British actor Ralph Fiennes and Australian actress Cate Blanchett gave a stirring performance in a 15-minute multimedia theatre production, “Minutes of Separation” in an re-enactment of the journey made by IWC founder Florentine Ariosto Jones across the Atlantic from his native America to Schaffhausen.

In front of 1,700 invited guests which included the likes of Kevin Spacey, Christopher Lambert, Jean Reno, Rinko Kikuchi, Lenny Kravitz, Ronan Keating, Zinédine Zidane, Luis Figo and Boris Becker, David de Rothschild and Paolo Coelho, Minutes formed the highlight of the red carpet event held by IWC, entitled “The Crossing” at the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) on 8 April.

The gala event has become something of a tradition for IWC to showcase its latest models. This year, it was the IWC Vintage Collection – Jubilee Edition 1868 – 2008. The collection comprises reinterpretations of six iconic IWC models - Pilot’s Watch Hand-Wound, the Portuguese Hand-Wound, the Ingenieur Automatic, the Aquatimer Automatic, the Da Vinci Automatic and the Portofino Hand-Wound.

Guests were also treated to performances by aerial acrobats from Australian physical theatre company, Legs On The Wall. Canadia’s Queen of rock 'n' roll, and multi-Grammy Award winner Alanis Morissette gave a rousing performance to round off the evening with a bang.