair revealed more than technical innovation. It signaled a shift in mood, subtle, but unmistakable.

Patek Philippe New Models 2026

BVLGARI celebrates old-school glamour with its newest Serpenti watches.

There is a clear return to old-school glamour and with it, a strong retro influence. Not nostalgia in its simplest form, but a deliberate reinterpretation of the past. Vintage codes are everywhere: softened silhouettes, intricate bracelets, and, most notably, the reappearance of the secret watch.

These pieces conceal their dials beneath decorative covers, blurring the line between jewelry and timekeeping. They are intimate, almost private objects, designed to be discovered rather than displayed. It is a language that echoes the elegance of earlier decades, yet feels entirely contemporary in its execution.

At the same time, craftsmanship is moving back to the center of the conversation. Not just as a technical necessity, but as a form of artistic expression. The level of detail, the patience, and the human touch behind these pieces feels more important than ever.

One example that stayed with me came from CHANEL. A chess set, already sold and therefore no longer on display in its final form, was presented through prototypes. Each figure was meticulously crafted, with the Gabrielle Chanel silhouette wearing a tweed jacket, entirely set with diamonds, that emphasized the effect of the material. It was less an object and more a demonstration of what true craftsmanship can achieve: intricate, precise, and deeply intentional.

Audemars Piguet Etablisseurs Galets

At the same time, a structural shift within the industry is becoming increasingly visible. The market is stretching apart.

Van Cleef & Arpels is expanding its Jour Nuit collection with a new timepiece in honor of the Moon. Within the Midnight case, the watch features two overlapping complications: the first one animates the Jour/Nuit display, while the second one illustrates the actual Moon phase. 

BVLGARI

On one end, brands are leaning heavily into haute horlogerie, producing exceptional, highly complicated, and often extremely limited pieces. These watches are not simply products; they are statements of craftsmanship, created for collectors who value rarity as much as technical mastery. Prices reflect this shift, reaching levels that position these timepieces firmly within the realm of art and investment.

Celebrating 100 years of the Rolex Oyster with this beautiful and affordable Rolex Oyster Perpetual 36 «Jubilee Edition».

On the other end, the more accessible segment remains present, but quieter, almost overshadowed by the spectacle of high-end innovation. The middle ground is thinning, and the contrast between the two extremes is becoming more pronounced.

A Testament to Métiers d’Art: Van Cleef & Arpels, with its latest Perlée Extraordinaire Fruits Enchantés collection, is capturing the ruby-red intensity of perfectly ripened raspberries.

Yet within this high-end focus, creativity is flourishing. Freed from the need to appeal to a broad audience, brands are allowing themselves to be more expressive, more daring, and more niche. Watchmaking, in this sense, is becoming increasingly cultural. These are no longer just instruments or even luxury goods, they are narratives, identities, and statements.

Collectors today are not simply buying watches; they are engaging with meaning.

Walking through the fair, it quickly becomes clear that the experience goes far beyond the watches themselves. Some booths are consistently extraordinary, fully immersive environments that tell their own story. Officine Panerai, known for its diving heritage, brought that world to life with a stand that felt like stepping into the depths.

Van Cleef & Arpels created something entirely different, a poetic garden, complete with a swing, where time seemed to slow down.

And Audemars Piguet offered a more introspective atmosphere, with a library-like setting that invited you to pause, reflect, and look closer.

I leaned into the spirit of the fair with a Moschino look, complete with a watch-shaped bag and a hat featuring a clock detail. A subtle nod to the theme of time, and one that, quite unexpectedly, drew a lot of attention throughout the day. I was frequently stopped, photographed, and even interviewed, an unusual but fitting part of the experience.

Yves Piaget with me (click here for a previous post from 2012).

Amidst all of this, it is often the quieter, more personal moments that stay the longest. Seeing Yves Piaget again was one of them. Having been for many years an ambassador for Piaget, it made the encounter feel all the more meaningful.

Relaunch of the Piaget cocktail ring collection, for which I hosted an private garden party in my house in 2013.

There was something genuinely special in being recognized, in that brief moment of familiarity within such a fast-moving environment. A small exchange, a shared memory, and somehow, it stays. I still have the Piaget rose.

Ulysse Nardin

And perhaps that is what defines the fair as much as the watches themselves. It is not just an industry event, it is a cultural moment, where craftsmanship meets storytelling, and where timepieces become part of a larger narrative.

I predict a huge success for the BVLGARI Octo Finissimo Watch in satin-polished 18 kt yellow gold case.

What remains after a full day is not simply a memory of products, but a clear impression:

The future of watchmaking may well lie in its past.

In craftsmanship over scale.
In rarity over ubiquity.
In intimacy over display.

And in the enduring desire to make time feel, once again, timeless.

Trying on Cartier‘s latest Bagnoire collection, that I am completely obsessed about.

Some of the most remarkable pieces deserve a closer look, and I’ll be returning to a few of them in more detail over the coming weeks.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Sandra Bauknecht
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The reason for my trip to Milan this week was the opening of “O’Clock – time design, design time” with Officine Panerai as the main partner. The exhibition is curated by Silvana Annicchiarico and Jan van Rossem, with a special exhibition design by Patricia Urquiola that analyses the relationship between the concept of time and design, on display at Milan Triennale from 11th October 2011 to 8th January 2012.

