BaselWorld 2016
The World Largest watch fair
BaselWorld the favorite place on Earth for watches and asparagus lovers. The architecture of the different booths, their events and animations are just unique. The world largest watch fair renamed BaselWorld in 2003 will celebrate 100 years next year.
141,000 square meters, 3 floors, 1,800 exhibitors, 150,000 visitors, kilometers and kilometers to see everyone, what an achievement!! The booths are for most of them an exact replica of the head office/manufacture/house of the brands. Some other focus more on their DNA, Tag suspended a Formula one, Bulgari booth is in a Serpenti shape, Breitling has a mega fish tank full of jelly fish this year, Hublot plays with holograms, while Zenith shows a more retro and masculine attitude. Rolex, Patek, Breguet remains serious as always while Blancpain watch maker was working on a complication showing a couple making love, minute repeater, carillon?? 🙂 Gucci unveils his new image, collateral as well as a new collection made by the newly best designer of the year Alessandro Michele, Hermes is all in wood and plants, sustainable and recyclable, Dior is chic, Swarovski sparkle and Jacob&Co baby doll models wear million dollars jewelry….Everything is possible in Basel, but let’s not forget the real heroes of the show, without them, complication will be a word without meaning: the watch makers!!
Everyone is speaking about the Breitling party while others are dying to be invited to the secret Rolex one. You smoke a cigar at the Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois (the 3 Kings), you drink a nice wine or cognac at the Euler, you get wild at the Bar Rouge….
On the food side it is asparagus season in Basel….Plenty of restaurant for which you need to fight to get a reservation, even though it was calmer this year the best ones remains a challenge to book….Jeffery’s The Thai restaurant just outside of the fair, father and son business, and real Thai food. Roma, few minutes’ walk outside of the fair another keystone during Baselworld. Restaurant Besenstiel, hidden gem in the center of Basel, excellent Mediterranean cuisine. Our waiter was from Portugal and recommended for the wine, a Quinta Do Mouro 2009. Surprising and excellent Portuguese wine produced by Miguel Antonio de Orduna Viegas Louro. Bottle number 94 of a Limited production of 1,850, illustrated by Beat Rosenberg. Matisse restaurant and Bistro, Blindekuh, a crazy experience, eating in the dark, Oliv restaurant, a light Mediterranean cuisine , Tibits the new in, vegan self-service expanding fast, a nice try during the fair.
Forget the Teuflhof and Nooh, over rated this year. Those 2 ones needs to put their kitchen and attention to their clients back together….
Due to logistic/new company policy this year I also experimented to have an early lovely breakfast with Darling at the Swiss Hotel. Believe it or not it is healthy, very calm, and next to the fair. The best place to start your day in great company :).
This year I asked few of my friends to let me know what their favorite watch of the show was.
Sabina Falkner, Bulgari Sales Director Travel Retail and North East: Her choice the Serpenti watch diamonds and turquoise. May be one day Darling ! 🙂 Other interesting choice, and one of the star of the show,The Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater. This is high end watchmaking and as serious as it gets! With this amazing new introduction, this timepiece places Bulgari among the most aesthetically forward looking and the most technically sophisticated watchmaking brands on the market. It is the thinnest Minute Repeater anyone as ever made! The movement thickness is 3.12mm and its titanium case only 6.85 and is also water resistant to 30m.
Rudolf Lang, Chopard Marketing Services, Inc. Managing Director – Caribbean and Latin America. With a case size of 45 mm, it is bold yet sexy. It is great to know that buy wearing this beautiful Chopard does something good in sustainability – it is one of few fairmined gold watches existing in the market, wearing the Poincon de Geneve. It is truly a grand complication, featuring a perpetual calendar, and orbital moon-phase display and a fly back chronograph. Do I have to mention the Hand-guilloche gold dial? Definitely a great collectors piece with a USA retail of 85,000.
Ozzie Clausell, Sales Director for Frederique Constant, the new Perpetual Calendar, Plated Rose Gold, $8,500 retail price, Frederique Constant Manufacture Movement. FC produces 21 in house movement since 2004.
Growing fast, The Brand to Watch.
Fausto Salvi, Managing Director Attila Mexico, distributor of Hublot, Zenith, Graham, Gucci and Bomberg chose 2 watches: Hublot and Berluti and one of the new Zenith…..
Jerome Blanchard, Sales Director Laint America and the Caribbean Gucci Timepieces: first collection from Alessandro Michele, the GG2570, extra large with vintage brown leather strap. Vintage, Bold and Elegant.
Elodie THELLER, Regional Sales Director, LVMH Watch & Jewelry Caribbean & Latin America, her choice, the new TAG Heuer CARRERA Heuer-02T, COSC-certified automatic chronograph with Tourbillon. Just six months after the release of the TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer-01, the backbone of a new collection of contemporary manufacture chronographs, comes the TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer-02T, a COSC-certified automatic chronograph combined with a titanium and carbon flying tourbillon. Flying again….