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Basel Watch Fair Print E-mail
Page 2 of 2


basel_watch2.jpg
Courtesy MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) LTD.
Size, scale, and detail were to be seen not only on the Krieger watch. The utilitarian handsomeness of the Bell & Ross BR 01 Instrument series of watches comes from a presentation with a hard-headed cool; the timepieces have the stark, easy-to-read elegance of an altimeter, which makes them reflective of the company’s history of making watches for pilots. The epic, rococo manliness of the Bell & Ross watches brings to mind the works of the Italian action maestro Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time on Your Wrist). And like directors at a film festival, Bell & Ross used the watch fair as an occasion for a premiere: a limited edition Instrument, a version in black carbon that’s priced at $131,000 and available for purchase only at this year’s Basel event. The response was, on its own terms, a box-office smash; by the Festival’s halfway point, over 50 of the special Instruments had been purchased with 11 of the sales made to American customers. The dizzying aplomb of the Instrument made it one of the most talked-about pieces at Basel. Its success even outside the walls of the fair has put it on track as a new classic, a timepiece that instantly calls attention to its verve and originality.

A more traditionally designed watch with an idiosyncratic fea- ture on its face is the sleek Bedat & Co 878. Like a number of the more interesting watches at Basel this year, the Bedat 878, in a plat- inum case with a gunmetal gray face, makes a fine argument for integrating what might appear to be style contradictions into a coherently realized whole; the old-school gentility of a cushion-shaped case is married to a woven alligator strap rather than a more conventional material-choice for the bracelet. The strap reduces the period aloofness and makes the watch feel contemporary, rather than a slavish imitation of an earlier era. The attractive culture clash on the 878 has an allure that makes it feel like an all-new amalgam, a post-punk version of art deco. The Bedat is another bracing blend of the new and old, just like the rest of the best at Basel.

Intriguingly, the fact that so many of the timepieces at this year’s BaselWorld watch fair worked so hard to establish standout status is because we now live in an era in which watches are less necessary than ever. From your cell phone to your computer screen to your kid’s Nintendo DS, the correct time is inescapable. This means that selecting a watch is absolutely a proclamation of who you are and what you want your watch to say about you. Your watch selection makes a statement about your individuality the way the house that crafted it expressed itself through its own craftsmanship and handiwork. The understanding of that fact is clear in many of the watch houses—for example, see the return of the back-in-the-day Concord, which abandoned its former emphasis on mid-level chic for a bold sophistication and devotion to high-ticket classy sports, a watch that is the order of the day. Even Concord’s lyrical old logo has been erased—the new script has the relentless, carbon- alloy tech stamp that suggests the readout James Cameron picked for his Terminator cyborgs. This year’s watch fair was a fascinating collection of manufacturers, a field of competitors as far as the eye could see, all dedicated to the same ideal, a melding of luxury and attainability that seemed like a combination of Marxism and capitalism; in other words, welcome to Switzerland.
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