Royal Oak by Audemars Piguet

1972. Audemars Piguet decides to buck the trends of the day by imagining a luxury watch made of stainless steel. The Royal Oak was born out of a giant risk. In an era where every watch was made of gold, in a climate of artistic experimentation and intellectual effervescence, the manufacturer decided to bring a watch made out of steel into the world. Since become a legend, the watch was initially on the receiving end of a number of ferocious critiques, and even a fair dose of spite. In any case, the Royal Oak dared to turn all the most conformist conventions of mechanical watchmaking on their head. Its story, its name… the Royal Oak owes everything to one of the British Royal Navy’s warships. This ship was named in honor of the tree that King Charles II climbed to escape his enemies. Some four centuries later, designer Gérald Genta took inspiration from an oak shell consolidated by steel plating to imagine and then design the watch’s bracelet, as well as the octagonal portholes on the bezel. The result: a completely novel aesthetic – an octagonal bezel inset into the casing with eight white gold screws and an integrated bracelet. Originally, the two were also equipped with a telltale blue dial.

 

This is the androgynous Royal Oak. Recognizing a radical action and an authentic work of art, connaisseurs quickly adopted this gem created by Audemars Piguet, the longest standing watchmaker to not have left the origins of its founding family. Throughout time, the saga of the Royal Oak, an iconoclast become the emblem of Piguet, has consecrated Audemars Piguet’s fierce independence with gusto. This independence brought the world the first sports chic watch in the history of watchmaking. Today, the new Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar possesses an ultra-thin movement, so thin that its precision is flawless: the complex and detailed astronomical indication of the phases of the moon only requires a correction once every 125 years. Also worth noting is that the Royal Oak 2015 is available in steel as well as an 18 carat rose gold version…