The award has found a hero – Style – Kommersant

The 22nd award ceremony for the winners of the international watch competition Grand Prix d`Horlogerie de Geneve (GPHG) took place in Geneva. 90 selected models competed for 20 awards, including the main prize – the Golden Arrow.

President of the GPHG Foundation Raymond Loretan, listing the advantages acquired by the Grand Prix for the 22nd year of the event, boasted of absolute impartiality. Answering a question from a Kommersant correspondent, he assured that no one was able not only to influence the decisions of the jury, but even to know the results of the vote in advance: “The new scheme for determining the winners does not allow outside interference.” Mr. Loretan meant that now, along with 30 members of the jury, professionals of the highest standard, members of the GPHG Academy, of which there are already five and a half hundred around the world, are voting.

In part, his words were confirmed by the results of the current award, where four brands snatched two prizes at once. Under the old rules, such coincidences were extremely rare, the competition sought to distribute “earrings to all sisters.” In the same year, Bvlgari, Hermes, Van Cleef & Arpels and MB&F achieved a double.

However, we would question Mr. Loretan’s assertion that no one, except for the notary responsible for the secrecy of the vote, knew the results until the moment the envelopes were opened. Otherwise, why in the hall of the Genevan Theater du Leman from year to year are mainly the heads of those brands that are waiting for awards? One should have seen the reaction of one of the captains of the industry, who, in anticipation of the announcement of his victory, did not take his iPhone off the podium, keeping the members of the jury in sight. The captain knew what awaited him, he certainly knew, otherwise he would not have come: what a pleasure to see that the award is being carried past one’s own nose?

The rest of the ceremony looked quite traditional – partly thanks to its constant leading French actor and director Edouard Beru with his jokes: “Now a prize will be awarded for watches worth up to 3 thousand francs – mere pennies at local prices” (by the way, the average retail price of those awarded in this year, wristwatches – 148 thousand Swiss francs, so GPHG has once again confirmed its elite character). Laughing at wealthy Switzerland, Mr. Behr touched us in passing: with a purchase price limit of 300 francs set by Swiss sanctions for exports to Russia, there was not a single copy at the competition that could officially end up in a domestic store. Although it is clear that any of them can enter the country on the arm of their new Russian owner on a flight arriving from Istanbul or Dubai. So we can now laugh at the jokes of the entertainer without any ulterior motive: isn’t it funny that all this is again inaccessible to us, as in the days of the USSR?

At this year’s competition, compared to 2020 and 2021, there was no unconditional favorite. Van Cleef & Arpels looked like the “king of the dance floor”, both in terms of content and by virtue of the law of large numbers (the GPHG shortlist included five models of the brand at once). Mainly thanks to the “flower watch” Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier, on the mother-of-pearl dial of which 12 precious flowers gradually open their petals, showing the current hour (the minutes are shown by an indicator on the side of the pink gold case). However, despite all the innovations, GPHG is not in the habit of giving the main prize to women’s watches – earlier this happened only once, at the very start of the competition in 2001. Usually the “Golden Arrow” goes to complex men’s watches, mostly independent brands that are not part of corporations. It happened this year as well, and the mechanical miracle of Van Cleef & Arpels received a prize in the special nomination “For innovation”. The second prize went to the French jewelry and watch house in the new Table Clock nomination for the unique Fontaine Aux Oiseaux automaton clock made in one copy with “reviving” birds, which are remarkable, among other things, for their price – from 5 million to 10 million francs, as listed in the GPHG catalog, making them the most expensive entries in this year’s competition.

We’ve already mentioned the law of large numbers, but this time it didn’t work for one of the jury’s former favorites (and 2019 Golden Arrow winner) Audemars Piguet. The only representative of the “big three” (Patek Philippe traditionally, and Vacheron Constantin situationally abstained from participation), despite the five models in the shortlist, did not receive a single prize. We would explain this by the fact that now the manufactory is in a slightly suspended state: long-term CEO Francois-Henri Benamias announced his resignation this year, his successor has not yet been named, and GPHG favors famous and charismatic leaders.

And those, of course, were. First of all, this refers to the triumphant of the previous year, the head of the Bvlgari jewelry and watch house, Jean-Christophe Babin, who had to go up to the stage twice. First, for the Jewelery Watch prize, won by the Serpenti Misteriosi High Jewelery snake, equipped with one of the world’s most compact mechanical calibers BVL 100 Piccolissimothen for the honorary award “For Courage”, which was awarded to ultra-thin Octo Finissimo Ultra only 1.8mm thick.

Strictly speaking, the Bvlgari masterpiece is no longer a world record: it was broken by the Richard Mille brand, which reduced the thickness of the case of its RM UP-01 Ferrari up to 1.75 mm, and the mechanism – up to an incredible 1.18 mm, but she did not want to participate in this year’s competition. A certain limited view, traditionally inherent in the Grand Prix, played a minus. In fairness, let’s say that it is not worth blaming the organizers for it. We are sure that the members of the GPHG Academy offered to participate in the competition the novelties of Richard Mille, and Rolex, and Patek Philippe, and numerous brands of the Swatch Group, but the final decision on participation is made by the manufactories themselves, paying or refusing to pay the registration fee – by the standards of a highly profitable industry, quite symbolic. For the same reason, the competition did not find a place for the bearers of such trendy trends for the industry as green dials, right-handed watches (for people who prefer to wear them on the right hand) and bezel watches. Rainbow (decorated with multi-colored sapphires arranged in a rainbow pattern). Steel-on-steel watches with steel bracelets, which were in high demand among buyers, were in the shortlist in small numbers, but did not win anything. But what was in abundance among the nominated and winners was skeletons (watches with a transparent dial that opens a view of the mechanism) and world timers (watches with local time indication in all 24 zones of the Earth), which, after the pandemic self-isolation ended, again went up.

The squad of skeletons, although in this case this factor was not decisive, is also represented by the owner of this year’s Golden Arrow chronograph MB&F Legacy Machine Sequential Evo. Despite its merits, we will not sin against the truth if we say that the founder of the MB&F brand, Maximilian Büsser, received the main prize for total merit. The universal favorite of the hour party at the very beginning of the ceremony took the “Challenge” prize from the stage. He got it for the M.A.D.1 Red watch, which he says he “made for his friends who can’t handle the usual MB&F price tag.” We understood this in two senses at once. Literally, the watch costs a little more than 3 thousand francs, which, no matter how the entertainer scoffs, is really for nothing. And figuratively, we remember how Max told how a mighty wave of friends rolled over him with a request to sell at least one copy. Who wouldn’t swear eternal friendship for such a deal? At the end of the ceremony, under the drumbeat of the “old grenadiers”, the Genevan mummers veterans, Busser also accepted the highest prize. The first MB&F chronograph was at the same time the most unusual split chronograph. It combines two independent movements with its own pushers and has a common node that controls both chronograph movements (push-button at 9 o’clock). Already the 20th caliber in the 17 years of MB&F’s existence was developed by independent Irish watchmaker Stephen McDonnell, and dozens of “friends” (the brand name stands for “Maximilian Busser and friends”) took part in its implementation, including designer Eric Giroud, engineer Jean – Francois Mojon and others. All of them deserved the “Golden Arrow”. But they found it, hand on heart, thanks to the authority, charisma and charm of the person whose name is in the name of the brand. The Golden Arrow of 2022 is an award not so much for a watch as for a person.

Kommersant Style broadcast live from Geneva with Russian-language comments from one of the authors.

Alexey Tarkhanov (Geneva); Yuri Khnychkin