Audemartian chronicles

See this guy, LeBron James,” motions Oliviero Bottinelli, Audemars Piguet (AP) managing director for Asia, towards a page of the AP catalog in my hand. That the King of modern basketball (well, to Miami Heat fans, anyway) is one tall dude goes without saying, continues Bottinelli, but notice how the Audemars Piguet watch doesn’t look Lilliputian around the wrist of the Chosen One. “That’s how big our Royal Oak Offshore watches are.”

Maybe around the wrist of FC Barcelona’s “Little Lion” — Lionel Messi, one of the best football players in the world and another AP endorser — the watch would look like the iconic clock in Back to the Future. Talk about “outsized perfection.”

Audemars Piguet (AP) managing director for Asia Oliviero Bottinelli says AP stands for a lot of things: “Tradition. Excellence. Innovation. But there is a word that we value most — ‘Respect.’ Respect for what we do. Respect for our customers, for our retailers, for our watchmakers. People who come in every morning to work on one square centimeter (of a timepiece) the whole day…we have a lot of respect for them.” Photos by WALTER BOLLOZOS

Bottinelli is in Manila for the launch at Opus in Resorts World of three new 44-millimeter-case watches that are part of the prestigious lineage of Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore. This particular model, the AP man will be quick to tell you, is the “largest of the large.” Some would dismiss it as “gigantic” or even “disproportionate.” When it first came out in the timepiece scene in 1992, it was similar to Bob Dylan going electric, or Picasso breaking down his formerly graceful figures into jarring cubes and angular distortions. It was something polarizing and quite baffling. Many were aghast.

Bottinelli joined the company in 1996 when he came to Asia. He was only 23 years old at that time, born the same year as the Royal Oak, 1972.

“In 1991, I was lucky enough to see the Offshore 42 millimeters around the wrist of the then CEO of the brand — and everybody was laughing. They said that the watch was too big. They said, ‘Are you guys crazy? Nobody’s going to wear it.’ The brand (executives) decided to make only 500 pieces. That was supposed to be it. But it became such a success, everybody started wearing big watches, and now we’re making more than 500 of those watches every year.”

Audemars Piguet, we can safely say, is always well ahead of its time. (Let that pun sail under the crossbar just like one of Messi’s spitfire goals.) 

Let’s go back to calendars past: Jules-Louis Audemars and Edward-Auguste Piguet founded the company in 1875, specializing in the design and production of watches with complications. The two young Swiss watchmakers found out that their talents matched — Jules-Louis designed ever-bolder new models while Edward oversaw the ever-precise setting of each piece. And that their skills go, well, hand in hand.

Aero-smithy: The AP Royal Oak Offshore in forged carbon. Forged carbon is a material borrowed from the field of aeronautics, and the Manufacture Audemars Piguet was the first to introduce the material into the world of watch-making.

“They were two young watchmakers who went to school together. Their parents and grandparents were also watchmakers. And they had an incredible passion for the craft,” he explains.

The duo established the brand at Vallée de Joux, a place that is one hour away by car from Geneva and which is considered to be the “cradle of prestige watch-making.” In the old days, the winters were very harsh in the valley, so the inhabitants — who made a living by farming — didn’t know what to do during the cold, cold months. They were bored out of their gourds, so they started to tinker with watches: movements first, which Geneva businessmen bought from them in spring. Then eventually, the entire watch.

After all these years, what makes Audemars Piguet tick? After all, not many watch brands are endorsed by the likes of Michael Schumacher, or name-checked by Jay-Z, or brought up in a Bill Murray movie.

“As you may know, the company is still independent, still family-run. There aren’t many brands left in Switzerland that are independent, especially at this stage of the watch industry. We are proud to be independent, same with our employees.” They don’t work for a faceless monolith of a corporation; they feel they are part of a family.     

After nearly 20 years — after a handful of limited-edition watches and such — Audemars Piguet has come up with three new Royal Oak Offshore watches: one in stainless steel, one in forged carbon, and one in pink gold.

“(Abroad) they have been very well received,” says Bottinelli. “I was in Geneva last week when we launched them. By the end of the evening, AP had a waiting list for all three models. They have strengthened the Offshore collection, bringing it to an even higher level. The finishing of the case is perfect and finally we’ve opened the back case — unlike in the Offshore 42 millimeters — so you could see the movement.”

You have the usual materials that make up a watch such as stainless steel, carbon and gold, but AP makes use of — surprise, surprise — ceramic.

“We like the material; we’ve worked with ceramics in the past already,” he explains. “Ceramic is really becoming part of the Offshore. We started with the bezel first, and then when we were able to do the small parts, we began using ceramics for the crown and the pusher.”

The first-generation Offshore, the 42 millimeters, had a rubber crown and pusher. They still manufacture the model as so (because, as Bottinelli explains, it was born that way). But for the new models, the DNA of the brand revolves around ceramics — ceramic bezel, crown and pusher.

“It’s a tough material, but we’re exigent as well — we really want high finishing, even on the ceramic. It wasn’t easy to accomplish, but now we’ve mastered it. And this watch was entirely made by hand. The more I see, the more I like it (laughs).”

Historically, the Royal Oak Offshore watch is the largest of the large. When it was first introduced in 1992, some even went so far as to claim it was an insult to good taste. It proved to be a pioneer. It set the trend for large-size watches that has continued ever since. Audemars Piguet is exclusively distributed in the Philippines by Lucerne.

Look at the forged carbon Offshore, motions Bottinelli to another page in the catalog. “Six years ago, we invented the process of putting forged carbon in our watches.”

While other hi-tech, high-end watches would cost an arm (and a leg) but are indecipherable and hysterically useless because of design overkill (something that wouldn’t look out of place in a Mike Mignola comic book), the Offshore is the exact opposite.

“It’s very easy to read,” he enthuses. “Clear and readable — most important. I think people want to buy watches that will tell them the time very easily. At night, sometimes your eyes get very weak, but this watch (won’t give you any difficulties at all in telling time).”

He discusses the other Offshore models — the beauty in rose gold and the other, the stainless steel wonder.

“The Royal Oak, before the Offshore, was born in 1972 in stainless steel. And Audemars Piguet was the first brand to use stainless steel the way we use precious metals. People also said, ‘That’s crazy! That would never work!’ (laughs). But it did. After that, everybody made steel watches.”

He shows the surface of the stainless steel wonder, with its mirror polish, intricate case and all. He says when a person wears an Offshore, others (the sophisticated ones, to be precise) know right away that it’s an Offshore. And the people who generally wear AP watches are those who like radical designs.

“Architects, artists — they get inspired by the Offshore. Our brand is known for making ‘crazy’ watches,” Bottinelli says, meaning “offbeat” and “unusual” models. “But we can also make very classical and complicated ones as well. I don’t think other brands could do that. It’s not in their DNA.”

And that’s in the DNA of AP.

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Audemars Piguet is exclusively distributed in the Philippines by Lucerne. AP timepieces are available at Greenbelt 5 (729-0392) and Lucerne Shangri-La Plaza Mall (634-3161). For information, visit www.audemarspiguet.com.