Time is of the essence in our new Winter 2024 issue. We showcase the highlights from the recent Watches & Wonders fair in Geneva, including the best in men’s and women’s haute horology and get to know the young social media stars shaking up the watch scene.

Every minute counts as we discover everything there is to know about whisky, sing the praises of timeless Naomi Campbell, and turn back the clock with a visit to the world’s best skin clinic for men.

Elsewhere, we dawdle in Double Bay, the exclusive Eastern Suburbs enclave that is undergoing a renaissance, and spend time in a new Sydney parfumerie and a private gallery advising canny art investors.

On the travel front, we make haste while the sun shines and head to Rajasthan and Paris, before whiling away the hours in Mexico and Australia’s first truly private island. After all, time is the ultimate luxury. Make the most of it while you can.

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When the Art Basel fair opens in Switzerland in June, it will do so with a certain swagger. Art currently tops Knight Frank’s Luxury Investment Index, with prices rising by 11 percent in 2023; by comparison, the values of rare whisky, classic cars, handbags and furniture fell. Transaction volumes are also on an upward trajectory; 39.4 million buys were logged globally last year, with figures more pronounced at the “affordable” end of the scale.

That doesn’t mean the action has stalled at the pinnacle of the market—far from it. In May at Christie’s in New York, Andy Warhol’s Flowers (1964), a huge 208 cm by 208 cm fluorescent silkscreen, fetched US$30.5 million (around $46 million), while Georgia O’Keeffe’s close-up oil painting Red Poppy (1928) secured US$14 million (around $21 million). Spring auction sales across the metropolis approached US$1.4 billion (around $2.1 billion), confirming the Big Apple’s reputation as the city whose art market never sleeps. 

In this context, the importance of how to invest wisely and ensure the sound provenance of your purchase comes into even sharper focus. Enter Jesse-Jack De Deyne and Boris Cornelissen, whose A Secondary Eye gallery functions are both a private space with rotating exhibitions, and somewhere serious investors can buy and sell with confidence.

“We offer access to some of the finest works entering the secondary market in Australia and operate with a stringent provenance framework in place,” says De Deyne from the company’s top-floor space overlooking leafy Queen Street in Sydney’s Woollahra.

The gallery launched in May with a presentation of rare works by Rover Thomas, the late East Kimberley artist who represented Australia at the 1990 Venice Biennale—which will not come as a surprise to those in-the-know, as De Deyne specialises in Australian Indigenous art and comes to Sydney with a background as a director at Maningrida Arts & Culture in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. Cornelissen, meanwhile, is a former contemporary art specialist from Sotheby’s in London and Hong Kong.

“We are most effective when a prospective client comes to us with a specific artwork in mind,” explains De Deyne. “They may have recently been to Canberra to visit the highly regarded exhibition of Emily Kame Kngwarreye at the National Gallery of Australia and there is a specific period of the artist that they are drawn to. Through our contacts, we may be able to help source available related works that would not necessarily appear at auction.”

Though A Secondary Eye was founded in 2020 in Brisbane, De Denye says the larger pool of collectors in Sydney drew him and his partner south. The new gallery’s private aspect seems to be a key selling point for the duo, who prize discretion above all else.

“Whereas auctions are publicly advertised, a private dealer can offer a work discreetly to a handful of clients without over-exposing it,” says De Denye. “And we can also present works in a more considered way through curated, high-quality exhibitions that tell the story of each work.”

Follow A Secondary Eye here for future exhibitions. 

If you were wondering whether Jaeger-LeCoultre could top its 2023 Reverso novelties—yes, we’re still dreaming about the Reverso Tribute Chronograph—you’d be wrong to doubt the 190-year-old watchmaker from the Vallée de Joux.

Okay, so we didn’t see any collector favourites in Reverso or Polaris models, but the brand did put on quite a show with four new reveals—the Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual, Duometre Quantieme Lunaire, Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar, and Duometre Chronograph Moon—highlighting its more intricate, high horology skills as it sets out its stall for 2024.

