quarta-feira, 5 de abril de 2023
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Meditações - o luxo dos relógios parados
Para muitos, a noção de luxo ainda está intrinsecamente ligada ao mundo da ostentação, caro e inacessível a uma grande franja dos comuns mortais, guiada por critérios económicos e medida maioritariamente pelos zeros situados à direita da vírgula nos cheques. E sim, é claro que experienciar as mais estreladas mesas Michelin e as gigantes e confortáveis camas de hotéis cinco estrelas é tão luxuoso como prazeroso, o mesmo se aplicando a viagens para os mais exclusivos resorts paradisíacos, provas vínicas das colheitas mais raras ou visitas às requintadas lojas de luxo das avenidas mais nobres das cidades, por exemplo.
Ainda assim, e como acontece com quase tudo, o termo luxo tem evoluído com o tempo, ganhando novas e mais complexas camadas de significado, muitas destas menos palpáveis e quantificáveis. Para mim, o maior luxo de todos será sempre o tempo. O mesmo que cada vez mais sentirmos não ter, para fazermos o que bem nos apetece e apraz. O mesmo que nos escapa entre os dedos, com todos os afazeres das rotinas de hoje em dia, mais caóticas e encavalitadas do que nunca. O mesmo que muitos começaram a valorizar com a chegada da pandemia, há dois anos e meio, quando, pela primeira vez em muito tempo, fomos obrigados a parar o motor do carro e colocar em marcha-atrás algumas prioridades.
A verdade é que as 24 horas diárias são as mesmas de sempre, mas fomo-nos tornando exímios em querer estar em todo o lado, ao mesmo tempo. Os fins de semana passam a correr, e os dias úteis… nem se fala. Mas 2020 pode ter sido o início de uma nova fase. Um estudo da revista americana “Science Advances” dava conta que, com a chegada da pandemia, 75% dos inquiridos diminuiu a sua sensação de “pressão temporal” – leia-se o esforço malabarista de tentar cumprir as tarefas profissionais e pessoais de cada dia.
E o tempo tem coisas fabulosas, como página em branco que é. Para muitos de nós, o tempo que a pandemia nos trouxe foi o suficiente para ganhar coragem e mudar de vida, seja da cidade para o campo, ou de emprego. Mas também a saber apreciar mais as pequenas coisas que nos fazem felizes. Luxo é ter tempo para ler um bom livro, para cozinhar o nosso petisco preferido, para assistir ao por do sol na melhor companhia, para abraçar os que ainda cá temos, para rir, dançar, caminhar, pensar. Tudo isto sem ter que olhar para os ponteiros do relógio. Isto sim, é um luxo.
Nuno Cardoso: o luxo dos relógios parados 21.11.2022 Evasões
terça-feira, 4 de abril de 2023
A caminho da “Genevaworld”?
A caminho da “Genevaworld”?
Em 1991, liderado pelo então Grupo Vendôme (hoje Richemont,
o maior do mundo em termos de alta relojoaria), várias marcas de luxo, como a
Cartier, abandonaram a Feira de Basileia, queixando-se da falta de condições
para receber clientes e imprensa. Nascia o Salão Internacional de Alta
Relojoaria (SIHH, hoje Watches and Wonders), em Genebra.
O evento de Basileia, o maior do mundo para o sector
relojoeiro, teve as suas raízes em 1917. Em 2019, o maior grupo de relojoaria
do mundo, o Swatch Group, anunciou que abandonava este centenário certame,
queixando-se dos preços cobrados.
Tanto em 2020 como em 2021, as edições das feiras de
Basileia e Genebra foram canceladas, devido à pandemia. Mas, entretanto, o
maior grupo de luxo do mundo (LVMH), anunciava que algumas das suas marcas de
relógios saíam também de Basileia e mudavam-se para o salão de Genebra. A
machada final no certame ocorreu quando, em 2021, os quatro maiores
independentes – Rolex, Patek Philippe, Chopard e Chanel – também anunciaram que
se mudavam para Genebra, passando a fazer parte do Watches and Wonders.
O evento deste ano decorreu, como habitualmente, no parque
de exposições de Genebra, o Palexpo, com um recorde de 48 marcas. Mas, aproveitando
a presença na cidade de milhares de importadores, retalhistas, jornalistas,
influencers e consumidores finais, realizaram-se mais dois salões paralelos e,
nos hotéis, as suites estavam todas reservadas e transformadas em show rooms de
relojoaria e joalharia. Num total que se estima em 200 marcas.
