This year, Revolution turns 20. Two decades of chronicling watches, people and ideas have given us a front-row seat to a remarkable story: how an age-old craft has both preserved its soul and reinvented itself for the 21st century. To celebrate, we’ve chosen over 100 names and milestones that, for us, define the era so far. From leaders to watches, you can see the whole list here.

It’s easy to forget if you weren’t there. But in the early 2000s, under Jean-Christophe Babin’s leadership, TAG Heuer was very possibly the most exciting watch brand on the planet. In 2004, Philippe Dufour — yes, that Dufour — rushed to Basel with the prototype of the TAG Heuer Monaco V4, the world’s first belt-driven watch designed by Jean-François Ruchonnet, and unveiled by Babin to what I can only describe as slack-jawed awe and amazement. During the same decade, Babin would also create a 100th-of-a-second chronograph wristwatch, a 1,000th-of-a-second chronograph and the bonkers Carrera MikroPendulum Tourbillon — a tourbillon watch featuring a balance wheel beating at 50Hz regulated by opposing magnets. This last watch came out the year Babin departed but was clearly part of his strategy to create mind-blowing halo watches to empower his more commercially oriented base.

TAG Heuer Carrera MikroPendulum Tourbillon, 2014

In 2013, Babin arrived at Bvlgari and soon demonstrated his ability to manage a portfolio of transversal categories, from high jewelry to watches to some of my favorite hotels. A year later, Babin oversaw the launch of the Octo Finissimo. Now, even if the project was already in the works when he arrived, it took immense courage to double down on this crazily ultra thin timepiece as one of Bvlgari’s core pillars. And while the Octo Finissimo took a few years to reach its popular appeal, today we can say that it is one of the real true icons launched in the new millennium that is not a facsimile of a design made over 50 years ago, as many timepieces today are. Babin applied the same creative fearlessness to the Octo, resulting in a long road of shattered world records for thinness and culminated in last year’s amazing COSC-certified Ultra and this year’s Ultra Tourbillon.

Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC, the thinnest mechanical watch at 1.7mm and a COSC-certified

Octo Finissimo Ultra Tourbillon (©Revolution)

Along the way, Babin (initially to respond to the Covid pandemic lockdowns) also created Geneva Watch Days, a watch fair at the end of summer with increasing importance. Babin has, as of this year, ascended to the rank of commander supreme of LVMH’s watch and jewelry division, and though the entire industry has been facing a multitude of challenges, Babin is undoubtedly the right man for the job in these tough times — few individuals in the watch industry are as creative, relentless and dynamic as him.