Editor's opinion

I guess you have heard it already. The Swiss watch exports are suffering. Hong Kong and Macau are paralyzed and the Swiss manufacturers are stunned by export numbers that are as low as they were in midst of the financial crisis in 2009. The novelties on offer at Basel World 2016 did reflect on the slump and several of the luxury watch brands offered more steel watches that before.

Let’s go back to the late 1980s when Frenchman Alain Silberstein decides to give up his job as an interior designer to start his own watch brand together with his wife, Sylvie. Silberstein’s watches are like birds of paradise among sparrows. Primary colours and clear geometric shapes, that reflect some of the Bauhaus philosophy as well, are the foundation of his watches. In-your-face watches that you either love or hate.

Within the IWC brand - with a largely male-dominated customer base - there was some surprise at the success of the mid-sized Portofino model on its release. Women adored the watch, and sales climbed rapidly. This year was the turn of a mid-sized pilot's watch, the advertising video showing a professional female wrist in amongst the uniformed pilots. The brand’s conventional collections have featured many models with a very feminine design, which was carefully emphasized in their presentations.

With its Heuer-02T Tourbillon, TAG Heuer makes the statement that for many years now everyone has been paying far too much for a tourbillon - not that 40,000 euro is a sinecure - and that building such a complication isn't as hard as it is purported to be. TAG Heuer puts the tourbillon under bright fluorescents instead of giving it flattering atmospheric lighting and soon everyone will be awake; wide awake. And then? Then I want a minute repeater for under 10,000 euro

And suddenly there was the question that arose during a discussion with a befriended watch journalist. That intriguing thought and consideration: do you select a watch the same way you choose a life partner? That choice may be conscious or subconscious. It may be based on the head or the heart. In the blink of an eye or after careful deliberation, but the question remains the same.

Recently, it has been said and read that products that flash the makers' logo in big fonts and repeatedly on their products ​are facing a grim future. A new generation of influential shoppers seem​s​ to have had enough walking around like ​human billboards - which for certain brands sounds like bad news. But not for the makers of ​really iconic products. The Hermès Birken bag is easily recognized metres away, but would anyone recognise a Louis Vuitton bag without the LV-logos plastered all over it?

Smartwatches command acres of news these days. Die-hard collectors of traditional watches say no, open-minded collectors of fine timepieces would consider wearing them on the other wrist, and kids love them. Personally I am somewhere in the middle. But you will not see me in a sleeping bag outside the local Apple store with the first movers and tech bloggers, once the Apple smartwatch is ready for sales in my part of the world.

Watchspotting is my thing and I do it all the time and wherever I am. When I'm watching TV - I spot Charlie Sheen wearing a Patek Philippe in a repeat of Two and a Half Man and I find myself chuckling, not at the corny jokes but because of the fact that I'm spotting a Patek - when I'm eating in a restaurant - to the serious displeasure of my dinner companion who is feeling neglected - when I'm on a plane - the fellow passenger can feel eyes on him, but strangely enough on his wrist rather than the back of his neck.