The Best Watchmakers You Haven’t Heard Of
The watchmakers to watchmakers, these independent companies prove you needn’t require the backing of a conglomerate to get the industry ticking.
It’s true, these days the majority of major-label watch brands belong to the portfolio of huge parent companies—Swatch Group, Richemont and LVMH having spent the previous 30 years feverishly acquiring large swathes of the industry. Yet, behind the household dial-names taking up jewellery-shop windows, a cornucopia of independent companies is busy producing some of the most interesting, elegant and downright bat-shit crazy watches out there. If you’re looking for a watch with real talking-point status, these are the watchmakers’ watchmakers.
F.P. Journe
F.P. Journe is the only watchmaker to have won the Grand Prize at the hallowed Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix three times over. The cinematic equivalent would be for a filmmaker to be named Best Director at the Academy Awards on three occasions. It’s an even more impressive feat when you consider that F.P. Journe is an independent brand lacking the backing of a multinational parent company. A doff of the cap.
Laurent Ferrier
Having served at Patek Philippe for 37 years—a four-decade tenure that saw him rise to creative director—you might have forgiven Laurent Ferrier for putting his feet up. Not so for this third-generation watchmaker. In 2010, aged 63, Ferrier decided that the time was right to launch a watch brand of his own. He debuted with the Galet Classic Tourbillon Double Spiral, an elegant piece that was named Best Men’s Watch at that year’s Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix. The rest, as they say…
MB&F
MB&F doesn’t call itself a watchmaker: it prefers to be known as an “artistic concept laboratory”. That’s because MB&F doesn’t make watches. Nope, what the brand makes is “horological machines”. And so we get robotic clocks, time-telling music boxes, and timepieces shaped like spaceships, jet engines and jellyfish. Occasionally, the maddest brand in watchland will come out with something you can actually wear on your wrist.
H. Moser & Cie.
The main advantage of being independent is, surely, autonomy, and therefore the freedom to pursue your dreams—regardless of how outré and commercially perilous those ideas might be. Never one to let convention get in the way, H. Moser & Cie. has, in its two-decade history, given us a mickey-take of the Apple Watch named the Alps Watch Zzzz; a timepiece with a case made of actual cheese; and an equally irreverent number from which real plants sprouted. Somehow, it works, often spectacularly—as with 2019’s Swiss Alp Watch Concept Black, which featured no hands and no hour indices. Go figure.
Bremont
As British as a Beefeater eating a cucumber sandwich, Henley-on-Thames-based Bremont has been spearheading the mission to bring back mass-scale mechanical watchmaking to the United Kingdom since 2002. Two decades on, and the brand, with the backing of billionaire celebrity hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman since the beginning of 2023, is close to achieving that mission, manufacturing components for its own proprietary movement in a space-age technology centre close to the banks of the River Thames.
Parmigiani Fleurier
Michel Parmigiani began his career restoring historic clocks and watches, including many pieces from the Patek Philippe museum. After rebuilding a number of exhibits for the Watch Museum of Le Locle, in 1996 he began manufacturing watches of his own. King Charles III, a champion of traditional crafts, has proven himself an admirer, having been photographed wearing the now-discontinued Toric chronograph on several occasions.
HYT
HYT made a splash in 2012 when it became the first watchmaker to display the time using mechanical components to regulate coloured fluids inside cylindrical tubes. If you think that sounds crazy, you’d be exactly right. After a brief hiatus, HYT is back and as experimental as ever, so expect big things in the very near future.
Arnold & Son
When English clockmaker John Arnold presented his Arnold No. 36 to the Greenwich Royal Observatory for review in 1778, the clock proved so precise that it was the first timing device to be denoted a “chronometer”; and the term is still used today to signal a supremely accurate timepiece. Continuing in that vein—although now operating from Switzerland’s La Chaux-de-Fonds, instead of London’s Chigwell—is the clockmaker’s latter-day incarnation, Arnold & Son, creator of 19 proprietary movements and counting since 1998.
