Editor’s Picks: Our Favorite Watches of SIHH 2019

If we each had to choose one watch to own from SIHH 2019, this is what we’d end up with — and it was no easy choice.

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Published January 29, 2019

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Updated June 1, 2021

This year’s SIHH brought the heat — we saw incredibly complicated watches from the likes of Lange & Söhne, Vacheron Constantin and others, as well as rough-and-ready tool watches from IWC and Montblanc, to name just a few. Not surprisingly, then, it was pretty tough for our editors to pick out their favorite timepieces of the show, but if we had to narrow it down, the following is what each of us would choose for his wrist.

Until next year’s SIHH then, watch fans.

Laurent Ferrier Galet Annual Calendar Montre Ecole Blue Dial

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A stunningly beautiful take on the annual calendar complication in almost any configuration, the new blue dial version of the Galet Annual Calendar Montre Ecole is particularly striking, especially in steel (though if someone were to offer me a red gold version, I would gladly accept). While more complicated pieces certainly debuted at SIHH whose engineering was admittedly more impressive, sometimes a refined version of something familiar strikes the deepest chord. — Oren Hartov, Assistant Editor

More Info: Here

Hermes Arceau L’heure de la Lune

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SIHH is a serious watch show for serious watch people, but I think my favorite timepiece on display there was Hermes’ delightfully offbeat new take on the moon phase complication, the limited-edition Arceau L’heure de la lune. In place of a traditional moon phase that spins quietly at 6 o’clock, this watch inverts things and turns the hour and minute and date indicators to roving satellites. They spin slowly over the course of 59 days over the stationary moons on the dial, showing what the moon looks like from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The €23,000 you’ll have to spend to get that close to one of these things? Worth every penny. — Justin Fenner, Senior Associate Editor

More Info: Here

Vacheron Constantin Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar

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It’s hard to get viscerally excited about something that costs $200,000 and that I will never hold (or see) again in my life, but Vacheron Constantin actually did something surprisingly novel for SIHH: they solved a problem. Sure, the problem is one that people without problems have, but the idea of a perpetual calendar that can sit on a table (or behind several thick layers of steel) for over two months and not need to be reset is actually incredibly cool. Never-mind that this whole thing is housed in an impossibly thin movement and that the watch itself is weirdly wearable compared to its haute horlogerie peers. Beauty, brains and a little bit of finesse make for SIHH’s best by a mile. — Henry Philipps, Deputy Photo Editor

More Info: Here