The good news for this new year is that we have more friends than ever, and we wish to thank them most sincerely. While diamonds have long been considered a girl’s best friend, watches are increasingly asserting themselves as a man’s best friend. In parallel with these two classic principles, a new trend is emerging: your friends become my friends. In other words, countless men’s watches now come clothed in diamonds, while complicated watches are increasingly sought after by women. Moreover, another type of friend is becoming ever more important for watch brands: the supplier-friend, generally called a partner, to whom one is grateful for priority delivery while acknowledging their expertise – and publicly at that. At the award ceremony of the glittering year-end Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix, many watch bosses indeed made a point of thanking not just their personnel, but also in many cases their supplier-friends and designers. Among those who thus expressed their gratitude was the man whose masterpiece appears on the cover of this issue, Richard Mille, who received the Grand Prix Golden Hand for his work as a whole. Among the prize-winning brands presented in the following pages, Audemars Piguet deserves a special mention for garnering two awards (the Designer’s Watch Prize and the Sports Watch Prize), while Harry Winston won the Complication Watch Prize and Hublot the Jewellery Watch Prize. This issue also features Urwerk and Vacheron Constantin, which were among the nominees..

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