The value of heritage: 24Hours celebrates great watchmaking innovations

Watchmaking has a long history. Full of innovations, of models that have made history and continue to do so. 2025 is a year full of celebrations: births or special birthdays that brands rightly wish to highlight. This issue of 24 Hours presents some of them. The Cover Story is dedicated to the new Prospex 1968 Heritage Diver's GMT SPB519J1, a diver in the Seiko tradition of underwater watchmaking 60 years after the launch of its first diver, and is enriched by an interview with record-breaking freediver Alessia Zecchini, a friend of the brand from the Japanese brand. It continues with Audemars Piguet, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary and presents itself at the celebrations by introducing the Royal Oak and Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet with a movement that brings the perpetual calendar complication into the future. Staying on the theme, here is the most complicated wristwatch ever made, the unique Les Cabinotiers Solaria Ultra Complication - La Premiere: a 41-complication ace put on the table by Vacheron Constantin to mark its 270th anniversary. Another birthday to celebrate is the 250th for Breguet, which, looking back to its incredible past written, at the beginning, by the brilliant founder Abraham-Louis Breguet, has created for the occasion the elegant Classique Souscription 2025, in which time is marked by a single hand. Bulgari, on the other hand, is celebrating the 50th birthday of the iconic Bulgari watch with a new version with a marble dial. While Longines, with its recent Longines Spirit Zulu Time 1925, has produced a watch with a dual time zone reading, recalling that, 100 years ago, it was the first to make a wristwatch with this useful function. Then from Hublot a special limited edition line for the 20th anniversary of its iconic Big Bang collection. Montblanc commemorates the last of the seven highest peaks conquered by legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner, with the limited edition 1858 Geosphere 0 Oxygen Mount Vinson. This chapter closes with a gallery of eight watches with a story to tell, signed by Cartier, Chopard, Girard-Perregaux, Zenith, Angelus, Alpina, Citizen and Bulova. We start with the new Oyster Perpetual GMT-Master II by Rolex, which for the first time for the House of the Crown chooses ceramic as the material for one of its dials. Iwc presents recent versions of the Ingenieur, including a complicated one and one, in a limited edition, that reproduces the already mythical model worn by the driver played by Brad Pitt in the recent F1 - The Film. It continues with Chanel's Blush capsule collection, a rose-tinted foray into the beauty division for the maison's most important timepieces. The interviews are with two sporting greats. British sprint cyclist Mark Cavendish, brand partner of Richard Mille, and Czech tennis player Barbora Krejčíková, winner of Roland Garros 2021 and Wimbledon 2024, brand ambassador of Rado. The tour of Italy's most important boutiques stops in Milan, face to face with Chiara Pisa, CEO of Pisa 1940. Enjoy reading!