Speake-Marin
Last year, Speake-Marin celebrated 20 years in the watchmaking business with its first timepiece with an integrated bracelet. Inspired by architectural elements of London’s financial district—a geometric case recalls a church clock tower and the dial sports “Big Ben” hands—the sporty Ripples collection points towards a more contemporary direction for the low-volume brand. The watches might take the English capital as their muse, but the movements inside are all manufactured within the company’s workshops in Geneva.
Franck Muller
Launched in 1991 between Franck Muller and watchcase designer Vartan Sirmakes, Muller is best known for exquisite timepieces that often defy logic and land with a heavy sense of “wow”. A watch boasting 36 complications and comprising 1,483 components? Please meet the Aeternitas Mega 4. Require a ten-day power reserve? Grab yourself the Giga Tourbillon. For all the complexity and wonder—Muller is rightly known as the “Master of Complications”—there are also softer moments such as the current Cintrée Curvex collection. Muller’s edge, though, is the crafting of something new and innovative—here’s an out-of-the-box thinker who has found incredible global success with tangible anticipation framing each year’s releases, and what is, ultimately, a unique take on watchmaking and one that’s become immediately recognisable.
Richard Mille
If you had to name the most successful independent watch brand of the 21st century, Richard Mille would surely appear near the top of your shortlist. It’s certainly the only name on this register of which non-watch folk will have heard. Mostly, that’s down to the strategic sponsoring of big-draw sporting events, everything from tennis and golf, to polo and Formula 1—hell, for several years now Richard Mille has sponsored the F1 teams of both Ferrari and McLaren. Yet there’s also the watches, including a handful of timepieces that have broken records for their physics-defying, lightweight construction.
Jean Daniel Nicolas
There’s limited edition. And then there’s Jean Daniel Nicolas. The second independent brand founded by legendary watchmaker Daniel Roth—his first company, simply Daniel Roth, was established in 1988 and acquired by Bulgari in 2000—produces a grand total of just two watches a year. Having cut his teeth at Audemars Piguet, Roth spent 15 years spearheading artistic direction at Breguet. Save for springs, rubies, glasses and cases, everything inside the brace of watches produced each year by Jean Daniel Nicolas is manufactured by hand within the company’s own workshops.
Grönefeld
Grönefeld’s first watch was a statement of intent. Resurrecting a Dutch dial-name first established by their grandfather in 1912, Bart and Tim Grönefeld relaunched the family business in 2008 with the GTM-O6. Not only was the brand’s maiden timepiece powered by an in-house movement, it was also equipped with a minute repeater—broadly considered the most challenging of all complications to execute. This year saw Grönefeld release its first sports watch proper, the water-resistant, shock-absorbent 1969 DeltaWorks. Testament to the popularity of the independent brand, the customisable collection sold out shortly after launch.
Greubel Forsey
The holy grail for any independent watchmaker is to lay claim to its own proprietary movement. To successfully design, manufacture and put into production just one “in-house” calibre is a feat of micro-engineering that typically takes years, if not decades, to achieve. Since its launch in 2004, Greubel Forsey has developed more than 20 of its own branded movements, leading to more industry awards than you could shake a quadruple-tourbillon-regulated GMT hand at.
Philippe Dufour
Manufacturing a minuscule number of watches each year by hand from his workshop in Le Sentier, a sleepy, lakeside village in the foothills of the Jura Mountains, white-haired, pipe-smoking Philippe Dufour is straight out of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. The Father Christmas of independent watchmaking, if you will. In 2021, Dufour’s Grande et Petite Sonnerie No. 1, the watch he used to launch his brand in 1992, sold at a Phillips auction in Geneva for US$5.21 million (approx. $7.86 million), making it the most expensive timepiece ever sold by an independent watchmaker.
Thomas Prescher
Before turning his hand to watchmaking, Thomas Prescher was a captain in the German Navy. These days, following stints at IWC, Audemars Piguet and Blancpain, Prescher creates super-complicated wristwatches—including triple-axis tourbillons and perpetual calendars—on the shores of Lake Biel. Models such as the Nemo and the Nautica nod towards his former life.
