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It’s an enormous deal if Patek Philippe releases one among its watches with a brand new dial coloration or a brand new steel. In truth, Patek Philippe is so essential to horology, the maison makes watch-world-shattering information if it merely decides to cease making a watch. That makes the magnitude of in the present day’s announcement tough to quantify. For the primary time in 25 years, because the launch of the women’ Twenty~4 in 1999, the watchmaker debuted a model new assortment named the Cubitus.
Patek Philippe’s impression on the world of haute horlogerie—“excessive watchmaking”—is difficult to overstate. A member, together with Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin, of what collectors confer with because the Holy Trinity, it has led even these august maisons with improvements that we in the present day take as a right. In 1941, it launched the reference 1526, the world’s first serially produced perpetual calendar wristwatch. As if that weren’t sufficient, it concurrently debuted the world’s first serially produced perpetual calendar wristwatch mixed with a chronograph with the reference 1518. It took the remainder of the watch world some 50 years to supply an analogous timepiece.
Jean-Daniel Meyer
The Roots of the Cubitus
In 1976, after many years of difficult pocket watch and wristwatch manufacturing, Patek rewrote the rulebook with the introduction of the Nautilus. Conceived of by famed watch designer Gérald Genta, this “luxurious sport watch” helped—together with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, the Vacheron Constantin 222—to usher within the period of the high-end, stainless-steel time-and-date timepiece. Whereas devoted software watches such because the Rolex Submariner and the Omega Seamaster had, for twenty years, fulfilled the transient of offering sturdy, correct timekeeping in all circumstances, the posh sport watch was about elevating stainless-steel to the extent of valuable steel. Certainly, one classic Nautilus commercial proudly said, “One of many world’s costliest watches is fabricated from metal.” Luxurious sport watches just like the Nautilus are actually the most well liked items amongst collectors.
With time, the Nautilus got here to be one of the crucial fascinating watches on the planet. Escaping its stainless-steel origins, it has been supplied in valuable metals and featured issues starting from chronographs to perpetual calendars. Nevertheless, it was lengthy the less complicated time-and-date mannequin in stainless-steel, the reference 5711, that not solely captured the watch world’s collective creativeness however pervaded the higher zeitgeist and have become a popular culture icon in its personal proper. When it was introduced in 2021 that Patek was discontinuing the 5711, it arrived with a shock. What different watchmaker would dare to place its hottest be careful of manufacturing?
