Style Edit: Hermès wowed at Watches and Wonders 2025 with playful, intricate timepieces – reimagining time with a suspended complication, and delving into high jewellery

South China Morning Post

28-04-2025

If there is one overarching theme in
Hermès' releases for Watches and Wonders 2025, it is the ability to play with time. The brand reintroduced one of its signature complications, Le Temps Suspendu (Suspended Time), to two of its mainstay collections. At the push of a button, time is stopped and all hands of the watch assume a fixed position near the 12 o'clock marker – hour hand at 11:59 and minute hand at 12:01. It's a configuration that otherwise won't be seen on a watch, and yet even as the watch remains fixed and the wearer transfixed, time marches on within the movement.
Hermès Arceau Le Temps Suspendu. Photo: Handout
This year, Hermès offers the complication on two different models. The Arceau Le Temps Suspendu shows the complication as described, while also hiding the retrograde date hand when the complication is engaged – so not only is the time forgotten, but the day is also left to your imagination. The 42mm piece presents in three varieties – a white gold case with a brun désert (desert brown) or rouge sellier (saddle red) dial, or a rose gold case with a sunburst blue dial. The semi-openworked dials and exhibition caseback show the Hermès H1837 movement inside.
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Hermès Cut Le Temps Suspendu. Photo: Handout
For those looking for a sportier version of the complication, the Hermès Cut Le Temps Suspendu is a 39mm piece in rose gold with either an opaline or red-tinted dial, or combines a white dial with a gem-set bezel. This version of the Cut shows time suspended by fixing the sub-seconds dial at 12 o'clock. The dial itself is also 'cut' to show where the hands are stopped when time is suspended – there are no minutes when the hands reach that position.
Hermès Maillon Libre. Photo: Handout
Hermès' newest collection, Maillon Libre,
delves into high jewellery watches, and in particular their tendency to conceal the checking of time. The discreet, two-hand, time-only, gem-set piece comes in rose or white gold, and as either a discreet bracelet wristwatch or a brooch. The latter – which can be worn on the cuff or on the neck via a cordlet and clochette – shows the watch adorned with a terracotta tourmaline in the rose gold version, and an indicolite tourmaline in white gold.
Hermès Arceau Rocabar de Rire. Photo: Handout
The most playful watch of Hermès' releases this year, however, has to be the Arceau Rocabar de Rire. Here, the dial combines engraving and hand-painting techniques to evoke Hermès' signature Rocabar marquetry and equestrian motifs, while activating the pusher at 9 o'clock makes the horse stick out its tongue.