Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève 2024: 57 Luxury Watch Brands Battle for the Aiguille d’Or Prize

The 2024 version of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) noticed 57 luxurious Swiss watch manufacturers go head-to-head at a glittering award ceremony hosted by actress Carole Bouquet on 13 November. 

On the occasion, dubbed the ‘Oscars of watchmaking’, the makers of those distinctive timepieces vied for prizes together with girls’, males’s, calendar and astronomy, jewelry and mechanical clock. 

For the primary time, there was additionally an eco-innovation prize awarded which celebrates developments in sustainability and traceability.

Introducing the ceremony, GPHG president Raymond Loretan reminded the viewers of watchmaking’s status as UNESCO intangible heritage. 

“It is a visionary trade and craft, an infinite quest for magnificence whereas remaining true to centuries-old custom.”

Happening in Geneva’s Théatre du Léman, the ceremony gathered collectively a jury of 30 consultants with historian, creator and journalist Nick Foulkes as president joined by watch collectors, watchmakers, journalists, auctioneers and Ilaria Resta, CEO of Audemars Piguet, final 12 months’s winner of the highest prize, the Aiguille d’Or.

90 watches had been within the operating this 12 months – listed below are all of the profitable timepieces from the twenty fourth spectacular ceremony. 

Winners of the GPHG watchmaking awards

Right here is the complete record of winners of tonight’s dazzling awards ceremony:

Women’: female watches comprising the next indications solely – hours, minutes, seconds, easy date (day of the month), energy reserve, basic moon phases – and which will doubtlessly be adorned with a most 9-carat gemsetting.

WINNER 2024: Van Cleef & Arpels’s Woman Jour Nuit

Van Cleef & Arpels has reinvented the Woman Arpels Jour Nuit watch, launched in 2008, with a diamond-paved moon and stars perpetually pursuing the solar, embellished with guilloché yellow gold.

The jury described this timepiece as a “tiny theatre that adjustments its set like a parade of poetic ambiences.”

Iconic: watches stemming from an emblematic assortment or mannequin that has been exercising a long-lasting affect on watchmaking historical past and the watch marketplace for greater than 20 years or providing a recent reinterpretation.

WINNER 2024: Piaget’s Piaget Polo 79

This watch was chosen as “a timepiece which has marked this historical past of watchmaking” via the traits of “nonconformity and freedom”.

45 years after it was first created – after it got here to outline the spirit of the Nineteen Eighties – it has been relaunched as “one thing that respects the spirit that Piaget wished to offer to this, a chunk of jewelry and a watch on the identical time.” 

Chronograph: mechanical watches comprising at the least one chronograph indication. Extra indications and/or issues are admissible.

WINNER 2024: Massena Lab’s Chronograph Monopoussoir Sylvain Pinaud x Massena Lab

It is a monopusher chronograph, crafted nearly fully by hand within the atelier of Sylvain Pinaud in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland. The jury praised the motion’s built-in chronograph complication, hand-finished by the watchmaker himself and left uncovered on the dial facet.

Jewelry: watches demonstrating distinctive mastery of the artwork of jewelry and gemsetting, and in addition distinguished by the selection of stones.

WINNER 2024: Chopard’s Laguna Excessive-Jewelry Secret Watch

This timepiece “set the jury dreaming of distant shores” because of its “scintillating combine of colors and glow of a pearl.”

Crafting this mesmerising miniature ecosystem concerned over 1,000 hours of effective workmanship, delicately entwining moral gold and titanium.

Sports activities: watches linked to the world of sport, whose capabilities, supplies and design are suited to bodily train.

WINNER 2024: MING’s 37.09 Bluefin

The jury praised the timepiece as an “authentic watch with a minimalist type that celebrates every kind of blue and the spirit of the open sea in a diving watch.” 

“Petite Aiguille”: watches with a retail value between CHF 3,000 and CHF 10,000. Smartwatches are admissible on this class.

WINNER 2024: KUDOKE 3’s Salmon

This watch was highlighted for its unconventional approach of displaying the time. Whereas the minutes are “historically” indicated, the hour indication is positioned on an connected plate and divided into three sections on the extent beneath the higher dial.

The hour is indicated with the assistance of a triple-armed hour hand – every hand with totally different lengths operating between the 2 dials. When one arm of the hand reaches the tip of the hour scale, the following longer or shorter arm seems originally of the following hour scale. Hours 2, 6 and 10 are then proven twice on totally different scales earlier than the present handarm strikes on.

Problem: watches with a retail value equal to or below CHF 3,000. Smartwatches are admissible on this class.

WINNER 2024: Otsuka Lotec’s No.6

The jury awarded the prize as a result of the watch options an “authentic double retrograde show exhibiting the time as would an instrument on an previous dashboard, a effective tribute to the pioneers of steam engines and submarines.”