Roger W. Smith
Waiting lists for Rolex Daytonas have nothing on those commanded by watches by Roger W. Smith. Put your name down for one of the five models the company currently produces, and it could be a decade until the Isle of Man workshop is ready to ship your order (although we’re guessing Ed Sheeran and his wife Cherry, who had a pair made for their wedding, didn’t wait that long). The cause of the lag? Every single element that goes into a Roger W. Smith watch enters the company’s boutique studio as a raw material. As such, only a dozen or so timepieces emerge each year.
Armin Strom
During the 1970s, Armin Strom made a name for himself skeletonising watch hands. That talent was demonstrated in his own timepieces, which began appearing in 1984, and continues to be a hallmark of the brand today under the stewardship of Serge Michel and Claude Greisler, who used to frequent Strom’s workshop when they were kids—although the company’s penchant for skeletisation has spread from hands to the rest of the dial. The brand, boasting a handful of its own movements, produces all of its main plates, bridges, levers, springs, wheels, pinions and screws in-house at their fully integrated manufacture in Biel—more than can be said for many of the industry’s big boys.
Kari Voutilainen
You might not have heard of Kari Voutilainen, but the judges at the annual Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix have. In the 20 years since the Finnish brand’s inception, critics at that prestigious awards body have bestowed Kari Voutilainen with eight awards—the most recent in 2022 for his stunning Ji-Ku piece (Artistic Crafts Watch Prize). Few brands, even among watch-world heavyweights, can claim such a substantial, and sustained, medal haul. Interestingly, in 2021 Kari Voutilainen acquired another star of the independent watchmaking scene, Denmark’s Urban Jürgensen.
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Omega Just Unveiled 9 Watches in Its New Constellation Observatory Collection
The line-up shows up a bevy of metals and colours, too, as well as two new calibres.
Omega’s latest watch is in a universe of its own.
The Swiss watchmaker just unveiled its new Constellation Observatory Collection today, the next step in its Constellation lineage and the first two-hand hour and minute timepieces to ever earn Master Chronometer certification. And if you were paying attention to any of the dazzling watches spotted at the Oscars this year, you would’ve caught a glimpse of the new line already: Sinners star Delroy Lindo rocked one of the models on the Academy Awards red carpet, giving us a pre-release preview of the collection.
Developed at Omega’s new Laboratoire de Précision (its chronometer testing lab open to all brands), the collection houses a set of nine 39.4 mm watches. The watches underwent 25 days of scrutiny there, analysed via a new acoustic testing method that recorded every sound emitted from the timepiece to track irregularities, temperature sensitivities, and more in the name of all things precision. (Details such as water resistance and power reserve are also thoroughly examined.) This meticulous process is all in the name of snagging that Master Chronometer label, meaning that the timepiece is highly accurate and surpasses the threshold for ultra-high performance. The Constellation Observatory Collection has now changed the game, though, thanks to its lack of a seconds hand.
“Until now, precision certification has required a seconds hand,” Raynald Aeschlimann, president and CEO of OMEGA, said in a press statement. “The development of a new acoustic testing methodology has made that requirement obsolete. It is this breakthrough that has enabled us to present the Constellation Observatory, the first two-hand watch to achieve Master Chronometer certification.”
In addition to notching its place in history, the collection also debuted a new pair of movements: the Calibre 8915 and the Calibre 8914, each perched on a skeletonised rotor base. The former’s Grand Luxe iteration will appear on the 950 Platinum-Gold model in the collection, which offers up that base in 18-karat Sedna Gold alongside a Constellation medallion in 18-karat white gold with an Observatory dome done in white opal enamel surrounded by stars. The second Calibre 8915, the Luxe, will find its home on the other precious-metal models in the line, either made with the brand’s 18-karat Sedna, Moonshine, or Canopus gold seen across the case, the hand-guilloché dial, and, of course, the movement itself. (Lindo chose to rock the Moonshine Gold on Moonshine Gold iteration, priced at approximately $86,000, for Sinners‘s big night at the Oscars.) As for the Calibre 8914, it can be found in the collection’s four steel models.
