The Salón Internacional Alta Relojería brings 50 brands to Mexico City, six of them for the first time, from a Dutch maker of planetarium watches to a Milanese microbrand.
Carlos Alonso founded the Salón Internacional Alta Relojería (SIAR) in Mexico City in 2007. He also runs Tiempo de Relojes, the magazine launched in 1996 that organizes the show. According to the official website, more than 170 brands and 62,164 visitors passed through its first 19 editions. SIAR Summer followed in 2021, during the pandemic, as a second annual show driven by distributors and independent brands; its sixth edition took place in May with 43 brands.
The 20th edition runs from October 20 to 22 at The St. Regis Mexico City, the show's usual venue, with 50 brands. Raymond Weil, which turns 50 this year, and Nivada Grenchen, in its centenary year, are exhibiting at the October edition for the first time after taking part in SIAR Summer. QLOCKTWO and WOLF return to the show.
The six newcomers
Christiaan van der Klaauw is a workshop in Joure, in the Netherlands, founded in 1974 and devoted to astronomical complications. In 1999 it introduced what it describes as the world's smallest mechanical planetarium, and in 2021 its Planetarium Eise Eisinga won the Calendar and Astronomy prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG). Kudoke, the German brand of Stefan and Ev Kudoke, is known for hand engraving and skeletonized movements; its Kudoke 2 won the Petite Aiguille prize at the same competition in 2019. Pragma, a Swiss brand founded by designer Kai-hsuan Liu and watchmaker Christopher Wegener, publishes an ecological index of the materials and processes behind each watch, and according to the brand its first collection, the P1 Perseverance, uses 82.7% recycled materials.
The other three newcomers sell at more accessible prices. NOMOS Glashütte makes its own calibers in Glashütte, Germany; its Metro Date Power Reserve ice blue, which ORELO covered on October 14, costs USD 4,500. Unimatic was founded in Milan in 2015 by Giovanni Moro and Simone Nunziato, two industrial designers who trained at the Politecnico di Milano. It makes minimalist dive and field watches with Seiko NH35 or Sellita SW200 calibers. Neprosolar brings back a solar-powered Swiss digital watch with a red display, first shown at the Basel fair in 1976.
Exhibitors and speakers
On the exhibitor list, the newcomers sit alongside houses from the major groups, such as Hublot, Breitling, Panerai, Piaget, Zenith, Longines and Tudor, as well as Grand Seiko, independents such as De Bethune, Laurent Ferrier, H. Moser & Cie. and Armin Strom, and design-led brands such as G-Shock and Ciga Design. Executives and founders taking part in the program include Julien Tornare, CEO of Hublot; Jean-Marc Pontroué, CEO of Breitling; Rolf Studer, CEO of Oris; Brice Le Troadec, president of Grand Seiko Americas; and Jan Edöcs, CEO of Doxa.
A show open to enthusiasts
SIAR has been open to collectors and enthusiasts since its first edition, alongside retailers and journalists. This year the program includes masterclasses on how a mechanical movement works, for beginners and for more experienced enthusiasts. Karine Szegedi, head of fashion and luxury at Deloitte Switzerland, presents a study of the Mexican market for the second year running, and the organizer has announced international launches and limited editions conceived for Mexico, which it has not yet detailed. NOMOS, one of the newcomers, does not publish official prices for Latin America, and at the end of September the shipping destinations of its online store did not include any country in the region; at SIAR its watches can be seen in Mexico City.
This year's mix
Three of the newcomers, Christiaan van der Klaauw, Kudoke and Pragma, are small-production independents, and the other three sell at more accessible prices, a mix close to that of the rest of the list, where G-Shock and Ciga Design exhibit next to De Bethune and Laurent Ferrier. Twenty editions after its founding, SIAR brings together at the St. Regis a mechanical planetarium from Joure, NOMOS's in-house calibers and the reissue of a 1976 digital watch, on the same list as the houses of the major groups.
