In another time, no doubt Hublot chief executive Ricardo Guadalupe would have flown to Tokyo to be at his striking “Hublot Tower” boutique in Ginza for today’s launch of the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami All Black as part of LVMH Watch Week 2021. As it was, he appeared as a hologram, beamed in live from the Swiss watch company’s headquarters, just outside Geneva. Alongside him, in the flesh, stood the diminutive Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, whose greying beard and floating lilac beanie called to mind a pop art wizard – which in many ways, given the prices his artwork commands, is precisely what he is. The two had crossed time zones to announce their first collaboration, a piece conceived around Murakami’s trippy smiling flower motif.