Gucci unveils five lavish new watches inspired by a ‘magical fairground’

Gucci was the first fashion house to turn to the Swiss watch industry for its time-telling machines back in 1972 and now they’ve just launched five timepieces with a ton of personality and spectacular complications to make a point.

They want to be taken seriously as a watch manufacturer but before we start talking about these five watches, we should take a moment to explain why fashion brands have always struggled with this.

Most fashion brands you’ve heard of have tried making their own timepieces at some point and while that almost always works commercially, watch collectors and industry experts hardly ever pay attention.

That’s because they know that, with exceptions, wristwatches produced by fashion brands tend to be overpriced and underengineered.

Watch collectors want high-end complications, precious metals and engineering complexities. They also want timepieces that retail their value or, even better, that appreciate with value.

They wouldn’t buy a suit from Rolex and for the same reason they generally don’t buy watches from fashion brands.

So will this work for Gucci? Well, there’s a lot to unpack.

Inspired by a “magical fairground”, all five timepieces are unique and have Gucci written all over them in terms of character and that’s certainly a plus, but there are also some interesting technical details.

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The G-Timeless Moonlight (pictured above in the first photo), for example, will tell time and the date seamlessly for the next 360 years.

This isn’t digital, by the way, it’s done mechanically and that is truly remarkable in terms of horological engineering.

Precious metals? The G-Timeless Planetarium (featured in the second image) features 12 gemstones around the dial and the Dancing Bees has diamond bees ‘dancing’ around the mother-of-pearl dial.

With this collection – price upon request, by the way – Gucci isn’t trying to directly compete with the big names, but it is instead trying to do things its own way.

Will it work? Too early to say.

But do these timepieces look desirable? I’d say they do.