I’m long on record saying the mark of a genuine enthusiast is being able to get just as excited about a $100 Timex or G-Shock as about a $100,000 Rolex or Patek. I still think there’s something to that. Still, I also recognize that summing it up so patly, though convenient, ignores a huge amount of the nuance that undeniably exists in the watch space. It also ignores some of the fundamental impacts of price, including, crucially, attainability. After all, there are very few enthusiast pursuits (or, really, pursuits of any kind) where price and pursuit can be wholly siloed, and watches are not some rare example where we can afford to be price agnostic — at least, not most of us.
Still, once in a while, it can be fun to just say screw it and enjoy watches for what they can be at their most extreme. Which brings us to the topic of today’s 2025 round-up, “F**k You Money” watches. The concept of a “F**k You Money” watch can be a bit nebulous. Unlike dive watches or chronographs, say, which either are or are not what they say they are, there’s no real set definition for what qualifies as “F**k You Money,” but like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and pornography, I may not be able to specifically articulate what qualifies as a F**k You Money watch, but I know it when I see it.
gérald genta Geneva Minute Repeater
You thought I was gonna start with some crazy Richard Mille or Jacob & Co., didn’t you? Well, this probably isn’t going to be that kind of list, because this year, some of the craziest watches to come across our inbox were also some of the most subtle, and there’s an elegant kind of F**k You in that. The last few years have seen an extraordinary amount of discourse around the idea of ‘Quiet Luxury,’ and while we’re certainly a step or two removed from the peak of that trend, there’s no denying that 2025 was all about a certain understated over-the-top-ness. And in that, the gérald genta Geneva Minute Repeater, with its deceptively architectural 40mm yellow gold case and onyx dial, is a masterclass.
The revival of the Gérald Genta brand — now stewarded by LVMH through their ultra-high-end specialty manufacture, La Fabrique du Temps — has been a good game played slowly since it was announced back in 2023. A one-off release for the edition of Only Watch initially scheduled for late that year was a fun kick off for the brand, but since then, the new Gérald Genta (or gérald genta, as the brand would format the name) has released just two production models.
The first of these is the Gentissima Oursin, a sea-urchin–inspired watch with a pebble-y case, faceted crystal, and a variety of stone dial options. The second is the Geneva Minute Repeater. And this thing is awesome. Though not a direct reproduction of any previous Genta design, the new watch does a fantastic job of evoking the design icon’s sensibilities. At a glance, this could easily be a watch made in any of several decades, but it also manages to feel decidedly of the moment. Its yellow gold case may not be the perfect choice for the minute repeater enthusiast seeking perfect tone, but it is the perfect choice for anyone looking for a watch that just oozes a certain “I’ve got money, and you don’t” vibe.
Chopard L.U.C. Grand Strike
If you haven’t been paying attention to Chopard the last few years, you’re missing out on something special. The brand has been on a serious hot streak, and any watch of theirs bearing the initials “L.U.C.” is not to be ignored. This is a brand that has absolutely nothing to prove to anyone, and yet, here we are, and they’ve shown us all up with the L.U.C. Grand Strike, the brand’s most complicated chiming watch to date, and a serious reminder that L.U.C. isn’t just a part of the race; they may just be leading it.
The Grand Strike builds heavily on the previously released and celebrated L.U.C. Full Strike, which, on its own, could easily qualify for a list like this, but raises the bar with the inclusion of a Grande et Petite Sonnerie. A 60-second tourbillon with stop seconds, which Chopard first paired with a minute repeater in the L.U.C. Full Strike Tourbillon back in 2022, is also included, and the result is an immensely complicated watch that is pretty hard to ignore.
To make all of this possible in one watch, Chopard introduced an entirely new in-house caliber, the 686-piece L.U.C. 08.03-L. The movement itself is an achievement and represents something of a trend in high-end watchmaking, where there has been a real push to not only produce mechanically marvelous calibers, but user-friendly ones as well. Here, that means an ability to switch between sonnerie functions without having to worry about damaging the movement, a rare trick, and one reminiscent of the increasingly robust perpetual calendars permeating the top end of watchmaking.
The manually mound movement is on full display here, thanks not to a skeletonized dial, but to the complete absence of any dial whatsoever. A crystal minute track is as close to a dial as you’ll find here, and is integrated with the sapphire gongs that make this, if the sound is anything like that of the Full Strike, a chiming watch unlike any other I’m aware of (save for Chopard’s other offerings).
Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Solaria Ultra Grand Complication
There was no way I could put together a list like this and not include something from Vacheron Constantin. 2025 was somewhat of a banner year for the maison, which spent much of the year celebrating its 270th birthday with serious flair. Up and down the catalog, Vacheron dropped some serious heat, and plenty of their 2025 novelties could have comfortably found a home on this list (basically any watch whose name includes “Les Cabinotiers” or “Métiers d’Art” would fit). I mean, this was a brand that released everything from a water-resistant calendar minute repeater to a three-and-a-half-foot-tall, quarter-ton clock. But when all is said and done, the choice is clear, and it’s the Les Cabinotiers Solaria Ultra Grand Complication, the world’s most complicated wristwatch.
As the name implies, the Solaria Ultra Grand Complication was produced for Vacheron by its Les Cabinotiers team, a division inside Vacheron built to execute the brand’s craziest ideas, most often in service of creating one-off masterpieces. You can think of Les Cabinotiers as a sort of Skunk Works analogue, dedicated to pushing the limits of Vacheron Constantin watchmaking without any of the typical constraints (like cost or time) that might come with the creation of a production-ready model.
