One of the main themes at Watches and Wonders was gold, gold and more gold – watches with dials, cases and bracelets all made out of every pirate’s favourite metal. Stealth wealth didn’t last long, it seems. You would be hard-pushed to call them all-purpose timepieces, but what they lack in versatility they make up for in jaw-to-floor wow factor. Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso stole the show with a pink-gold makeover. Key to pulling something like this off is the interplay of textures and the maison nailed it with a grained dial, polished case and a full 18k Milanese mesh bracelet the sinuous finishing touch.

It’s a big year for IWC Schaffhausen, with its watches – and sponsorship – all over Brad Pitt’s highly anticipated movie, F1. It’ll be a double-act between the brand’s Pilot and Ingenieur collections (apparently some actors are also featured), with Pitt himself sporting a new green-dial version. True IWC connoisseurs will be drawn to this model, however: the combination of the company’s in-house perpetual calendar movement and its sleek stainless steel 1970s design. Perhaps the nicest touch is the clean, sans-serif typography for the calendar subdials, which gives the whole watch a more modern feel.

The Martin-Baker line is one of Bremont’s oldest and most proudly held, the association referencing the world’s pre-eminent maker of ejection seats. Only pilots forced to abandon plane are eligible to buy the MB1; the rest of us can buy this updated titanium version, which takes its name from the Gloster Meteor, the jet used for testing by Martin-Baker. With a more refined dial and case design than previous models, it’s a sophisticated update, but it’s still built to handle the rigours of leaving your jet via its roof.

A complicated NOMOS is a rare thing, the German brand preferring to reduce and simplify wherever possible. Bringing a new world time function to its Club Sport collection has created a real go-anywhere, do-anything watch, with the rugged construction and 100m water resistance of a sports watch and the ability to bounce rapidly from Karachi to Honolulu via Athens with ease. Two standard editions and six limited colourways exist. We fell for the 1930s expedition vibes of this “Glacier” dial.

Piaget always used to have to call this watch the Black Tie and relish the unofficial nickname of “the Andy Warhol”, as one of the many designs owned by the prolific artist (and equally prolific watch collector). But now it has the official blessing of Warhol’s estate and has relaunched to celebrate, bringing us a white gold model paired with a tiger’s eye hard stone dial. Each one produced will be unique, thanks to the cut of stone used for the dial. Not sure what Warhol, the arch-replicator, would have made of that…

Only H. Moser could reinvent its key collections as a limited-edition set of 18 different styles, in six sets of inversely-paired semi-precious stones, and have the end result look like Ettore Sottsass had been moonlighting as a designer for Patek Philippe. We’ve picked out this simple automatic that pairs turquoise and orange coral, but urge you to check out the other 17 references, which use lemon chrysoprase, lapis lazuli, Burmese jade and pink opal to fantastic effect. The stonecutting craft is exceptional, the logo-free design brave and the watchmaking underneath exemplary as always.

Having recently streamlined its already minimal designs with the Type 8 and Type 9, Ressence surprised us with the bigger, thicker, more complicated Type 7 (no, nothing is ever released in numerical order). But the brand’s first bracelet watch is an example of how the same guiding principles can deliver different results: this 41mm titanium GMT model is for everyone who’s always liked the brand’s style, but wished it came in a more emphatic – some would say more conventional – form.