O que torna definitivamente Genebra no centro do sector. Morta
e enterrada a Baselworld, como será o futuro? O Watches and Wonders não poderá
crescer muito mais, sob pena de seguir um caminho trilhado pela feira de
Basileia e deixar de ter condições de exclusividade.
Reunir todas as restantes marcas num segundo certame, uma
espécie de “Genebraworld”, poderia ser a solução, em datas não coincidentes,
mas ligadas. Isso permitiria ao mundo viajar uma vez por ano até à Suíça e em,
digamos, duas semanas, informar-se sobre as novidades, fazer as suas
encomendas.
Mesmo com uma “Genebraworld”, será que o Swatch Group voltaria? Depois de uma edição de um salão próprio, em Zurique, a iniciativa não teve continuidade, e a pandemia não ajudou. Deixando enigmaticamente o maior grupo industrial do sector sem, aparentemente, estratégia de comunicação coordenada para as suas marcas (que vão de Breguet a flick-flack, passando por Omega, Longines ou Tissot). Estranho.
Já está disponível aqui ou aqui a edição de Abril do Relógios & Canetas online.
Meditações - a staring contest with the minute hand...
Joy in New Beginnings
If you would have told me my world was going to be flipped
upside down in aisle B9 of a
furniture store, I wouldn’t believe you, but I should.
Contrary to belief, picking out pillows for the new living
room can be interesting. Shelves upon
shelves of pillows were stacked on either side of the aisle
and as I run my fingers along all the
pillows, feeling the different texture of cotton, fur, and
silk, I think about the sweetest of dreams
I could have if I sank into the cart at the end of the aisle
labeled “clearance.” Standing next to the
cart, I pick up the smallest one hiding in the crevasse of
the bin, grip the side, and throw it down
the aisle, watching the pink and yellow tassels hanging from
the sides dance into the hands of my
best friend, Hannah, shouting “touch down!” so loud the old
lady looking at bathroom towels a
few feet away, glaring at us, the fifteen year olds, like we
were five.
With a quick sorry to the woman, we giggled as we put the
pillow back on a random shelf and
got back on task to finding the perfect summer pillow for
Hannah’s mother to add to her sofa. As
I reached for a cream colored, perfectly square cushion with
a bright yellow bumblebee
embroidered on the front to ask for Hannah’s opinion, her
phone started buzzing. “Which boy is
knocking on your door today?” I joked but soon realized her
face had gone pale and her eyes
were glued to the screen on her phone. Before I even had the
chance to ask what she was looking
at, she tilted her phone just enough for me to see and
that’s when my among all the dreamiest
pillows I had ever laid eyes on, my nightmare began.
It was a single post on a social media platform that changed
the entire outcome of my high
school career and ultimately, my direction in life. Little
did I know that as I stared motionless
into Hannah’s phone, illuminating a picture of my biggest
secret I had managed to keep from
everyone, was there for all to see. Not even a blink of an
eye could wake me from this nightmare.
If I could remember everything that happened between setting
foot on the cold concrete outside
the store as we rushed home in Hannah’s car and the first
day of calculus class surrounded by
unfamiliar faces, I would tell you. The painful drive back
to my house, collapsing into my
mother’s tired arms, repeating my story to countless
officers and searching for the truth became
an exhaustive memory not worth keeping anymore. As much as I
was able to flush out the
incident, it wouldn’t change that my peers remembered and
still had screenshots of what
happened deep inside their camera roles. The school wasn’t
willing to enforce consequences and
the police officers had nothing more to say than to gently
encourage I transfer to a different
school. So, that’s what I did. New school. New me.
In a high school with five distinct buildings, I had to pay extra attention on the tour I had just a
week before classes began so I could retrace my steps back
to my first period class. Peeking my
head into the classroom, I found nobody else but an older
gentleman who could be Albert
Einstein’s doppelgänger. I took a minute to admire his
thinning white hair with a matching
mustache before softly interrupting his focus of what looked
like a million emails he hadn’t
opened yet on his computer screen. “Is this the calculus
classroom?’ is all I could muster to
squeak out. His twinkling eyes switched their attention to
me as he youthfully jumped up from
his desk chair and introduced himself as Mr. Yoder. He
showed me to my assigned seat without
me even having to tell him my name - perks of being the new
girl. I took a seat and watched him
return to his computer as I pulled out my pencil case and
notebook, eagerly waiting for other
students to walk in and ease the awkwardness I felt. “Early
bird gets the worm,” I heard him say.
