An industrial designer, specializing in watches, Liu hopes to see a lot more diversification in high-end watchmaking over the next few years
Inspired by bridges and buildings, Yinglin Liu’s version of the Royal Oak is a light-weight, 41 mm ‘endoskeleton’ model endowed with skeleton hour-markers and hands. The skeletonized Grand Tapisserie dial has no date window or aperture – the see-through design is meant to give a tantalizing peek into the movement underneath. “I heard of this competition through a friend and participated because I thought it was very interesting. I worked on the design during my spare time but it was not perfect, so I was very surprised to learn that I was actually selected as one of the winners. I’m honored to have been a part of this great initiative,” says Liu, who is an industrial designer, specializing in watches.
Liu was very sure he didn’t want to meddle with the form of the Royal Oak but the design had to be distinctive in some way. So he went with an openworked style for the entire watch, including the movement and strap. “This was one way of turning a "solid" watch into a "linear" watch. It has a strong sense of technology and is visually impactful, as it is made with very little material. It’s also supposed to be ultra-light and very comfortable to wear,” says Liu, whose favorite AP is the Royal Oak Concept Flying Tourbillon GMT.
Over the next few years, Liu hopes to see a lot more diversification in high-end watchmaking where it won’t be just a few models from certain brands that would be most sought-after. “A large number of excellent watch models will get "niche". Also, brands in the top league could use their position in the market to strengthen and popularize watch culture, so that more people can get interested in watches.”
Watch the video to get to know more about Yinglin:
