When you enter the Van Cleef & Arpels booth, you travel back in time to the Belle Epoque, cradle of the Art Nouveau style, which is making such a big comeback. In fact, it has never left.

GrandSeiko presented their first ever mechanical chronograph - the Tentagraph, the name coming from its features: ten beats per second, three days power reserve, automatic chronograph.

Born in 2012, the Octo had a huge impact on the watchmaking communities over the last decade, becoming synonymous with a profoundly innovative and powerful Italian-style design that enriches Swiss watchmaking art – and with Bulgari’s uncanny ability to renew and reinvigorate its hallmark aesthetic.

I will freely admit it took me a while to warm up to Roger Dubuis watches - for a while I felt they were too far away from “normal” horlogerie. However, as time went by and I got closer to the watches, I started to understand and like the brand, exactly because it keeps veering away from “normal” horlogerie. This year is no exception, from the robot dog prowling around the Roger Dubuis booth, to the sci-fi watches embodying the hyper horology concept invented by the brand.

My love story with Vacheron Constantin started in 2007, when I first became aware of their incredible savoir-faire, fully displayed in the first set of the “Metiers d’Art” series of masks. Ever since, there has been year after year of extraordinarily beautiful and complicated watches – even now I think their Aerostiers series is the most beautiful thing that has ever happened in watchmaking and will never be matched.

My strategy for the past two Watches and Wonders has been to save Rolex until the very last day, so I can enjoy it fully, without hurrying to the next appointment.

Czapek (formerly partner of Patek) is riding the zeitgeist wave, after even taking a break last year from launching new models, because demand was too high and the brand is still struggling to honour the orders by customers in the last years.

The Maison Hermès has fought for and won a well-deserved place at the haute horlogerie table, consistently building an impressive roster of well-built, innovative, quirky, ludic, poetical, fanciful, very Hermès timepieces.

For IWC, this is the year of the Ingenieur, as the supercharged brand pays homage to the Ingenieur SL Jumbo Ref 1832, a legendary antimagnetic watch designed by famed Gerald Genta in 1976. As the brand officials take pains to underline, the new Ingenieur models are not remakes of the 1976 watch, but new timepieces created with a legend in mind.

Montblanc presented its latest round of timepieces at Watches and Wonders 2023, from the new 8000 capsule collection (an homage to the world’s 14 highest peaks), to the limited-edition 1858 Ice Sea Coffret set that comes in a spectacular presentation case.