Quiet Luxurious

Just a few standout themes dominated the nominations – and winners – of this 12 months’s awards. One development gripping the style and the watchmaking trade is ‘quiet luxurious’.

Parmigiani Fleurier was nominated within the girls’, males’s, calendar and astronomy, chronograph, sports activities and, a brand new class for 2024, time solely, which awards a basic timepiece with two or three arms and no issues. 

“It’s the most tough class as a result of it is the best watch and, in design, to be iconic with simplicity, is a really tough train,” Guido Terreni, CEO of Parmigiani Fleurier, advised Euronews earlier than the ceremony. 

Parmigiani Fleurier’s Tonda PF Micro-Rotor No Date watch was nominated on this class. It contains a 40mm metal and platinum case, a hand guilloché dial in a barley grain color and an automated micro-rotor motion.

Terreni believes Parmigiani Fleurier’s success within the nomination is partially resulting from its longstanding status as a luxurious model that has a modest design signature. 

In an period of ‘quiet luxurious’, that is serving to the model, mockingly, to face out: “When you take a look at our nominations all collectively, and you’re feeling the model identification, you’re feeling a brand new language and luxurious that we’re bringing, which is much less ostentatious, deeper, and that is appreciated by collectors and the commerce trade.”

The Swiss watch home led the nomination this 12 months alongside Chopard with six timepieces within the operating every.

“It is one thing actually particular. It’s the primary time in all of the 24 editions that the model will get six nominations. So it is a second of delight,” Terreni mentioned.

Hermès hopeful

Hermès, a model additionally effectively revered for its luxurious items however much less well-known for its watches, is nominated within the girls’, mechanical exception and creative crafts classes.

Laurent Dordet, CEO of Hermès Horloger, says that the model has been making watches since 1978 however started coming into the GPHG Awards in 2011. “When we’ve the possibility to be shortlisted, and generally to win, it’s totally helpful for us as a result of I feel it establishes the long-term notoriety of Hermès as a watchmaker. Hermès is a really well-known model, however very a lot so for different classes. I feel we’ve to show yearly, via our personal product, that we’re stepping as much as extra complicated watches, extra technical watches, extra official watches that set up the status of the model additionally on this class,” he says.

Every of the three nominated timepieces have uniquely Hermès design traits. The wheels within the motion of the Arceau Duc Attelé are impressed by the wheels of the “duc” horse cart from the Hermès emblem together with two horse-shaped hammers on the entrance. The Arceau Refrain Stellarum is impressed by one of many model’s basic scarves that includes a skeleton using a horse.

The Hermès Minimize is an easier design from a brand new line, however Dordet explains that the lower of the bezel on the 4 outer factors of the circle are a refined signature of this watch and the font on the numerals was created particularly for it.

The Hermès Minimize is nominated within the extremely aggressive girls’ class of the awards and Dordet says this is able to be a very particular win. “The primary GPHG we gained was in 2011 with the boys’s watch class for our Time Suspended watch. It was an important signal for us as a result of the Time Suspended is greater than a watch, it’s actually all about Hermès philosophy about suspending time. In order that’s why, 13 years after Time Suspended, we hope to be granted the women’ prize. The class could be sort of future.”

New youngsters on the block

The GPHG Awards don’t simply rejoice the massive names in watchmaking, it’s additionally a chance for brand spanking new and unbiased manufacturers to compete.

Hoping to win the problem class is first-time nominee SpaceOne. Based solely 18 months in the past, the TSpaceOne which has been shortlisted is just from the model’s second assortment. “To be already nominated is sort of an honour and it’s a prize for the work that has been completed by the crew. So, I’m tremendous completely satisfied, and we hope we’ll win this,” says Guillaume Laidet, who cofounded SpaceOne with award-winning watchmaker Theo Auffret.

The problem class is for watches that retail at 3,000 CHF (3,209 EUR) or decrease. Laidet says that the lower cost level is what’s particular about this nomination. “It is the primary time there’s a planetarium at a superb value… Our idea with SpaceOne is to democratize the unbiased complication that usually you can not purchase for lower than EUR 100,000. The complexity was to discover a option to make a complication however for an reasonably priced value.”

Laidet says that they’ve been in a position to retail the Tellerium for two,900 CHF (3,102 EUR) because of growing every part in home fairly than outsourcing to businesses.

Every of the 90 watches nominated on the GPHG this 12 months is a singular piece encapsulating the peak of design, know-how and craftsmanship and every is deserving of a win. However there can solely be one winner for every class. Tune in stay on the Euronews web site on the 13 November to seek out out who takes the crown.