After 8 exciting days Baselworld – the World Watch and Jewelry show in Basel, Switzerland – has come to a close. Each year, Basel is the place to be if you want to discover what’s hot in fine jewelry for the rest of the year.  How big is the show? Over 34 acres of jewelry exhibited in luxury booths hosted by over 1,400 jewelry companies from 40 countries.  This year more than 122,000 visitors and 3,600 journalists were in attendance.
Alongside renowned watch and jewelry manufacturers, such as Omega, Chopard, Rolex or Patek Philippe, a number of the world’s most well-known fashion brands also exhibited in Basel, giving visitors an initial peek at their new watch and jewelry lines. For many years a close bond has existed between Baselworld, the most important watch and jewelry show globally, and the leading fashion houses with their designers. This liaison has its roots in the early 1970s when Gucci was one of the first fashion houses to introduce watches of its own.
The link between fashion trends and designs in the world of fashion, on the one hand, and accessories like watches and jewelry, on the other, is evident in a large number of brands. Examples include the GG and Bamboo motifs at Gucci or the B watch from Fendi, which constitutes the ideal match for the famous Fendi B bag. In many of the luxury goods companies, including Hermès, Dior and Chanel, a constant flow of design and material-based inspirations takes place in both directions between the watch and jewelry collections and the company’s remaining lines, with the result that they influence and complement each other in the ideal manner. A large number of the watches unveiled at Basel captivated visitors with their accomplished French or Italian design and their perfected art of Swiss watchmaking.
While many of the collections shown at Baselworld reflect the major fashion trends and currents from the international catwalks, an influence in the opposite direction was also in evidence. Yellow and rose gold have featured frequently at Baselworld over the past few years and are now being taken up by the big fashion house collections too. The wider fashion and design trends have similarly been influenced by the use of ceramics, titanium and PVD, as well as by the pavé technique for setting diamonds and the use of colored stones.
Over the years, a large number of icons from the fashion world have been guests at Baselworld, including Vivienne Westwood and Diane von Fürstenberg.
