Issue 129: GPHG 2024 Results Analysed
Brings new meaning to the phrase "being given the finger"
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that has been around the world the Jura and survived to tell the tale. I attended the GPHG awards after a few days at a very special event with TAG Heuer, which will be something I return to in a few weeks’ time. Right now, I’ve focussed on the awards themselves: the good, the unexpected and the undeserving, as well as painting a bit of a picture of horology’s most glamorous night out. Enjoy!
One more thing before we start. More and more of you are getting in touch with little snippets of things you’ve heard, stories that you think need more attention and research. I love it and if I haven’t got back to you yet, I will! If you have something that you think TFW should look into - anything watch-related under the sun - or want to tip me off about some gossip that you know I’ll love, please get in touch. You can reply to this email, send me a DM on Substack or find me on Instagram. Anonymity will be respected.
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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Harrods Tudor Leaked: Details Confirmed
My Take On The Patek Philippe Cubitus
The Truth About Water Resistance
Why Can’t London Host A World-Class Watch Event?
My GPHG Predictions
As is probably abundantly clear from my spamming of the subscriber chat (check it out if you’ve never got involved, it’s a friendly conversation), and my live Instagramming (over on my personal account for greater reach), I was in my element at the GPHG awards on Wednesday night.
Some of my initial reactions made it onto the chat but for the most part, I’ve kept my views back until now. Before we go any further, here’s the full list of winners:
2024 PRIZE LIST
“Aiguille d’Or” Grand Prix: IWC Schaffhausen, Portugieser Eternal Calendar
Audacity Prize: Berneron, Mirage Sienna
Eco-innovation Prize: Chopard, L.U.C Qualité Fleurier
Chronometry Prize: Bernhard Lederer, 3 Times Certified Observatory Chronometer
“Horological Revelation” Prize: Rémy Cools, Tourbillon Atelier
Iconic Watch Prize: Piaget, Piaget Polo 79
Tourbillon Watch Prize: Daniel Roth, Tourbillon Souscription
Calendar and Astronomy Watch Prize: Laurent Ferrier, Classic Moon Silver
Mechanical Exception Watch Prize: Bovet 1822, Récital 28 Prowess 1
Chronograph Watch Prize: Massena Lab, Chronograph Monopoussoir Sylvain Pinaud x Massena Lab
Sports Watch Prize: Ming, 37.09 Bluefin
Men’s Complication Watch Prize: De Bethune, DB Kind Of Grande Complication
Men’s Watch Prize: Voutilainen, KV20i Reversed
Time Only Watch Prize: H. Moser & Cie, Streamliner Small Seconds Blue Enamel
Jewellery Watch Prize: Chopard, Laguna High-Jewellery Secret Watch
Artistic Crafts Watch Prize: Van Cleef & Arpels, Lady Arpels Jour Enchanté
Ladies’ Complication Watch Prize: Van Cleef & Arpels, Lady Arpels Brise d'Été
Ladies’ Watch Prize: Van Cleef & Arpels, Lady Jour Nuit
“Petite Aiguille” Watch Prize: Kudoke, 3 Salmon
Challenge Watch Prize: Otsuka Lotec, No.6
Special Jury Prize: Jean-Pierre Hagmann
Twelve of the twenty watch prizes, i.e. everything other than the special jury prize, went to independent watch brands. Three of the rest went to Van Cleef & Arpels, two to Chopard, and the others to IWC, Piaget and Daniel Roth. Five awards went to non-Swiss brands.
On that basis, it was a good night for indies and for Richemont. It was a great night for IWC, which has never won a GPHG before and went straight to winning the top prize.1 It was a below-average haul for LVMH, which across its many brands scooped only the tourbillon prize for its revived Daniel Roth, and Parmigiani, which saw the Toric and Tonda completely ignored.
It was an acceptable night for my personal predictions; depending on how charitable you are in reviewing last week’s newsletter, I got eight right. Nine if you include recognising the IWC in some way, although I admit I did not figure it for glory at the highest level.
It is a strange night to experience first-hand. Billionaires rub shoulders with indie watchmakers (sniffing out their next acquisitions?). Executives and brand staff mill about in the lobby beforehand, smiling politely and pretending not to already know who’s won2; afterwards “it was an honour to even be on the shortlist” is the go-to phrase. Hangers-on like myself sip their champagne and look for someone to tell them something interesting. The night is tinged with idiosyncratic Swiss moments: my favourite this year was the presence of ceremonial guards who accompanied a couple of more eminent presenters on stage, like the mayor of Geneva, who gave the award for best chronograph. These gents stood stock still, feet apart, staring sternly ahead, the intimidating effect only slightly undermined by their garb, a red-and-yellow cape and bicorn hat3.
As to my attendance, I was a guest of TAG Heuer, who paid for my flights and hotel. I was also among a small number of journalists invited to attend the brand’s ‘collector summit’, a two-day event that gave Heuer geeks a chance to invade the manufacture, museum and dial-making factory, as well as some hands-on time with future releases. More on that in future newsletters.
But back to the awards. The mood on the night was that broadly speaking, the little gold hands ended up in the right places, although some choices wrong-footed me to say the least.
I expected the Hermes Cut to be recognised, after its positive reception at Watches & Wonders, but Van Cleef & Arpels’ clean sweep of the ladies’ watch categories plus the award for artistic crafts was a victory for stereotypical notions of femininity - flowers, diamonds and so on. VCA’s appeal is sometimes misunderstood; its quality is superb and there is real mechanical creativity to its movements, but I do feel the jury could have cast its gaze a little wider. I’ll repeat a point I made last week: the Jury and Academy are overwhelmingly male, so these watches are being judged by people who by and large don’t take a close interest in the watches and certainly don’t speak from experience when they consider what constitutes a successful ladies’ watch.
I did expect Kollokium to win; perhaps my perspective had been skewed by writing about the brand but plenty of people I spoke to felt the same way. I’ll give Otsuka Lotec another look, but it’s not really doing it for me. In hindsight I should have given Kudoke more respect; it’s really well finished for the price. It made a change from Tudor winning, at least: the brand has won nine awards since 2013, most of them in the Challenge, Petit Aiguille and Sports categories.
Speaking of regular winners, it wouldn’t be the GPHG without Kari Voutilainen appearing on stage at least once. The presenter of the award for best men’s watch slightly killed the anticipation by noting that either Rexhep Rexhepi or Voutilainen tended to win (the duo have two each in the last six years, with Grand Seiko winning in 2021, and the category being absent last year), before going on to read out Voutilainen’s name again4. It’s a tricky business, because we are expected to convincingly compare a low-volume, hand-built item with mass-market creations; objectively the Voutilainen is made to a higher bar in every respect, but what is this award meant to mean? As a fellow journalist remarked to me, the idea that this is the best watch a man might go out and buy this year is slightly ridiculous. It’s like choosing between a Mercedes S-Class and a Gordon Murray T50 for ‘best car’.
We already have the Challenge and Petit Aiguille categories, defined by price; I think we need to continue that pattern upwards. A bracket from CHF 10,000 to CHF 30,000 and another from CHF 30,000 - CHF 100,000 would be good. Drop the ‘time-only’ category but rule that both of the above should be time-only watches.
On that subject, I was surprised to see H. Moser win in the time-only category, only because its Streamliner has been around for a few years. But with Berneron and Lederer picking up other awards, the four remaining were all simply variations on existing watches. Chopard was also well-represented elsewhere, so if you believe that this kind of political appeasement goes on, it makes as much sense for Moser to win as either of the other two - and it is a lovely blue dial. But as it happens, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that Chopard really shouldn’t have been as successful as it was.
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