I cleared my throat before saying, “I’m sorry, what was
that?” He turned towards me and
chuckled, “Early bird gets the worm. You’re thirty minutes
early for class.” He must have seen
how bright my face got as he quickly reassured me that I
could stay and even added that he liked
the company. I must have been so distracted by the
complicated campus map and class schedule
on my tour that I had tuned out simple details, including
when school actually started. I shifted
my eyes to the clock that was hanging over the door I had
come in and got into a staring contest
with the minute hand. Unlike how I was able to make pillow
shopping interesting, watching a
clock simply is that boring.
My mind began to wander as I wiggled my toes inside the
straps of my leather sandals. I had no
idea how students at this school dressed, failing to mention
that it is a private school where kids
my age go because their academics are deemed superior or
their fathers wanted them to fulfill the
family name, not because their social media account was
hacked. I decided on a blush pink loose
blouse, medium wash bluejeans, and a pair of well-loved
sandals that probably should have been
tossed years ago. Before I could shuffle the things in my
backpack to grab my cellphone to tell
my grandfather to come pick me up so we could wait together
until the time of class was closer,
another student walked in with their head down, concentrated
on a text they were drafting. The
student was a boy my age wearing Converse high top sneakers,
khaki pants
with a hole in the knee cap with a black t-shirt with “Elton
John” written in all caps on the front.
Soon after him a girl walked in dressed with what looked to
be the school’s soccer team uniform.
I looked at my reflection in the blank white board to my
right. “Dressed to perfection,” I
whispered.
Arriving early to calculus class started as an accident and
transitioned to getting help for my
sinking grade and again shifting to the sole purpose of
spending more time in my favorite
classroom next to the teacher that taught me more than just
how to use the quadratic formula.
Transferring to a different school wan’t running from my
past, but rather providing myself with
the opportunity to redefine who I was. I knew that all along
but just needed someone like Mr.
Yoder to give me a little push. He never knew the whole story of what had happened to me, but
didn’t need to. He saw how lost and broken I felt on my
first day but could also see the light
shining from within me. I was beyond disappointed having to
switch schools but it gave me the
chance to step back and think about who I wanted to be and
what was important to me.
By the end of senior year, Mr. Yoder and I performed
together in chapel. He sat next to me
playing his old six string as I stood in front of the entire
school, looking into the pews now filled
of not unfamiliar faces, but friends and teachers who
quickly became my biggest supporters.
With sweaty palms I gripped the microphone and gave Mr.
Yoder a quick smile before singing an
aged folk song about new beginnings. The lyrics, “So you
should hold my hand while everything
blows away and we’ll run away to a brand new sun” still
echoes in my heart today. New
beginnings are something to rejoice in and that’s what Mr.
Yoder showed me
segunda-feira, 3 de abril de 2023
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Watches and Wonders 2023 bateu todos os recordes
Há um quarto de século que vamos ao salão de relojoaria de Genebra. A edição deste ano bateu todos os recordes, segundo a organização.
Durante cinco dias, o Watches and Wonders Geneva 2023 teve 43 mil visitantes (22,000 em 2022), entre os quais mais de 1.400 jornalistas, 5.400 retalhistas, 125 nacionalidades, 1,8 milhões de posts mencionando #watchesandwonders, tendo atingido mais de 600 milhões de pessoas.
O Anuário Telógios & Canetas manteve, como sempre, a sua presença no stand do salão, sendo o único título de Portugal.
O comunicado:
Watches and Wonders Geneva closes its 2023 edition with
results that exceed expectations and best forecasts. All of its indicators are
well above previous editions. The Salon confirms its trajectory as well as its
position on the world watchmaking scene, thanks to controlled growth and a
common voice.
The innovations were numerous, as were the expectations.
Watches and Wonders has redoubled in creativity, innovation and openness in
order to keep pace with a rapidly growing global watch market (24.8 billion
Swiss francs in 2022).
Watches and Wonders Geneva 2023 closed with record figures, with 43,000 unique visitors (22,000 in 2022) over the whole week, 5,400 retailers, 125 nationalities, and 35,000 overnight stays, while the number of end-consumers doubled during the first five days.
The number of shares on social networks exceeded all expectations, with 1.8 million posts mentioning #watchesandwonders and an estimated reach of over 600 million people - more than half a billion - an all-time high.
