LVMH Watch Week: Highlights from Bvlgari, Hublot, TAG Heuer and Zenith

LVMH Watch Week at a glance: a few breakthrough pieces, exciting revivals, and united in green.

All eyes were on Miami this week as the fifth edition of LVMH Watch Week kicked off, a spectacular showcase of the innovations and wizardry from the watchmaking brands under the group, which include Bvlgari, Hublot, TAG Heuer and Zenith. If this is a taste of what the rest of the horological season is like, consider our appetites whet.

Bvlgari

A quest to capture timelessness perpetuates at Bvlgari – and what is more Bvlgari, than the Bvlgari Bvlgari watch? The emblematic timepiece was born in 1975, envisioned by Gianni Bulgari and taking its form from a sketch by Gerald Genta. The original watch was engraved Bvlgari Roma and came with an innovative digital display, and was made not for commercial purposes, but as a gift for the maison’s top clients. The watch experienced a renaissance in 2019, when the brand revived and refined the watch and paired it with a modern metal bracelet.

The new versions today are classic to the core, forged in yellow gold with a black dial or in rose gold with a silver opaline dial and expressed in two case sizes: a dainty 26mm or a more gender-neutral 38mm. In the 38mm version, the back is transparent so wearers can gaze into the self-winding mechanical BVL 191 calibre. The 26mm version runs on a quartz movement. And rather than metal bracelets this time, the watches are paired with alligator straps, black for the black dial versions, a brown strap for the 38mm opaline dial version and a warm beige for the 26mm opaline dial version.

While there’s nothing technically new about the Octo Finissimo launched at LVMH Watch Week – what’s exciting for us is the release of a rare steel version with a salmon dial, and beautifully named the Tuscan Copper. The Octo Finissimo’s achievements don’t need to be repeated here again but if you’re really curious you can read all about it here.

And in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Lvcea, Bvlgari has launched a new range with subtly redefined case and bracelet design. There are choices, choices, choices, in rose gold and steel, with or without diamond bezels, set with mother-of-pearl Intarsia, which showcases a sunray finish on top, or in a standout malachite marquetry dial.

But if you know us, you know it’s the green malachite version that has our hearts. Stoned dials were the trend in the sixties and this modern-day version pieces together the small malachite fragments in an example of upcycling done beautifully. The fragments are selected carefully by Bvlgari artisans, who pick based on the mineral’s hue and vibrancy. There are a lot of green dial watches this year, and for us this is one standout.

Hublot

What Hublot has become today is really the work of long-time CEO Ricardo Guadalupe, who has really taken on the brand’s tagline, the Art of Fusion to mean completely reinventing the traditions of watchmaking and developing timepieces that are wholly new, unexpected and thoroughly exciting. And the timepiece to show off all of this mastery in its R&D department is the MP-10 Tourbillon Weight Energy System.

“For a piece to be part of our MP collection it must not only reinvent existing complications; it must create something exclusive, invent, build and open up new avenues in watchmaking R&D,” Guadalupe says in a statement. “I gave our designers and watchmakers carte blanche, and this is the fruit of their labours.”

For Guadalupe, the MP-10, short for Manufacture Piece 10, is a new turning point for the brand, one that underlines what the future of watchmaking is going to look like at Hublot. The watch has no dial, no hands or oscillating weight. Instead, it comes with a roller display, a circular power reserve and an inclined tourbillon automatic winding by two linear weights. Disruptive and avant-garde, the great thing about all MP pieces too are that they are not concept watches or prototypes, but fully functioning watches that will adorn the wrists of collectors – in this case, only 50 collectors can call one their own.

Another breakthrough from Hublot comes in the form of the the Big Bang Unico Green SAXEM, which took the manufacture two years to accomplish. SAXEM, a chemical compound, is similar to sapphire – another material that Hublot has already mastered – but it has an even brighter shine compared to sapphire. The new Green SAXEM comes in a robust 42mm size, and while SAXEM itself doesn’t receive light, it has the illusion that it emits it, making the bright green even more vibrant. The watch comes with a new movement as well, a new generation flyback chronograph HUB1280 Unico 2 that’s self-winding and comes with 72 hours of power reserve. Want more green? The watches TAG Heuer and Zenith released at LVMH Watch Week may tickle your fancy. Read on below.

