Geneva, 20 January 2015 – IWC Schaffhausen and around 800 prominent guests gathered to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the legendary Portugieser watch family at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) in Geneva. Guests and brand ambassadors who attended the gala evening included movie stars Emily Blunt, Christoph Waltz, Zhou Xun and Moritz Bleibtreu, filmmmaker and screenwriter Marc Forster, sports personalities such as Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Luís Figo, supermodels Adriana Lima and Karolina Kurkova and musicians Aloe Blacc, Ronan Keating and Mick Hucknall. The latter was responsible for the evening’s musical highlights after Marco Tempest had transported the guests to the infinite depths of the universe through his high-tech animations.

The theme of the event was “Journey to the Stars” and the entire evening was devoted to the secrets of measuring time and the complex mechanism of the Portugieser, the most prestigious watch family from IWC Schaffhausen. For 75 years, the Portugieser line has represented the epitome of precision and the art of watchmaking at its most complex. “No other product line unites so many of the technical achievements of haute horlogerie,” explained Georges Kern, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen. “Portugieser watches with their sophisticated complications and movements embody all of the skill and manufacturing expertise we have amassed over many years. With the 75^th anniversary of the Portugieser, we are celebrating the birthday of a genuine icon.”

Multimedia magician Marco Tempest opened the “Journey to the Stars” extravaganza with a poetic high-tech performance in which magic and computer graphics melted into one another and reflected the infinite nature of the universe. Moritz Bleibtreu provided the storyline for the gala evening. “Philosophers argued that time did not exist. Time was the perception that the present becomes the past. An idea. A figment of our imagination,” said the German actor warming to his task. “But more practical men began a quest that continues to this day. To make the invisible visible. To hold time in your hand, and measure its passing with infinite precision.”

Beijing’s Red Poppy Ladies Percussion, who flew in from China especially for this event, have enjoyed international fame since their appearance at the Olympic Games. For the IWC event, the artists were transported into the arena by black-clad “time agents” on Segways, where they proceeded to give a scintillatingly choreographed performance that reproduced the heartbeat of a watch movement. The Japanese dance troupe Enra, whose members draw on their skills and training in kung fu, classical ballet and animation dancing, performed against a background of strobes and stardust to symbolize the perfection of the art of watchmaking. However, the evening’s standout performance came from Simply Red frontman Mick Hucknall, who sang a number of songs that enraptured his audience, including his band’s famous 1991 hit “Something Got Me Started”. “It’s an honour to join the IWC family for a night under the stars. I have yet again experienced a fantastic event with IWC and am happy to be a part of the Portugieser 75^th anniversary celebrations,” said two-time Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz. The gala evening was perfectly rounded off by the appearance of SaintTropez legend DJ Jack E, who treated guests to the latest hits from the international party scene.

Guests of honour and brand ambassadors had the chance to experience IWC’s outstanding watchmaking skills and innovative production technologies in advance of the gala evening when Georges Kern offered them a tour of the IWC Schaffhausen booth. The booth clearly differed from earlier concepts as well as any other stands at the SIHH. The main attention-grabber was a gigantic 3-D watch case from the latest Portugieser generation. Projections of various movements, dial colours and case colours gave the model an endless series of new faces, while a direct connection to the Internet enabled it to display the current time. IWC CEO Georges Kern personally gave the brand ambassadors a view of the collection and explained new models such as the Portugieser Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month Edition “75^th Anniversary” (Ref. 3972). Other models that were especially well-received included the newly developed Annual Calendar (Ref. 5035), which shows the month, date and day in three separate, semicircular windows at “12 o’clock”, and the Portugieser HandWound Eight Days Edition “75^th Anniversary” (Ref. 5102), whose design harks back to the first Portugieser watches of the late 1930s and the early 1940s and pays worthy tribute to this extraordinary watch family