An increase in the number of business visitors
The press recorded an increase of over 50% in attendance with the return of the Asian markets, i.e. a total of 1,400 journalists present in Geneva, with 13,000 registrations for the 1,800 Touch & Feel sessions enabling them to discover and handle the year's new releases. Not to mention the 2,600 journalists who were able to follow the entire program online.
Retailers racked up more than 8,000 appointments, confirming the unfailing appeal of watchmaking in all its markets, particularly in Europe, which alone accounted for 70% of visitors.
The general public responded massively
All 12,000 tickets were sold out before the weekend started. Aside from the statistics, Watches and Wonders has proven its appeal to the younger generation: 25% of the tickets sold were purchased by people under 25, with an average ticket-holder age of 35. These visitors were particularly attracted to the LAB experience, which offered them a vision of the future of watchmaking. The Salon thus brings together and federates two to three generations at the same watchmaking crossroads.
This hub now extends well beyond Palexpo and offers the Salon new horizons. The "In the City" experience marks an important turning point in the development of Watches and Wonders Geneva, engaging the city and the general public who were drawn by special events in the boutiques and at other points of interest in the watchmaking capital. The Avener's concert filled the quayside and had both locals and international visitors dancing to the rhythm of watch movements.
Watches and Wonders has more than ever consolidated its position as the international watchmaking summit. See you in spring 2024!
As jóias de Olga Noronha no Relógios & Canetas online
Meditações - Time’s not your friend
To the Wicked, Death Speaks
Under the ground, or under the sea,
Somewhere, somewhen’s waiting for thee.
There’s a room you won’t leave, or a bed you won’t flee,
For somewhere, somewhen is waiting for thee.
Imagine what it’s like, to have no eyes,
After flesh falls off, and all’s eaten of flies.
Or would you rather still have them—with wood for your
skies?
Either way it be dark, as all is that dies.
Maybe frame’s ready-built, in wait to embrace;
Or the tree’s not been cut, no timber defaced.
But the earth readies herself, preparing in haste
To carry you down, to our last proper place.
Listen to yourself describe being alive!
And you have the gall to beg not to die?
Do you want ten years? Take a hundred. My prize
Won’t change; he’s closer, every minute goes by!
Time’s not your friend. Smash the clock—yes, I tried.
That dread hand won’t stop approaching, I find.
The hand won’t stop reaching, and reach us—no mind
Whether all broke and busted—it will, and well-timed.
The hour draws short, and our Doom comes his way.
You cower alone, but I’m prepared for the day.
Darkness eternal—fit, for shadows I array.
But no use, no fighting. For naught I display!
Under the ground, and under the tree,
Somewhere, someone’s waiting for me.
My mock’s over, it’s done; we bend the same knee,
For somewhere, Someone is waiting for me.
domingo, 2 de abril de 2023
Meditações - "Eternity" is a negative idea, clothed with a positive name
"Eternity" is a negative idea, clothed with a positive name. It supposes, in that to which it is applied, a present existence; and is the negation of a beginning or an end of that existence.
William Paley (Natural Theology. 12th edition. J. Faulder: London, 1809,
Chapter XXIV, p. 447)
sábado, 1 de abril de 2023
Meditações - quadrante solar em dia de Abril deslumbrante
Como el cuadrante solar
Junto a la orilla del mar,
entre un rosal y un jazmín,
a la entrada del hogar
se alza un cuadrante solar
en el florido jardín.
Allí, orlado de azucenas,
de claveles y verbenas,
se yergue frente a la playa,
y como extraño atalaya
marca las horas serenas.
Misterioso vigilante
de la inmensa eternidad,
en su augusta soledad
nunca señaló el cuadrante
las horas de tempestad.
Descansa en la noche obscura,
despierta al nacer el día,
vive mirando a la altura,
y es un reloj de alegría,
de cielo azul, de ventura.
Y es el cuadrante solar
alma sin sombras ni duelo,
que, ajena a todo pesar,
vive reflejando un cielo
junto al espejo del mar.
Sintiendo envidia punzante
de aquella dicha sin fin,
en un Abril deslumbrante
me detuve ante el cuadrante
que se yergue en el jardín.
Y con gran tristeza mía,
al hollar la verde alfombra,
vi al cuadrante en pleno día
marcar la luz, la alegría,
¡con una raya de sombra!
Que el mundo es goce y pesar,
lucha entre Arimán y Ormuz,
y, de la vida en el mar,
¡hasta el alma toda luz
es un cuadrante solar!...
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