Audemars Piguet’s latest tribute to the Royal Oak is a fascinating tome on the making of the icon over the last five decades – peppered with juicy, behind-the-scenes details and lots of anecdotes
Did you know that the first prototype of the Royal Oak was made in white gold and not steel? Or the fact that before the inception of the Royal Oak in 1971, AP had not really made a series-produced watch? Also, the Royal Oak was originally code-named ‘Safari’ and it was an Italian distributor, who later christened it as ‘Royal Oak’–a homage to the warships of the Royal Navy.
Full of juicy details like these, the Royal Oak: From Iconoclast To Icon, chronicles the journey of Audemars Piguet’s most successful watch with the help of 400 amazing illustrations and delightful anecdotes from the bigwigs who contributed to the making of this icon over the last five decades.
Published by Assouline and written by acting editor-in-chief of Wallpaper magazine, Bill Prince, the nearly 300-page encyclopedic tome deep dives into the cultural context through the decades in which the Royal Oak expressed its highly nuanced modernity without ever compromising on the time-honored traditions of the Valle de Joux. It’s fascinating how Prince has framed the 50-year-long journey of the Royal Oak within the larger social context along with various milestones in the fields of art, architecture, design and fashion from 1972 to now.
While it’s tough to capture all the highlights from this incredible book in a short review, here are some of our favorite excerpts and anecdotes from Royal Oak: From Iconoclast To Icon.
The Making Of The World’s First ‘Luxury Lifestyle Watch’
Largely defined by discos, shiny suits and gold chains, the 1970s marked several socio-political movements on the world map – the Watergate scandal, women empowerment, gay rights and more. A byproduct of this dynamic era, the Royal Oak reflected the taste of the times, rightly explained by the then CEO, Georges Golay as “a model both sporty and stylish in spirit, suitable for evening wear and for the daily activities of today’s man of taste.” Artfully androgynous, it was worn by the best of both sexes.
Interestingly, it was a third party–the Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogère – that encouraged Audemars Piguet to think about producing an “unprecedented steel watch”.
“The distant rumble of quartz technology was becoming something more akin to a roar – particularly after the Japanese watchmaker Seiko released the world's first quartz-powered wristwatch, the Astron, in 1969. Closer to home, Audemars Piguet's independence was proving to be a burden as well as an asset; as production numbers continued to rise, Golay knew that if it were to remain in the game, the company would need wider distribution.”
“Careful to protect the Manufacture's interests, Golay spent a year negotiating a deal with SSIH that retained Audemars Piguet's independence whilst gaining access to the group's network of agents – several of whom, Georges Golay would soon discover, had their own views on what the new joiner could bring to the horological party.”
“Thus, on April 10, 1970, the eve of the fair's opening day, a trio of agents representing SSIH's distributors in, respectively, Italy (Carlo de Marchi), Switzerland (Charles Bauty), and France (Charles Dorot) gathered for what would turn out to be an auspicious meeting with Georges Golay, for whom the 'three musketeers,' as they were known, had a question: could Audemars Piguet produce an 'unprecedented steel watch'?–Royal Oak: From Iconoclast To Icon
Golay took up the challenge and tasked Genta to come up with a “steel sports watch” that had never been done before. Believe it or not, the Royal Oak, turned out to be the largest order placed for a single design in the company's ninety-six-year history. Until 1971, AP had made around 6000 watches for 237 different models but not a series-produced watch. Golay had shown a white gold prototype to two clients from Italy and Switzerland and they agreed to buy 400 pieces. As Bill Prince points out in the book, the Royal Oak was not perceived as “being solely a steel watch” but the whole idea of attempting ‘a luxury lifestyle watch’ in a relatively humble case material worked wonders for the brand.
From One Extraordinary Movement To Another
Besides its audacious case design, the Royal Oak has always stood out for its powerful movement. Over the years, this watch has exemplified Audemars Piguet’s mission to improve the ergonomics and performance of its timepieces, especially with the use of ultra thin movements. In 1964, the then chairman of Audemars Piguet, Jacques-Louis Audemars, sent a letter to LeCoultre & Cie. saying, "For the past three or four years we have been keeping our customers waiting, and they are finding it increasingly hard to understand why specialists in ultra-thin high-luxury watches are still offering self-winding watches that are amongst the thickest on the market!" This led LeCoultre to invent an efficient ultra-thin movement equipped with a full-size rotor and ruby rollers running along a circular rail at the periphery of the caliber.