Each model is a callback to myriad design features on past Omega models. That two-hand dial, for one, comes from the 1948 Centenary (the brand’s first chronometer-certified automatic wristwatch), while the pie-pan dial (seen in various blue, green, and golden hues throughout the line) and that Constellation medallion caseback both appear on watches from 1952. The star adorning the space above 6 o’clock also harks back to 1950s timepieces from Omega. And to finish off the look, you can opt for alligator straps in a variety of colours, or perhaps a gold iteration to match the precious-metal models; the brick-like pattern on the 18-karat Moonshine bracelet was also inspired by Omega watches from the ’50s.
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Inside Loro Piana’s First Sydney Boutique
A first Australian address brings the Italian house’s textile-led approach to retail full circle.
On the fourth floor of Westfield Sydney, near the Castlereagh and Market Street entrance—in the space formerly occupied by Chanel—Loro Piana has opened its first Australian boutique. It is a significant address change for that corner of the mall, and a meaningful one for the Italian house, which has sourced Australian merino wool for decades but until now had no retail presence here.
The facade is understated—creamy, tactile, more about texture than theatre. Inside, the store unfolds across a single, expansive level divided into distinct men’s and women’s wings. The separation is clear without being heavy-handed: womenswear leads from soft accessories and leather goods into ready-to-wear, while menswear occupies its own assured territory, with tailoring and outerwear given proper breathing room. Footwear (supple loafers, luxurious slides, pared-back sneakers) is particularly strong, and the sunglasses are a quiet standout: mineral-toned frames with a disciplined elegance that feels entirely of the house.
That same restraint carries into the interiors, where the surfaces do much of the talking. Walls are wrapped in the company’s own linen and cashmere; carpets are custom, dense underfoot, softening the acoustics and the pace. Oak and carabottino wood add warmth without fuss; marble accents introduce a cool counterpoint. The effect is a composed space calibrated around material, proportion and restraint.
The Spring 2026 collection now in store underscores that sensibility. Silhouettes are elongated and fluid; cashmere, silk and featherweight merino move in sandy neutrals, creams and muddied earth tones, with flashes of marigold and pale turquoise breaking the calm. Tailoring is softly structured and projects confidence without aggression. Leather goods arrive in buttery skins that feel almost pre-lived, as though time has already worked its magic.
What distinguishes Loro Piana, particularly in a market that has grown noisier by the season, is its refusal to perform luxury in an obvious register. There are no oversized insignias telegraphing allegiance. Instead, the status is encoded in fibre count, in hand-feel, in how a coat hangs from the shoulder. It assumes the wearer knows and, crucially, does not need to announce it.
Sydney’s luxury landscape has matured in recent years; global houses no longer test the waters but commit to them. Yet Loro Piana’s arrival feels different. It is not trend-driven expansion but material logic. For a country whose sheep stations have long contributed to the house’s fabric story, this boutique reads almost as a thank-you note written in cashmere.
Photography: Courtesy of Loro Piana.
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This Stylish, Water-Resistant Dopp Kit Might Be the Last One You Ever Buy
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If all you’re going to do is look at it, a leather Dopp kit from a fashion house is a fine choice. But if you take travelling seriously—and do it often, for business, pleasure, or both—such a bag will inevitably end up blemished with droplets of water or stained by errant flecks of toothpaste. Get stuck with a cavalier team of baggage handlers, and it can even get soaked in your favourite fragrance or anti-ageing serum.
But Patricks, the high-performance Australian grooming brand stocked in Harrods and Bergdorf Goodman, has a solution. Its limited-edition bathroom bag, called BB1, is purpose-built to protect everything inside and out. Conceived by industrial designer George Cunningham with brand founder Patrick Kidd, the cuboid design is executed in a water-resistant recycled nylon you can rinse clean. It’s lined with a thin layer of shock-absorbing foam to safeguard your products, but if a bottle somehow gets cracked in transit, the two-way water-resistant zippers and sealed seams (which keep liquids from seeping in or out) ensure that whatever leaks won’t ruin your cashmere. Inside, two dual-sided zippered compartments are ideally sized to fit toothbrushes, razors, and other small essentials.
And though its clean lines and rugged construction make it undeniably masculine, its greatest feature is borrowed from women’s makeup bags. Like the best of these, BB1 unzips to lie flat, giving you unobstructed access to everything inside. Well, you and the 999 other gentlemen who move fast enough to snag one. $289
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4. Technical-Fabric Shell
The durable recycled-nylon is easy to maintain and woven to survive splashes and leaks from your go-to products.
