EDITOR’S LETTER
NO ONE REALLY needs a wristwatch anymore. We can check the time on our smartphones, on our tablets, on our laptops and on our desktops. YYet people love timepieces more than ever, especially expensive complicated models and beautiful jewellery watches. The Swiss watch industry is booming. Why? Perhaps it’s because, as a blogger on the Hublot Nation website puts it, “… most people who collect timepieces share a vision and find friendships across the globe which they could never make if they did not share [an] interest in watches. All of us find comfort, distraction, fun and joy by exchanging ideas and knowledge and building friendships that share common ground: mechanical timepieces.”
In this issue, we find fun, joy and common ground as a group of “Masters of Time” share their visions of the beautiful timepieces they manufacture, market and collect. I hope you find as much pleasure in reading our interviews with some of the greatest names in the watch business as we found in conducting them.
It was our privilege to sit down with Roger Dubuis, the man behind some of the most spectacular watches on the market, when he visited Jakarta recently. Richard Mille told us how, bored by conventional timepieces, he rose to the top of haute horlogerie after deciding “to make the kind of watch that I wanted to buy for myself, but never could.” We met Jérôme Lambert, CEO of Montblanc International, at Watches & Wonders 2014 in Hong Kong. Jean- Pascal Perret, Vice President of Communications, inspired us with his stories of how Omega is helping to save the planet when he joined us in Bali for The Prestige Gala 2014.
Our full report on the Gala, complete with acrobats and a sensational fireworks display over the Indian Ocean, is another highlight of this issue. There is much, much more to enjoy in this, our final issue of 2014 – not least our compelling Cover Story on arts patron Linda Hoemar Abidin. Make sure you never miss an issue of Prestige by turning to page 270 for news of our latest subscription offer.