TAG Heuer

The big news – or at least for the Prestige team – at TAG Heuer revolves around the Carrera, which this year celebrates the 61st anniversary of its launch in the early 1960s as a timepiece especially designed for motorsport. To be more specific, the particular Carrera we’re lusting after is a new version of the “Dato” chronograph, which references the penchant for simplicity and symmetry of the Carrera’s original designer, the great Jack Heuer, with its date window at 9 o’clock and 30-minute recorder at 3. What makes this new “Dato” so utterly eye-catching, however, is its combination of a vivid brushed teal-green dial and a domed “glassbox” crystal, the latter extending over the outer minutes/seconds track and thus covering almost the entire frontal real-estate of the watch. As an aid to visibility, SuperLuminova has been applied to the tips of the applied rhodium-plated hour markers, as well as the watch’s hour and minute hands.

Beating within the chronograph’s 39mm brushed-steel case is TAG Heuer’s own automatic Calibre TH20-07, with column wheel and vertical clutch, which oscillates at 4Hz for an impressive power reserve of 80 hours. Its Côtes de Genève-finishing and skeletonised oscillating weight are on show via a caseback crystal.

In the event the new “Dato” doesn’t quite work for you, TAG Heuer also has more variations on the Carrera theme with which to tempt you. There is, for example, the Carrera Chronograph Tourbillon that, unsurprisingly, will set you back a whole lot more. In a larger 42mm steel case, with the same teal-green dial, chronograph subdials at 3 and 9 o’clock and the tourbillon in the traditional 6 o’clock position (though no date window), it’s a heftier proposition though one that’s no less arresting to the eye.

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Joining the chronograph tourbillon in Carrera line-up is the Date Plasma Diamond d’Avant-Garde, whose glittering 2.9-carat polycrystalline dial features a single lab-grown yellow diamond of 1.3 carats just below the Carrera logo, as well as white-gold indexes and skeletonised hour and minute hands. Presented in a 36mm white-gold case, the watch is powered by the Calibre 7 Automatic, whose machinations can be viewed through the sapphire caseback crystal.

New references of the Aquaracer dive watch and a Connected Calibre E4 in green (not to forget revised dial faces for existing Connected watches), as well as three additional eyewear lines – complete the TAG Heuer novelties for early 2024.

Zenith

Novelties from Zenith unveiled during the LVMH Watch Week comprise a number of El Primero-powered chronographs, the most noteworthy of which is undoubtedly the return of the Chronomaster Triple Calendar. If you don’t get what that entails from the name alone, it means the watch features a new high-beat (5Hz) calibre that powers not only the chronograph complication but also a complete calendar, including moon phase. All of which is packed into a remarkably compact 38mm steel case.

A homage to a series of 25 prototypes developed by Zenith in 1970, this new model is based on an exact blueprint of the original reference. It’s available in two versions: one with a sporty sunburst silver-white “panda” opaline dial with three black sub dials, and the other featuring a largely slate-grey “reverse panda” scheme; a third, boutique-only option features a largely olive-green dial. The first two have applied rose-gold baton hour markers and hands, as well as a moon made from the same material, which is displayed in the moon-phase/60-minute-counter subdial at 6 o’clock, while yellow gold is used for the boutique reference. As with other El Primero-powered Zenith chronographs, the date window is at 4.30, with month and day indicators at 2 and 10 o’clock respectively.

Flip over the Chronomaster Triple Calendar and the architecture and skeletonised winding rotor of the 1/10th-of-a-second El Primero 3610 calibre are revealed through a caseback crystal, while to complete the package, the watch comes with a range of bracelets: steel on the silver-white version, black calfskin on the slate-grey model and green calfskin on the boutique reference.

A pair of 41mm Chronomaster Sport Green references, both with dial and bezel in that colour, as well as a luxurious rose-gold version with fully gem-set bezel of white diamonds, black spinels and grey and blue sapphires, a gold meteorite dial and baguette-cut diamond indexes, complete Zenith’s array of novelties. All are powered by the El Primero 3600 calibre – and thus feature a third colour on the dial, which in every case is a blue chronograph subdial at 3 o’clock.