Article | Independent Watchmakers Elegance Phillips New York Fall 2026 Online Auction

Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo is delighted to present The New York Sessions, Fall 2026, an online auction running from 1–9 October. Featuring more than 80 exceptional timepieces from leading makers including Patek Philippe, Rolex, A. Lange & Söhne, Audemars Piguet, and F.P. Journe, the sale includes all the lots featured in this story.

Elegance is a word that is often bandied around in watchmaking and the wider sartorial world, but what does it actually mean? For much of the 20th century, as far as wristwatches were concerned, the answer could be relatively straightforward: a slim case, clean dial, and modest proportions were decent places to start.

Nowadays, though, the parameters of elegance tend to be broader. And independent watchmakers – often much freer than group-owned brands to develop their own distinctive design codes – are well equipped to offer an interesting perspective on the subject. Four indie watches in The New York Sessions, Fall 2026 show just how varied interpretations of elegance can be.

Calming Things Down

Bovet isn’t exactly known for holding back. The Dimier collection includes some of the Fleurier brand’s most technically ambitious watches, often with their impressive mechanics prominently displayed on the dial side.

The Récital 15 channels a more visually soothing energy. Earlier versions of the model, first introduced in 2014, exposed the mechanisms behind and around its atypical display. Here, Bovet covers them with a salmon-toned dial built up from seven layers of lacquer.

There is still a good deal going on. Hours jump through an aperture at 3 o’clock, while a blued hand travels across a retrograde 60-minute scale. But the large swathes of uninterrupted salmon, the strikingly round polished titanium case, and sparse blue accents give the overall composition room to breathe.

Beyond the Circle

Gerald Charles was founded in 2000 by the legendary Gérald Genta, who served as its chief designer and continued to create watches for the brand until his passing in 2011. The Maestro GC39 25th Anniversary Edition draws directly on that legacy.

Created to mark 25 years of Gerald Charles, the watch revisits the GC39, a design Genta produced in 2005. That original displayed the hours on a rotating disc, with Genta entrusting the development of its sliding-hour complication to his friend, independent watchmaker Antoine Preziuso. The anniversary edition develops the idea in a 100-piece series.

The polished titanium Maestro case provides the first clue that conventional dress-watch thinking does not apply here. Inside its asymmetric outline sits a lapis lazuli dial center surrounded by radiating “meta-guilloché,” an effect created through a multi-stage chemical engraving process.

A single blued hand indicates the minutes, while the jumping hours appear through the curved aperture above. It is certainly elaborate, but its proportions, geometry, and controlled use of color and texture lend the whole a lovely coherence.

Sporting Refinement

Laurent Ferrier’s relationship with the luxury sports watch goes back further than his own brand. During his 37 years at Patek Philippe, he worked in the department responsible for cases, dials, hands, and bracelets – putting him in close proximity to the development of the Nautilus. Decades later, in 2019, his own Tourbillon Grand Sport explored the category with a 44mm steel case whose soft barrel profile and rounded surfaces were distinctly Ferrier.

The Sport Auto followed in 2022, developing that sporting vocabulary in a smaller 41.5mm automatic watch. The Sport Auto 79 takes things somewhere more sumptuous still, rendering its case and integrated bracelet in 18k 5N red gold. The warm metal is paired with a cream-colored opaline dial, slender applied markers, and Ferrier’s familiar Assegai-shaped hands.

Its name recalls 1979, when Ferrier and François Servanin finished third overall at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, years before the pair founded Laurent Ferrier. There is plenty of oil-and-engines motorsport pedigree here, but the execution just oozes Laurent Ferrier’s customary polish.

German Classicism, Reworked

At first glance, the Moritz Grossmann ATUM Pure H seems to bring us closest to conventional watchmaking. Its round 41mm stainless-steel case, small seconds, railway minute track, and finely made manual-winding movement all speak the language of Glashütte. Then you look at – or should we say through – the dial.

Instead of conventional openworking, its central portion forms a web-like collage of the different hand shapes used by the Christine Hutter-led brand, exposing the gilded mechanics underneath.

On this Ref. MG-001808, polished steel central hands and hour markers filled with vivid green HyCeram add an eye-catching hit of color, carried through to the stitching of the black alligator strap.

A Matter of Taste

We have seen how elegance can come from paring back a complicated display, or finding balance within an unconventional case. It can mean turning a full-gold sports watch into something really quite graceful, or suffusing the traditional codes of Glashütte watchmaking with sharp bursts of color. Perhaps what these four watches show is that elegance doesn’t have to follow a prescribed formula.

You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire New York Sessions, Fall 2026, catalog here.