The Solaria Ultra Grand Complication takes this to its logical extreme, in that the Solaria is, as I said earlier, the world’s most complicated wristwatch, including 41 complications in a watch smaller than the third-generation Planet Ocean Chronograph. This is the rare watch that sits somewhere between an academic exercise and a masterpiece, and is — quite literally — hard to conceive of, despite its verifiable existence. I’m not sure what this watch tells us about Vacheron’s future, but it was a hell of a way to start off an incredible year for the brand, and certainly stands as a true testament to the power of a blank check.
Breguet Experimentale 1
If there’s one brand that had as big a year as Vacheron in 2025, it was probably Breguet. I’ve long held a tremendous amount of affection for Breguet, but there’s no denying that the brand has spent a good amount of the last decade unjustly stuck on the back burner while Swatch Group has focused heavily on brands like Omega, Longines, and Blancpain. That changed in a big way this year. Breguet, which celebrated its 250th anniversary this year, pulled out all the stops in 2025 and was justly rewarded.
Like with Vacheron, I had a bit of a hard time picking just one watch for this list, but considering that the last three slots have all gone to high-end minute repeaters, I figured now was a good time for some variety. And so we have the Breguet Experimentale 1, a watch truly unlike any I’ve ever encountered. The Experimentale 1 kicks off a new line of, well, ‘experimental’ watches for Breguet, and introduces us all to a wholly novel escapement driven by magnets.
You know, magnets. Those things that we’ve spent the last several hundred years obsessively keeping away from our mechanical watch movements. Truth be told, I’m not entirely sure how to explain this movement yet — I need to spend some real time digging into this watch over the holidays to try and put some clearer thoughts together — but what I do know is that, historically, two of the biggest enemies of watch movements have been friction and magnetism, and somehow Breguet has figured out how to use the latter to mitigate problems caused by the former.
What I do understand is that this is an incredibly cool watch, and one that feels like a fitting capstone to a year that saw the brand win the Aiguille d’Or (for the very cool Classique Souscription 2025), introduce a new Hallmark all their own with the Poinçon Breguet, and remind us all that we should never have stopped paying attention to Breguet.
Ferdinand Berthoud Naissance d’une Montre 3
There’s nothing I can say that will quite describe for you the sensation of holding a wholly handmade watch. It’s an experience unto itself, one which remains the greatest argument I can conjure for the continued existence of traditional watchmaking. And the need for that argument is the driver behind the Naissance d’une Montre project, which has now been going for a decade under the watchful eye of the Time Æon Foundation, and which, in its latest evolution, has brought us the unbelievably good Ferdinand Berthoud Naissance d’une Montre 3.
As the “3” in the name would suggest, this is not the first release to bear the name “Naissance d’une Montre,” but it is the first contribution to the project by Ferdinand Berthoud, a relatively young brand owned and operated by the Scheufele family (the family also owns and runs Chopard). It’s also the best yet. To be very clear, I don’t say that as a knock against either the Naissance d’une Montre 1 or 2, it’s just a statement about how strong an offering this latest release from Ferdinand Berthoud (the brand takes its name from the celebrated 18th-century watchmaker) is.
The Naissance d’une Montre projects are true blue sky projects with just one restriction imposed; absolutely everything has to be done entirely by hand. Ferdinand Berthoud took this rule and ran with it, but they didn’t make it easy on themselves, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the choice to include a fusée-and-chain constant force system in the watch. At the best of times, with the most advanced tools, building and finishing a fusée-and-chain transmission is delicate and challenging work — I’m hard pressed to fathom how difficult it would be to implement entirely by hand, something which, historically, was never attempted in a wristwatch, and to my knowledge has never been attempted without the aid of modern manufacturing techniques, at least until now.
Beyond the technical, the watch is also amazingly impressive from a purely aesthetic standpoint, blending classical finishing techniques with modern sensibilities in a way few others have managed. The grained plates, a signature of classical watchmakers of Berthoud’s era, are matched up with polished anglage, and screw heads are abundantly blued or black polished. All in, it’s a great look, a great watch, and — with a reported 11,000 hours going into each of the 11 pieces slated for production — almost a bargain, despite its eye-watering price tag of CHF 850,000.
Bonus: Swatch ‘What If… Tariffs?’
Tariffs have been the single biggest topic of discussion in the watch industry this year, at least in the US. And wherever you stand on the politics of it all, there’s no denying tariffs had a tremendous impact on the import and export of goods to and from the US, and on the price of those goods once they were here. And with some of the highest tariff rates applied to goods imported to the US from Switzerland, it’s no wonder their announcement sparked a huge amount of discourse and stress among watch enthusiasts and brands.
Responses to the tariffs themselves have varied widely, but my favorite response has to be this pretty incredible Swatch, which was only available for purchase in Switzerland, in person, while the tariffs were in effect. The watch, which was modeled on an existing model in the already successful Swatch ‘What If’ collection, swapped the “3” and “9” numerals to read “39” across the dial, and came with a special “%” caseback battery cover to drive the message home. All said, it was a cheeky, precocious move from a brand that had a lot on the line, and I think they hit the nail on the head — and they did it with just the right amount of “F**k You” attitude.
Griffin Bartsch
2025-12-23 19:00:00