I’m just back from a couple of days in Basel, the city squeezed into a corner of Switzerland and flanked by both France and Germany (my hotel for the night was in Germany so I had to juggle Swiss Francs with Euros).  Thankfully EasyJet serves Basel these days, and for genuine budget airline prices.

I was visiting BaselWorld 2009, the industry trade fair for watches and jewellery.  This being Switzerland, the emphasis is very much on watches, and all of the watch brands that you have ever heard of, plus plenty that you haven’t, were there in force.

The watch brands really push the boat out at Basel; they build these fabulously over-the-top stands which are often several stories high, more like office blocks really, and all for just one week.  Many of them spend millions on their presence at the annual Basel show, because jewellers/retailers and journalists come from all over the world to ‘write their business’ for the year, meaning that they study the new collections and models and place their orders for the coming 12 months, including of course the next Christmas season.

Here’s a Wired report and photogallery featuring some of the watches at Basel this year.

I have been going to Basel (on and off) for about 10 years, and each year the watch brands seem to get more impressive.  They are there to sell their image and brand positioning as well as their product, and as they face themselves across the aisles at Basel each year they seem to build a little higher, fit their stands with even more widescreen TVs, deploy even more gorgeous models, find even more inventive and outlandish ways to display their watches… one stand featured a very smart new Porsche car.  Memorable participants for me this year included Dolce&Gabbana, Patek Philippe and Harry Winston.

But I wonder whether the watch brands haven’t slightly misjudged the current mood.  These booths were probably designed and paid for many months ago, and the world has changed.  The wall-to-wall bling put out by these watch brands is I think somewhat out of step with current attitudes to luxury consumption.  And the product is all too often big and chunky and macho – watch faces that are almost two inches in diameter and straps almost as wide.  Diamonds feature too, obviously: lots of diamonds.

Presumably these watches are being designed for many of the ‘masters of the universe’ that have recently fallen from grace quite so spectacularly: bankers, hedge funders, etc.  Will they really be giving and receiving and wearing these watches this year?  Let’s see.

Of course these watches are not really designed for telling the time.  Who needs a watch for that?  We all have iPhones or Blackberrys or other devices with us all of the time these days, and they have perfectly useful timekeeping functions.  But that misses the point doesn’t it?  These watches are accessories, status symbols, gifts to give and receive.  Telling the time is not really the point at all.

And what of the jewellery at Basel?  That’s for my next post.