A Jaeger-LeCoultre that sounds like Big Ben and the dial and watch colours hitting the right notes in 2019.

If an invitation from Richemont lands on your desk around early December, you can kiss goodbye to Dry January. The luxury-goods group doesn’t really “do” post-Christmas blues – instead, all things haute and horological are celebrated with its spectacular Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, aka the most extravagant and exclusive trade show in the world.

Outwardly, the Palexpo convention centre in Geneva couldn’t look less suited to hosting the rarest treasures of luxury watchmaking, let alone the A-list brand ambassadors flown in for every evening’s soirée. However, things rapidly change once you’ve set foot on the plush SIHH red carpet.

Knowing that someone had to do it, MR PORTER dutifully rolled up its sleeves this week, waved goodbye to a tranche of New Year resolutions, and selflessly headed to Switzerland to report from the frontline.

And after a relatively restrained few years (as “restrained” as something that showcases wristwatches costing the same as a new family car can be), we can report that the “haute” in SIHH’s name is most certainly back for good, with a welcome smattering of highfalutin “grand complications”.

This year, Jaeger-LeCoultre presented a showstopping combination of everything horological. The prize element of its Master Grande Tradition Gyrotourbillon Westminster Perpétuel is the mesmeric, spherical tourbillon cage framed in blue by four carefully tuned Big Ben-like “gongs”. With a press of a button, the precise time is chimed to the tune of the famous melody that resounds from the Palace of Westminster’s iconic clock tower. Yours for €800,000, excluding taxes.

Almost as a sidenote, Jaeger-LeCoultre throws a perpetual calendar into the bargain, too – the trending complication found throughout SIHH this year. However, its most elegant interpretation was over at Vacheron Constantin – Switzerland’s most venerable and studious watchmaker.

The Vacheron Constantin Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin not only manages to balance out its four subdials with perfect, dual-axis symmetry, but offers a masterclass in another strong trend for 2019: blue dials.

From midnight to cobalt, via cerulean, petrol and even “diesel”, the evidence from SIHH tells us that blue is watchmaking’s favourite shade outside of monochrome. Officine Panerai in particular offered a broad spectrum of azure shades, across its newly consolidated Submersible diving collection.

Blue wasn’t necessarily the warmest colour, though. Beside the odd flash of lime and acid yellow – honourable mention to Roger Dubuis’ Lamborghini Huracàn Perfomante hypercar for the wrist – a more sartorial colour trend for 2019 seems to be salmon. A hue especially popular during the 1950s, two very different but equally desirable salmon dials were to be found on A. Lange & Söhne’s Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon and Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin. But our favourite had to be Montblanc’s pared-back Heritage range, which is headed up by a single-pusher Pulsograph chronograph. (It’s actually a modern take on the “pulsometer”, which doctors once used to measure patients’ heart rate.)

If you’re looking for more realistically priced pieces, they were to be found over at IWC Schaffhausen’s WWII aircraft hangar of a stand. Ticking besides a gleaming 1943 Spitfire, the simplest specimen from the watchmaker’s rejuvenated ‘Pilot’s’ range was the Spitfire Automatic – the latest iteration of a classic IWC issued to RAF pilots from the 1940s to the 1980s and just a smidge over £4,000.

Very elegant it is, too, but what IWC Schaffhausen chose not to boast about is the brand-new in-house manufactured “32” calibre whirring away inside. Tourbillons, perpetual calendars and Westminster chimes are all very well, but crafting the sort of robust mechanics a military man can rely on, at industrial scale, with such precision? That’s what watchmaking is all about.