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.

It’s impossible to miss Brynn Wallner’s take on watches. Under the pseudonym of Dimepiece, the 33-year-old is playing a considerable part in steering the conversation around women in watches.

The “teeny tiny” movement—a phrase she coined—is currently buoyant, with watches of smaller shapes and sizes dominating the visual landscapes of social media.

“The post-pandemic spike in watch popularity has resulted in new ways of regarding watches,” says Wallner, from her apartment in New York City. “As more people get into this world, more interesting things inevitably happen, as we’ve seen with the rise in popularity of vintage Cartier, thanks to collectors like Tyler, the Creator.”

With social media now playing an integral part in watch reportage, from breaking news to the unveiling of brand novelties, Wallner contributes to the zeitgeist with a refreshing take on watches which is devoid of snobbery.

On any given day, she might, say, feature a post of the Olsen Twins parading New York’s Upper East Side wearing vintage Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks, or Timothée Chalamet rocking a “teeny tiny” Panthère de Cartier.

“I speak about them [watches] in the way that I would naturally, not bothering to alter my voice or perspective based upon a traditional idea of what a watch enthusiast’ should look or sound like.” says Wallner.

Since 2020, she has utilised her website platform for the greater good, interviewing women in non-pretentious settings about their collections. (Photos in a recent story on New York Times reporter Anna Kodé juxtaposed her Swatch Random Ghost with a greasy-looking plate of hot chips and a mound of ketchup.)

“A year into starting Dimepiece, I didn’t even own a watch, which only fuelled my perspective—how is it possible that, at age 30, I didn’t own or even aspire to own a luxury watch?” she remarks. “I felt that the industry completely missed me—young-ish, female, interested in fashion and ready to spend my disposable income.”

Today, Wallner is reaping the fruits of her labour: she travels the world under the guise of “press trips”; she curates and sells vintage watches together with friend Alan Bedwell of curio site Foundwell; she’s privy to new and exclusive releases before the public; and she’s penned features for publications such as the Financial Times, GQ and Harper’s Bazaar.

“Millennials and Gen Zs, the digital natives, are so burnt out by their screens that they’re starting to appreciate analogue things, like records and film cameras,” says Wallner. “The same goes for watches, and as the secondary market gets bigger, it will become even more of a destination for younger consumers already acclimatised to shopping pre-owned.”

@dimepiece 

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