Audemars Piguet has been devising endlessly inventive
horological masterpieces for over a century. Over the years,
Audemars Piguet has surpassed technical and theoretical
boundaries to develop more demanding and ...perhaps
unprecedented mechanisms. Audemars Piguet's company slogan
is quite mesmerizing; it says, "To Break the Rules; You Must First
Master Them." The slogan was introduced in 2012. Tradition,
excellence, & daredevilry are the three basic fundamental values
that let AP manufactures perpetuates the art of Haute Horlogerie.
At each stage of its history, AP has proved capable of adopting
the latest avant-garde technologies and combining them with
hand craftsmanship, thereby creating exceptional timepieces. AP
started manufacturing watches in 1875 in Le Brassus, a village at
the heart of La Vallée-de-Joux in the Swiss Jura, by Jules-Louis
Audemars and Edward-Auguste Piguet, who were two
enterprising young men who combined their talent to develop
watches that featured rare complications. In the early days, an
Audemars-Piguet watch was prized by watch admirers for its fine
mechanical timepieces. Through determination, imagination, and
discipline, Audemars Piguet inscribed their name in the broader
history of watchmaking. In the 1970s, AP rose to a prominent
position in the watchmaking industry, especially after introducing
the Royal Oak collection.
LeBron James very famously said, “First must evolve,” in
Audemars Piguet’s Future of First campaign video, which they
shot for the 25th anniversary of AP’s most famous watch, the
Royal Oak Offshore. And for over a century, the leading Swiss
watch brand has done precisely that: evolve. In 2018, AP
released quite unprecedented, tour-de-force in its flagship series,
the Royal Oak Self-winding Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin. With a
movement of 2.89 millimeters in thickness and a case of just 6.3
millimeters in height, the Royal Oak Ultra-Thin is the world’s
thinnest wristwatch with an automatic perpetual calendar, part of
what’s referred to by watchmakers as “complication.”
To most watch aficionados like yourself, the Royal Oak needs no
introduction. It was an era-defining masterpiece of Gérald Genta,
who designed the watch in 1972 at a time when the luxury
industry was modernizing itself, and the brand wanted to release
a high-end sports watch made out of steel, which didn’t exist at
that time. Interestingly, as the legend goes, Genta got inspired
by deep-sea diving helmets, and in the course of a night,
designed the Royal Oak’s iconic stop-sign shaped bezel, which the
series still carries today.
Jay-Z, one of the world’s most celebrated rappers, describes
encountering an Audemars Piguet for the first time, like a
conversion experience. This is because in 1997, when Audemars
Piguet brought him into the private vault in its New York
headquarters, then he “really got serious about wristwatches.” In
the following years, he went on to name-check Audemars Piguet
in rap lyrics that emblematized a critical era in the history of hip
hop and luxury. So, have a look at our collection and make any
one of these Audemars Piguet masterpieces yours.
