Since their creation in 2020, the Geneva Watch Days have quickly established themselves as one of the most vibrant fixtures in the annual horological calendar. Designed as an open and inclusive festival, the event offers a dynamic alternative to traditional trade fairs. This year’s edition, held in Geneva from September 4 to 7, 2025, set a new record with 66 participating brands. For four days, the city became a stage where heritage Maisons, bold independents, and rising talents presented their latest creations to collectors, journalists, and watch enthusiasts from around the world.
Far from being confined to closed booths, Geneva Watch Days thrives on its decentralized and convivial format: a living festival celebrating creativity, innovation, and diversity in watchmaking. It was in this unique atmosphere that I discovered my four personal crushes of the 2025 edition — four very different visions of watchmaking, united by a shared devotion to artistry, craftsmanship, and emotion.
TAOS – Tuxedo & Gala
Eighteen months after its debut, the young independent brand TAOS continues to captivate with creations that blur the line between horology and haute couture. The 2025 novelties, Tuxedo and Gala, extend the “Fabric” collection, transposing the world of precious textiles onto the wrist.
Every TAOS timepiece requires 1,001 hours of work, entrusted to the master artisans of Ateliers Olivier Vaucher in Geneva — among the most esteemed dial-making workshops in Switzerland. Engraving, enamel, gem-setting, feather art, and miniature painting converge to form dial compositions that are less watches than works of art.
Tuxedo embodies elegant, graphic masculinity, while Gala radiates flamboyant femininity. Together, they reinterpret the codes of formal evening dress in horological terms. The result is uncompromising refinement, where material is exalted, gesture is precise, and each creation beats to its own unique rhythm.
Gerald Charles – Masterlink Gem-Set
The legacy of Gérald Charles Genta, one of the most visionary watch designers of the 20th century, lives on in the Masterlink Gem-Set Limited Edition. For the first time, this asymmetric integrated bracelet watch embraces the art of gem-setting.
Each version features a silver dial framed by a white-gold bezel set with 60 invisibly mounted baguette-cut sapphires or tsavorites, limited to just ten pieces per color. Achieving this seamless brilliance was a technical feat, requiring each gemstone to be custom-cut to match the Maestro’s signature asymmetrical case.
The Masterlink traces its roots to Genta’s unique 2007 creation, the Sarawak, designed for the Royal Family of Sarawak. By reviving and reinterpreting this DNA, Gerald Charles has created what CEO Federico Ziviani describes as “the ultimate in discreet luxury.” Water-resistant to 100 meters, ultra-slim, and ergonomic, the Masterlink Gem-Set balances technical mastery, refinement, and vivid color in a way few watches can.
Dennison – ALD Dual Time
The new Dennison ALD Dual Time demonstrates how a watch can be more than a travel companion; it can also be a bridge between worlds, people, and memories. With its dual-display stone dials, this watch transforms timekeeping into an emotional connection.
Designer Emmanuel Gueit drew inspiration from the bold dual-time watches of the 1960s and ’70s, an era when horology embodied freedom and elegance in equal measure. Enlarged slightly compared to the original ALD, the Dual Time offers greater presence and a stage for mineral beauty.
Collectors can choose between split dials, combining two stones such as tiger’s eye with black marble or bloodstone with lapis lazuli, or monolithic dials in lapis, malachite, aventurine, or tiger’s eye, paired with contrasting subdials. Whether in stainless steel or gold PVD, on Epsom leather straps, the watch expresses a balance of nostalgia and modernity — priced at an accessible CHF 725 / EUR 780 / USD 890.
As Toby Sutton, founder of Dennison, explains: “Whether you’re traveling or maintaining a connection to another place, the Dual Time evokes emotion — allowing you to carry both worlds with you.”
Stollenwurm – Tarot Métiers d’Art
Few brands explore the philosophical dimensions of time as boldly as Stollenwurm. With its second series, the independent Maison turns inward, guided by the archetypes of the Tarot. Instead of hours and indices, the dials evoke presences: The Fool, The High Priestess, and beyond.
Realized in collaboration with the enamellers of Donzé Cadrans, each dial is a miniature work of Grand Feu enamel art, using champlevé and cloisonné techniques, fired multiple times until colors achieve brilliance and depth. The result is not mere decoration but transformation: archetypes given permanence through fire.
Inside beats the Caliber WU-A1002, a micro-rotor movement developed exclusively for Stollenwurm with Télôs Watch and TMH. With nickel-silver plates, pink-gold bridges, and an 80-hour reserve, it is both technically sophisticated and symbolically resonant.
As founder Edward Tourtellotte notes, Stollenwurm is less a brand than a threshold: a meeting point where artisans, engineers, and collectors converge to create objects that hold memory and meaning. These watches remind us that time is not neutral — it is a labyrinth of signs and stories.
A Celebration of Diversity
From the couture poetry of TAOS to the technical brilliance of Gerald Charles, the nostalgic-modern bridge of Dennison, and the symbolic depth of Stollenwurm, my four crushes from Geneva Watch Days 2025 could not be more different. And yet, they all reflect the spirit of this event: diverse, daring, and deeply human.
In just five years, Geneva Watch Days has become a vital stage for the industry’s most creative voices. The 2025 edition only reinforced its status as a festival of horology where passion, innovation, and storytelling come together — not behind closed doors, but out in the open, where watchmaking belongs.
