Having been awarded six times in succession to firms from Geneva, the Aiguille d'or this year was awarded to Richard Mille, a Frenchman who has established his company in the Jura region of Switzerland. Invited by the State and City of Geneva, around 1,500 guests gathered at the Grand Theatre on 14 November to attend, for the seventh consecutive year, the official ceremony of the Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix. The evening was hosted by a charming trio: actress and television presenter Lolita Morena, Ivana Dugalic, Miss French-speaking Switzerland 2007, and Christian Luscher, a lawyer at the bar of Geneva. 2007 has been a tremendous year for Richard Mille! Indeed, after witnessing the inauguration of new premises in Les Breuleux by the firm that develops and manufactures watches bearing his name (Guenat SA - Montres Valgine), the French designer has won for the first time the Aiguille d'or, the supreme accolade of the Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix. This distinction was awarded not only for the RM012 model in competition, but also for all of his work. In just under ten years, the RM collection has been supplemented by fifteen models, all revolutionary in one way or another. The RM012, which effortlessly combines the worlds of technology, architecture and visual appeal, is the first watch in the history of horology to abandon the concept of a solid metallic bottom plate in favour of a tubular structure. With this model, Richard Mille refines still further the architectural character of its calibres thanks to an original and extremely complex tubular construction that creates a perfect visual harmony. This exceptional timepiece required two years of development and four prototypes before reaching the final version. Assembling the movement takes several months, such is the meticulousness of each operation. One of the strengths of the RM012: its apparent fragility, a chassis which seems to be weightless. And yet this structure, composed only of tubes, has more torsional rigidity than many bottom plates. It is also incredibly resistant to variations in temperature, and to corrosion and shocks. The RM012 is available in a limited edition of 30 pieces in platinum. The prize for best watch designer was awarded for the first time to Jean-Marc Wiederrecht. A graduate of the Geneva School of Watchmaking in 1972, he runs the company Agenhor, which specialises in developing innovative concepts for several prestige brands. He has numerous designs to his name, most being judicious reworkings of proven functions such as phase of the moon, equation of time, perpetual calendar, retrograde indications and off-centre displays. Kari Voutilainen: a name well known to watch enthusiasts, but slightly less so in the eyes of the general public. And yet… Kari Voutilainen, born in Finland in 1962, possessed a passion for watchmaking which led him in 1989 to the workbenches of Wostep, in Neuchâtel. After working for ten years for Parmigiani Mesure and Art du Temps, he returned to Wostep, this time as a teacher. Then, in 2002, he set up his own business in Môtiers as an artisan in the field of artistic watchmaking. His long experience in design and development led him to present the Observatoire model, which won the prize for best men’s watch. The special jury prize went to Jaeger-LeCoultre for its Reverso grande complication à triptyque. Cartier took the Ladies Watch prize with its Ballon bleu model, which several days previously won the equivalent title awarded by the magazine Montres Passion. The Big Bang One Million Dollars by Hublot again received plaudits by winning the prize for best watch set with precious stones. Audemars Piguet for its part was the only firm to come away with two trophies: the Design Watch prize for the Millenary with independent seconds and the prize for best sports watch for the Royal Oak Offshore Alinghi Team chronograph. The prize for best complicated watch went to Harry Winston for its Tourbillon Glissière model. Lastly, Zenith won the Public Prize for its Defy Xtreme Open Stealth. Incidentally, the prize for best electronic watch found no takers this year due to a dearth of entries. After this shower of trophies, the best first-year pupil of the Geneva School of Watchmaking, Bastien Anderes, was presented by Roderich H. Hess, General Manager of Montblanc Suisse, with a tooling set donated by the firm, which also offered the pupil a work placement on its premises. According to a now well established tradition, the prize-winners were invited to donate one of their prize-winning watches to the Museum of Watchmaking and Enamelware of the City of Geneva.