“Launched in 1967, the Caliber 2120, measuring just 2.45 mm high, would serve as the world's thinnest self-winding movement featuring a central rotor for decades to come (as well as equip Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe's watches as 1120 and 28-255, respectively). More importantly, its power and strength offered up a beguiling number of possible further functions to be added – beginning in 1970, with the addition of a date window in the new Caliber 2121, just 0.6 mm deeper than the base movement and thus the world's thinnest of its kind.”
“In 1972, the Caliber 2121 served as the lodestar in a model hitherto unimagined within the scope of traditional watchmaking, one that would create self-expression in new forms its own niche in the emerging luxury market whilst helping the company withstand shocks shortly to beset the Swiss watch industry: the Royal Oak.”–Royal Oak: From Iconoclast To Icon
Besides restating the importance of ultra thin movements in the history of Audemars Piguet, the arrival of Caliber 7121 this year, marked a special milestone in the “Royal Oak’s journey from iconoclast to icon”. Specifically made for the Ref. 16202, this powerful and extra-thin caliber seamlessly fits into the “Jumbo” case and is just slightly larger than the Cal. 2121, coming in at 29.6mm in diameter with a thickness of 3.2mm. And oh, it now comes with the much-needed quick-set date feature as well!
Creative And Cultural Enterprises
By the late 1990s, the Royal Oak was contributing 45 percent of the sales at Audemars Piguet. Georges Henri Meylan, the former CEO, had once said “we are always trying to design a replacement, but it’s not easy.” The Royal Oak had started “to look immortal”. However, the real momentum in the brand’s growth came through in the first decade of the new millennium – marked by brand new collaborations with sports stars like Rubens Barrichello and Rory McIlory. François-Henry Bennahmias, the current CEO of Audemars Piguet played a crucial role in making the Royal Oak a global name within celebrity circles.
“Chosen by young, high net-worth individuals for its ability to project a subtle yet powerful era of success, the Royal Oak was part of a new phenomenon : a demographic christened ‘bobos’ (a conflation of bourgeois and bohemian by David Brooks in 2000.”
A professional golfer, who had worked in the fashion industry before joining AP in 1994, Bennahmias put AP on the world map with a celebrity auction “Time to Give” hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Muhammad Ali. The auction featured 34 signed watches worn by Robin Williams, Giorgio Armani, Sharon Stone, Billy Crystal and Sophia Loren. “After that event we started to build a new kind of credibility—street cred,” he says.
Chronicling testimonies from the likes of Kevin Hart, Bjarke Ingels, Elle Macpherson, Serena Williams and Ning Zetao, the book demonstrates just how successful Bennahmias’s initiative has been, especially over the past decade. “The Royal Oak Offshore enabled us to explore new territories including Hip Hop and establish amazing relationships with personalities through dedicated limited editions,” he says.
François-Henry Bennahmias first met Jay-Z in 2001, when the artist visited his office in New York with the idea to collaborate on a watch. The young hip-hop mogul already owned around fourteen watches. The pair spent time together, the man from Audemars Piguet hanging out in the studio with Jay-Z and his partners in Roc-A-Fella Records, Damon Dash and Kareem 'Biggs' Burke. Bennahmias, a music fanatic who'd grown up in Paris, one of the most musically diverse cities in the world, could see that 'hip-hop was exactly like jazz in the 1920s' with the same potential to reach a global audience. So he took the idea back to Le Brassus, where, in 2005, he received the green light from the Audemars Piguet Board of Directors to produce a Royal Oak Offshore Jay-Z 10th Anniversary limited edition of 100 pieces to recognize the artist's first decade in the music industry. Featuring a diamond-set numeral at ten o'clock and sold in a presentation set that included a 40-gigabyte iPod containing the artist's full discography, the series – fifty in steel, twenty in platinum, and thirty in pink gold – swiftly sold out. – Royal Oak: From Iconoclast To Icon
With its fascinating cultural references and deep insight into the timeless appeal of the Royal Oak, this book is a must-read for anyone who’s a fan of art, design, history and of course, the Royal Oak.
All images taken by Perkin Yu for Wristcheck.
