Wild animals, shooting stars, the ripple of waves at twilight – the natural world is writ large on the highlight watches of the season. Chopard pays homage to three endangered species, Vacheron Constantin has an endangered sea turtle on its one-of-a-kind Les Cabinotiers piece; and Cartier goes hallucinogenic tiger on new Crash – taking the watch back to the 1960s when it was first made.

These pieces are also about pushing the bounds of technology. Jaeger-LeCoultre has made an entirely new complication for a pair of watches showing the starlit sky: at random (between four to six times an hour) a shooting star appears and careers around the face, coming to rest behind billowing clouds. Hermès worked with the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology to create a dial made from silicon wafer to capture the graphic style of artist Thanh-Phong Lê’s depiction of the sea at twilight. And over at Breguet, it took three years and four patents to complete the new Marine Hora Mundi which can switch instantly between two time zones at the press of a button, synchronising date, day/night and city displays.