Is a $US20m watch a sign of moral decline?

In the Four Seasons Hotel in Geneva, a young woman in a midnight-blue evening gown stands beneath an antique chandelier. Around her neck is a diamond the size of a gobstopper. Stepping softly over the inch-thick carpet of the suite, which contains more flowers than your average monarch’s funeral, a smiling waiter fills champagne flutes with vintage Laurent-Perrier and offers canapes topped with gold leaf. Silver-haired men talk at women several decades their junior as we wait for the big reveal: a watch that costs $US20 million.

The creator is Jacob Arabo, born in Uzbekistan as the youngest of five. Arabo’s family immigrated to New York in 1979 in search of a better life. At 17, he dropped out of school to help support his family, working in a jewellery factory before deciding to go out on his own.

His big break came in 1987 when the rapper Biz Markie commissioned a four-finger ring that was eye-popping enough to be visible when he performed onstage. Soon every rapper from Jay-Z to Kanye West wanted a blinged-out piece from “Jacob the Jeweller”.

In 2002, Arabo expanded into watches, which gradually evolved from bejewelled pyrotechnics to pieces with wildly technical complications. Characterised by their opulence and crazed ambition, the pieces were informed by Arabo’s insistence that “nothing is impossible”.

Eventually, Arabo appears. Now 57, in a three-piece suit with slicked-back hair and the kindly air of your favourite uncle, he looks almost too mild-mannered for the commotion that follows as his new watch is unveiled. The coyly named Jacob & Co Billionaire Timeless Treasure is a light show of canary-yellow diamonds that electrify the case and bracelet.

Some 880 carats of rough yellow diamonds were painstakingly cut down to create this intricate mosaic of neon dazzle. At the heart, framed by gleaming tsavorites, is a skeleton tourbillon movement that predictably comes bedecked by further diamonds. I’m not sure if I’m watching a wrist-bound rendition of the American dream or the moral decline of Western civilisation.

A $US20 million watch is, of course, absurd. But after a certain point, numbers start to lose any tangible meaning. Would a $2 million timepiece be any saner? How about a $500,000 one? I’ve just spent the day at a watch fair where $20,000 price-tags are routine. Do these suddenly constitute hard-headed value?