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Editor's opinion

Editor's opinion

Shared joy and concerns: passion and professionalism in the watch world

In the watch industry there is a direct link between emotion and value. That link is invisible, vulnerable and dynamic and must be treated with the utmost care. If that emotion, the story of the maison, is no longer enthusiastically being told by enough passionate people the history that has been passed on for centuries without ever becoming boring will start to fade away.
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Editor's opinion

Just like tulips from Amsterdam

No one takes a Patek Philippe Nautilus for sale on eBay for a few thousand euro seriously: it’s either fake or stolen. But economic bubbles are something we can only see afterwards. Strange, that. Year after year the Swiss watch industry has been realising record turnovers. The big groups took the lead and new, small watch brands followed in their wake and the prices went up and up. No one, including myself, noticed the fact that slowly but surely a bubble was being created that strongly resembled the Dutch tulip mania.
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Editor's opinion

The Game Changer

I apologise if you think you have recently read the headliner before. Maybe because you recently read an article or press review of the new Piaget Polo S. A new watch that is named precisely that: The Game Changer. But what is a game changer in the watch world? Well, Piaget calls their new Polo S a game changer. Not only because it is their first watch of steel in decades. But also because the Polo S is priced very compatible compared to…well, pretty much any watch from Piaget the last ten years or so.
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Editor's opinion

When old is the new new

I guess you have heard it already. The Swiss watch exports are suffering. Hong Kong and Macau are paralyzed and the Swiss manufacturers are stunned by export numbers that are as low as they were in midst of the financial crisis in 2009. The novelties on offer at Basel World 2016 did reflect on the slump and several of the luxury watch brands offered more steel watches that before.
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Editor's opinion

Primary colours, primal love

Let’s go back to the late 1980s when Frenchman Alain Silberstein decides to give up his job as an interior designer to start his own watch brand together with his wife, Sylvie. Silberstein’s watches are like birds of paradise among sparrows. Primary colours and clear geometric shapes, that reflect some of the Bauhaus philosophy as well, are the foundation of his watches. In-your-face watches that you either love or hate.
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