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Mauve on Up
Brisbane boutique stay Miss Midgley’s offers a viscerally human experience—especially if you dig pink.
On a sun-bleached corner of Brisbane’s New Farm, where the scent of frangipani mingles with the clink of coffee cups, stands a building that has lived more lives than most people. Once a premier’s residence, an orphanage, a hospital and a private school, the 160-year-old stone structure now finds itself reborn as Miss Midgley’s—a boutique stay that teaches a masterclass in how to make heritage feel modern.
Designed and run by architect-mother-daughter duo Lisa and Isabella White, Miss Midgley’s captures the cultural confidence of a city in bloom. Nowhere is that new confidence more visible than along James Street—the leafy, slow-burn heart of the city’s fashion and dining scene—where Miss Midgley’s sits quietly at the edge, its shell-pink façade glowing in the subtropical light.
Built of Brisbane’s rare volcanic tuff, the building’s soft mauves and pinks are more than aesthetic; they are its identity. Locals still remember its 1950s incarnation as the Pink Flats, and the Whites have honoured that legacy with a contemporary blush-toned exterior, chosen to harmonise with the stone’s peachy undertones. Inside, those hues continue in dusty terracottas, russets and the faint shimmer of brass tapware. “Design can’t afford to be for the sake of fashion,” Isabella White has said. “It has to respond to what’s in front of you.”
That sentiment is tangible in every corner. Five apartments, each with their own idiosyncratic floor plan, occupy the building. Ceilings bloom with heritage plasterwork, 19th-century wallpaper fragments have been preserved in the kitchens, and tiny hand-painted notes left by the architects point out original quirks: a misaligned beam here, a hidden archway there. It’s a kind of adult treasure hunt for design lovers, where discovery feels personal and unforced.
Even the picket fence, a heritage requirement, has been reimagined in corten steel—a sly nod to regulation turned into sculpture. It’s this blend of reverence and rebellion that gives Miss Midgley’s its edge: heritage without starch, nostalgia without sentimentality.
True to Brisbane’s easy elegance, luxury here is measured not in marble or minibar but in proportion, privacy, and personality. Each apartment—from the Drawing Room and the Assembly Hall to the Principal’s Office—is a self-contained sanctuary with its own kitchen, large bathroom and outdoor space. The ground-floor units open onto leafy courtyards and welcome small dogs; upstairs, the larger suites spill onto verandahs shaded by jacarandas.
At the heart of the property lies a solar-heated pool hemmed with tropical greenery and fringed umbrellas—more mid-century Palm Springs than colonial Brisbane. Around it, guests share a petite laundry, a communal library and that rarest of urban luxuries: a car park per apartment. The atmosphere is quietly collegiate—a handful of travellers who might nod to each other on the stairs but otherwise inhabit their own creative bubbles.
The hotel’s namesake, Annie Midgley, lends the project both its name and its spirit. An ambidextrous artist and teacher, she famously instructed two students at once, writing with both hands simultaneously—a fitting metaphor for the dual vision the Whites bring to the building: one hand rooted in history, the other sketching toward the future. “Not famous, yet known,” goes the property’s understated tagline—and indeed, Miss Midgley’s has quietly become that most desirable of addresses: the one whispered about by people who know.
Sustainability isn’t an accessory here; it’s structural. The adaptive reuse of the heritage building is its boldest environmental act. Solar panels power the property; an electric heat pump warms the pool; recycled decking and tiles frame the courtyard. The metre-thick tuff walls regulate temperature naturally, and the amenities follow suit—refillable bath products, biodegradable pods, Seljak blankets spun from textile off-cuts, and compendiums wrapped in Australian-made kangaroo leather. It’s slow luxury in the truest sense.
In a world of carbon-copy hotels, Miss Midgley’s feels deeply human—a place where history isn’t curated behind glass but lives in the warmth of stone and the flicker of afternoon light. The lesson it offers is simple and resonant: that the most elegant modernity often comes not from reinvention, but from listening to what’s already there.