The latter was one of the standouts of the fair. Unveiled in 2007 as a chronograph, the new piece has been reimagined as a celestial complication. Available in platinum, and pink gold, the new Duometre iterations come with an entirely new calibre, dial and case, and is an elegant expression of the company’s watchmaking ethos.

The Calibre 391 introduces a fully integrated in-house movement that utilises a manually wound mono-pusher chronograph, a moonphase and night-day complications, as well as two power reserve indicators and a seconde foudroyante (flying seconds) display. Activate the mono-pusher and the hand runs to a remarkably precise one sixth of a second.

The new Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar, on the other hand, will appease traditionalists with a refreshing update to its case and dial design. We get a new pink gold model with a midnight-blue sunray dial—as well as a significant increase in power reserve; 70 hours, to be exact.

jaeger-lecoultre.com

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Read more about this year’s Watches & Wonders exhibition at robbreport.com.au

Anyone on tick tock knows that today’s status-obsessed youth is under the spell of fine fragrance. The more obscure, the better. Junior voluptuaries these days are bewitched by esoteric trails like Xerjoff Erba Pura and Creed Aventus. Not surprisingly, there has been an uptick in the theft of rare and expensive perfumes, with many department stores keeping them locked away. Libertine, a new temple to haute parfumerie in the stylish heart of Sydney’s Paddington, would benefit from hiring security guards. A boon to local devotees and anyone looking to broaden their scent IQ, the place carries Xerjoff and Creed, and a slew of other cult brands, including Amouage, Roja, Memo, Parfums de Marly and Mizensir. 

It’s enough to drive a perfume apostle to distraction. Created by interior designer du jour Tamsin Johnson, the unisex store recalls classical pharmacies down to the bespoke timber cabinetry and brushed metal railings. Stained oak French chiffoniers and marble plinths teem with flowers, candles, room diffusers and, of course, the world’s finest perfumes. 

A lush courtyard offers respite from the perfumed splendour, and opens onto a section in the back that serves as an event space and stocks limited-edition fragrances (some selling for up to $3,500) alongside a selection of curios and homewares.

Owner Nick Smart wanted “to create a space that hasn’t been seen in Australian beauty retail”. With his new 200 m² flagship, Smart has exceeded his ambition, creating an unrivalled olfactory adventure that is so dizzying, it occasionally resembles overeating chocolate. Or spending too many hours on TikTok.

Libertine Parfumerie, shop 6/134-140 Oxford Street, Paddington, NSW, is open from 10.00 am–5.30 pm, seven days a week.

Only a few years ago, Teddy Baldassarre was working for a software start-up in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio—a far cry from the luxury watch universe. Today, with more than a million YouTube subscribers, 376,000 Instagram followers and 90,000 TikTok fans, Baldassarre is one of the largest video content creators in the sector.

“I was like many who fall into the subject matter, being led headfirst by passion,” says Baldassarre. “I was fascinated with the depth of the subject, from the history, engineering, design, and navigating the many brands that made up the industry. After graduating, I finally had some money to spend and amassed a collection of pieces. I became obsessed with hearing from other collectors and how each watch they acquired connected to their broader story.”

Electing not to tell a single soul about his newfound bounty of vintage timepieces, he posted his first YouTube video in 2017. Within a month, the clip had accumulated more than 30,000 views.

What gives Baldassarre’s content mass appeal is his delivery, depth of knowledge and evidential passion for these knickknacks that tick. And he has leveraged his engaged, digitally savvy audience to create his own watch ecosystem: a website that highlights the latest tidings in the watch world, as well as an authorised e-commerce site, launched in 2020, stocking a small subset of brands like Nomos Glashütte and Raymond Weil.

“We have scaled year-on-year, adding new brands, which now umber over 35, and launched our bricks-and-mortar store (in Cleveland] in February this year,” he says. “My goal is to produce the best watch content for watch enthusiasts all around the globe, to be the leading retailer for my generation, and to continue to do this for as long as I can.”

 

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Read more about the watch industry’s horological influencers at robbreport.com.au