The Trends That Dominated at Watches and Wonders, From Perpetual Calendars to Stone Dials

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Inside the carpeted confines of the Palexpo convention center in Geneva—home to the annual Watches and Wonders fair, which this year ran April 1-7—the anxieties and distractions of the wider world often feel muted, occasionally even nonexistent. The event operates in its own deluxe bubble of well-dressed watchmaking professionals drinking espresso and Champagne while admiring the world’s finest, most expensive timepieces.

This year, however, the cocoon-like feeling that Watches and Wonders so often bestows on attendees was disrupted on day three of the fair, when news of the Trump administration’s new tariff regime made the rounds, leading to confusion and apprehension about how the 31 percent tariff on some Swiss goods would affect an industry already reeling from declining sales worldwide.

And yet, there was no shortage of exuberance—over attention-grabbing product introductions, such as Cartier’s Tank à Guichets model, the talk of the fair, and industry-changing developments, such as Rolex’s new Dynapulse escapement, a key feature of its debut Land-Dweller collection.

Below, we highlight the themes, colors, and complications that ruled the 2025 edition of Watches and Wonders. Never a dull moment!

The Theme: Precision 

The show got underway with a bang: For the first time in 13 years, Rolex unveiled a brand new watch, the Oyster Perpetual Land-Dweller. Even though news of the model had leaked more than two weeks before the fair opened, the collection’s official introduction was greeted with awe and widespread acclaim. Most of the fanfare was less focused on the styling of the piece, which boasts a slim, integrated bracelet design, than on the revolutionary mechanics housed within.

Equipped with Calibre 7135, a state-of-the-art 5 Hz frequency movement incorporating Rolex’s proprietary new Dynapulse escapement—a sequential distribution escapement made from anti-magnetic silicon—the Land-Dweller is being positioned as a next generation watch. According to Rolex, it’s more robust, more efficient and—here’s the key—more deserving of trust than anything else on the market, which some might read as a swipe at Omega. (The Swatch Group-owned brand equips its watches with co-axial escapements, making it the only other brand, besides Rolex, that produces chronometers at an industrialized scale.)

“I don’t see any brand capable of competing” with Rolex and Omega, industry analyst Oliver Müller tells Robb Report. “That’s why, when some artisan watchmaker says, ‘I do real chronometry, what those guys do is industrial,’ I say, ‘What these guys do is the real magic because they do it every day and in the tens of thousands, over and over again.”

The Complication: Perpetual Calendar

Last year’s Watches and Wonders saw the debut of scores of tourbillons, impressive and showy models that seemed to reflect the optimism of the later pandemic years when they were conceived. This year, the prestigious but far more restrained perpetual calendar was the complication of choice.

We saw the feature in combination with minute repeaters, as in A. Lange & Söhne’s handsome Minute Repeater Perpetual, a platinum edition limited to just 50 pieces (and priced at 715,000 euros, about $782,357). We saw it clad in 21st century materials, such as IWC Pilot’s Watch Performance Chronograph Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month, a contemporary-looking watch fashioned from the brand’s proprietary black Ceratanium. And we saw it in minimalist designs, exemplified by Parmigiani Fleurier’s pastel-hued Toric Quantieme Perpetuel, a 42.5 mm model boasting a solid platinum or rose gold dial featuring an elegant coaxial display, and not much else.

The Color Scheme: Red and Blue
Color was a general theme of the show, but two hues stood out: racing red and aquatic blue, with pastel shades of green (“pistachio” in Rolex-speak) a distant third. Chalk up the prevalence of red watches to Formula 1 fever—at TAG Heuer, especially. The brand introduced at least three models with bright red details: a Formula 1 Solargraph in a fire-engine red case with matching rubber strap, a Carrera Day-Date with a smoky red opaline dial, and a Monaco Split-Seconds Chronograph F1 encased in white ceramic, its red-tinted translucent dial offering a ghostly glimpse of the movement.

Plenty of other brands, including Oris, Tudor, Rolex, and Hermès, chose red dials and/or straps for select models, infusing the market with quite the crimson tide, more impressive than anything in recent memory. Blue, on the other hand, appeared in a host of nuanced shades that stood out for their variety. For the dial of its aforementioned Toric perpetual calendar, Parmigiani Fleurier chose a pastel shade dubbed “Morning Blue.” Practically the entire Chanel booth was an ode to blue—specifically, the denim-colored hue of its new J12 Bleu. Chopard highlighted a “Shades of Ice” blue hue for the face of its Alpine Eagle 41 XP CS in platinum and a frosted aqua blue for its L.U.C Quattro Mark IV timepiece, also encased in platinum. The most impressive commitment to blue, however, came from Zenith, whose 160th anniversary collection included a number of fetching blue-on-blue pieces in an electric shade unlike anything else at the show.

The Metal: Rose Gold

For every yellow gold watch unveiled at Watches and Wonders, there were at least five watches encased in its rosier, more vintage-looking cousin. Pink-, rose-, and red-toned alloys of gold are undoubtedly having a moment. We saw the trend emerge last year, when many watchmakers eschewed steel for more precious (and pricier) casing. And based on the novelties introduced in early April, the vogue for rose shows no signs of slowing.

From A. Lange & Söhne’s two big releases in its warm proprietary Honeygold alloy, the Odysseus and the 1815, to the new Reverso Tribute Monoface Small Seconds by Jaeger-LeCoultre, which comes on a rose gold Milanese bracelet (and racked up almost as many likes as the Cartier Tank à Guichets), the ubiquity of rose gold at the show came as something of a surprise in light of the metal’s skyrocketing price (generally speaking, north of $3,000 per ounce). Then again, high prices, and what they say about enduring value, may be the point. 

The Dial Material: Hard Stone

If you thought 2024 was a year of hard stone dials, 2025 promises more where that came from. The ubiquity of gemstone dials at this year’s Geneva watch week—and not just the obvious materials, like malachite, but also more obscure offerings such as jade and pink opal—was impossible to ignore, and begged the question: How did every brand get the memo?

The day before the show opened, H. Moser & Cie. dropped its Pop collection of timepieces bearing dials made from surprising hard stones such as lemon chrysophrase and pink opal. Two highlights from Piaget included a trapezoid-shaped watch bearing a turquoise dial in an unadorned gold case, from its new Sixtie collection, and the lapis-dialed Andy Warhol piece the brand presented in a case framed by baguette-cut blue sapphires. Turquoise also featured prominently at Rolex, which used the gem to add flair to its latest edition of the Daytona. The most unexpected gem-set edition came, once again, by way of Zenith, whose elegant new G.F.J. Calibre 135 model features a three-part blue dial centered on a disc of lapis lazuli.

Around Watches and Wonders, as well as at all the satellite events, the prevalence of timepieces with faces of stone was a reminder that 1970s style is the aesthetic du jour, du mois and de l’année. Ouais!

Credit: robbreport.com