There are at least three distinct families of decorative striping in high-end watchmaking, and confusing them is a common mistake even among enthusiasts. Côtes de Genève, Glashütte Stripes, and manufacturing variants like Moser Stripes or Côtes de Bethune share the underlying logic — incising the metal surface with regular parallel grooves — but differ in school, geometry, and execution method.
Côtes de Genève, also called Geneva stripes or Genevan lines, are equidistant parallel lines incised on bridges and plates using a specialized lathe or, in top-tier executions, by hand. The direction is fixed within a single component but not necessarily uniform between one bridge and another: on certain calibers the lines change angle from zone to zone, creating an interplay of light that makes the movement's structure visible under any lighting. They also reduce specular reflections during technical inspection, which is hardly a negligible detail for anyone working under magnification. Vacheron Constantin's côte unique version pushes the concept to the extreme: lines far finer than standard Geneva stripes, continuous from one plate to another, developed over more than five hundred hours of refinement.
Glashütte Stripes, also known as Glashütter Streifenschliff, are the Saxon answer to Geneva stripes. Technically, they are parallel grooves milled into the main plate — often the three-quarter plate typical of the German school — with regularity achieved through controlled manual polishing. In Nomos calibers the lines run horizontally across the plate and rotor; in A. Lange & Söhne the finishing is an integral part of what is called Saxon finishing, along with anglage and polished screws. The visual result is less iridescent than Geneva stripes, more uniform, with an almost graphic readability.
Moser Stripes are a case of manufacturing signature: forty-five degree lines incised on plates and bridges, aligned in continuity between one component and another. H. Moser also uses a double stripe version. The geometric coherence across components is the technical statement: it means that the pieces were finished with their relative position in the assembled movement in mind, not treated as independent units.
A note on what I cannot say with certainty: the precise boundaries between manual finishing and assisted mechanical finishing vary from manufacture to manufacture and are not always explicitly declared. What I can say from the bench is that the difference is visible: hand-made lines have a slight irregularity in depth and edges that, paradoxically, makes them more alive under raking light.