The works on show describe the way in which  some 80 international designers and artists have interpreted or represented one of the fundamental themes of our culture, that of time.

Patricia Urquiola has also created for Officine Panerai the installation “I mondi di Officine Panerai” (The worlds of Officine Panerai), presented here for the first time, in which eight watch models recount, as protagonists, the design of Panerai. The installation, positioned at the end of the exhibition, is open from 11th to 23rd October and consists of eight models in as many display cases, in which the watches are presented in a setting that skilfully blends humour and poetry and create the effect of a time tunnel which appears to possess a soul, that of time.

If the link between the concept of time and a brand of high-end timepieces is obvious and immediate, the same can be said of the connection between Panerai and the world of design. The Radiomir and Luminor, created in the 1930s and 1940s for the Italian Navy frogmen commandos, have become icons of fine watch-making since their launch in the 1990s.

Damien Hirst, Beautiful Sunflower Panerai Painting

On the occasion of the exhibition the famous British artist Damien Hirst is premiering two works, made using the spin painting technique and using dials from Panerai watches and household gloss on canvas: Beautiful Sunflower Panerai Painting and Beautiful Fractional Sunflower Panerai Painting.

“I love Panerai”, declared the British artist. “The watches are timeless and I made this spin painting using black Panerai watch faces without hands in the pattern of the seeds in the head of a sunflower – I hope the painting makes you think, we are here for a good time, not a long time.”

Damien Hirst, Beautiful Fractional Sunflower Panerai Painting
© 2011 Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved DACS, 
Photos: by Prudence Cuming Associates

By the way, Damien Hirst has included Panerai watches on several occasions in the past in his works: a Panerai watch is painted on a table next to medicines and a skull in “Skull with Watch” from 2005 and is physically present in the installations “The Tranquility of Solitude (for George Dyer)” (2006), and “Killing Time” (2008).

Gomitolo Clock
Carlo e Benedetta Tamborini
Diamantini & Domeniconi, 2008
courtesy Diamantini & Domeniconi

A cotton-knit cover; almost as if to suggest a subtle link between the technique of measuring time and the art of weaving.

One of my favourite art works is the following, created with different pieces of furniture:

The bug – Time Machine
Patricia Urquiola
site-specific, 2011

Time has always been an obsession for humanity in that it is the least controllable and modifiable element. The strongest limit to be overcome and on which technology and progress can intervene least of all. Dealing with our being limited, with a deadline, which we can try to extend, but not avoid. Dealing with eternity and the impossibility of experiencing it. The curiosity of being able to foresee or read the future, the primary search of every civilization, which perpetuates itself in continuous unlikely and unfound attempts, based on foundations comparable to beliefs. Power linked to a supposed control of time, by means of forecasts, surveys, readings, premonitions, the study of cycles, the creation of systems, genetic analysis, preventative tests, séances, oracles, reading of cards, bones, animal guts, the hand, the stars. To be able to make money on the stock market, to know society’s moods, the opinions of the decision-makers, to create consensus, prevent, anticipate, control. The final solution? Invent a time machine just like the train, the car, the airplane and the spaceship were invented.
Further and further away, faster and faster, in less time, but always and only in the present and space.
The bug is a worm, an insect, something unforeseen, an error, an act of nature or something artificial, like a metaphor for the impossibilty of total control of time.

Patricia Urquiola

Patricia Urquiola in front of her time machine

Patricia Urquiola with me

Poster Plants
Oscar Diaz
2011
courtesy Oscar Diaz

A piece of white paper with a paper tree with branches and a vase filled with green paint. The special material used to make the poster causes the green paint to be absorbed at regular intervals by the branches, so that the plant can „grow“ in the space of a few months.

Domino
Albin Karlsson
2005
courtesy Albin Karlsson

Dominoes arranged into the symbol of infinity fall one after the other in a chain reaction, to then rise again as if controlled by an invisible hand, ad infinitum.

Clock
Christiaan Postma
2008 
courtesy Christiaan Postma

At 3:00 on the clock’s right side, the word THREE will appear, fading out as time passes; then, at about 3:30, the word FOUR will slowly begin to emerge.

Eternity
Alicia Eggert, Mike Fleming
2010
courtesy Alicia Eggert & Mike Fleming

30 clocks and 36 black hands for the hours and the minutes move so as to form the word Eternity every 12 hours and only for a few secons on a white acrylic panel.

Givenchy
Riccardo Tisci
2011
courtesy of Sandra Bauknecht

This one was a little joke…got you? But sometimes clothes are pieces of art.
My look for the exhibition opening: Black and white dress and ruffled jacket with zipper detail by Givenchy, suede pumps by Yves Saint Laurent, stay-ups “Bonny Dots” by Wolford and cocktail ring by Dior Haute Joaillerie.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but must be lived forwards” – Sören Kierkegaard

LoL, Sandra

Suryia Hill to the right with me, Photos: © Sandra Bauknecht