The ‘70s icon that kept its cool
WHEN we decided to launch the Royal Oak 40 years ago,” Olivier Audemars explains animatedly, “it was the start of the worst crisis ever to hit the Swiss watchmaking industry. People were throwing themselves from windows… But luckily,” he adds with a glint in his eye, “watch factories tend to be just one storey high, so they survived.”
Not only did they survive, but despite the 1970s onslaught of plastic Japanese digitals, ye olde Swiss watch industry survived as well. Yet, on balance, Audemars Piguet’s iconic octagonal watch really shouldn’t have. No one had made a luxury sports watch before, and the market simply wasn’t ready for a steel watch that cost the same as prestigious gold pieces of the time.
“Back then, the technology didn’t exist to work the Royal Oak’s complex shapes in steel,” Audemars continues. “It was more expensive to machine the case and bezel in steel than gold. In fact, the very first prototype we made from white gold.
“The Royal Oak broke the rules of the industry, at a critical time, but at AP it seemed the logical thing to do.”
It took a few years for the Royal Oak to start selling, famously to entrepreneurs such as the legendary head of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, and fellow members of the glitzy international jet set. But sure enough, AP’s gamble of 1972 paid off handsomely, to the point where the Royal Oak now forms the core collection of this venerable family firm.
FRESH, COOL
It wasn’t just the bold choice of material that broke new ground, however. It was the design as a whole; a design that, like the Porsche 911 or Fender Stratocaster, has remained virtually unchanged four decades down the line; a design that still feels fresh and, let’s face it, achingly cool.
It was the brainchild of a man called Gérald Genta, who passed away in August last year. Universally acknowledged as the Greatest Watch Designer of Our Time, he already had classics like Patek Philippe’s Golden Ellipse and Omega’s Constellation under his belt before he embarked on the first and greatest of his trio of Seventies octagonal classics (the others being IWC’s Ingenieur SL and Patek Philippe’s Nautilus).
Legend has it that Genta dashed off the Royal Oak in a single night – which isn’t so far-fetched, given how coherently this watch hangs together. It’s a moreish cocktail of signature details like the tapestry-weave dial pattern, a slick integrated bracelet and eight hexagonal screws affixing that eight-sided bezel – it in itself inspired by the portholes of the Royal Navy’s 17th-century HMS Royal Oak.
“The Royal Oak is extraordinary because, amazingly, it remains unique and recognisable,” says Mansel Fletcher, features editor of men’s style portal, Mr Porter. “That’s partly, but only partly, because it’s octagonal. Forty years later it retains the power to shock – something for which Genta deserves huge acclaim.”
40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONS
What this year’s 40th-anniversary launches prove also is the sheer versatility of the Royal Oak formula. This ranges from a £247,730 tourbillon edition with a skeleton dial, whose interior angles take a week to polish, right down to a £16,000 re-edition of the 1972 original, complete with blue “petite tapisserie” dial, whose complex relief pattern is still milled using 40-year-old machines. There are chronographs, perpetual calendars, diamond-set ladies pieces and more – somewhat paradoxically, today these are available in gold as well as steel.
In terms of sheer élan, are there any other watches that even hold a candle to the Royal Oak? “Very few are in the same league,” says Fletcher. “Patek’s Nautilus is the only one that easily comes to mind and while it’s hugely desirable it doesn’t define the brand in the way that the Royal Oak defines Audemars Piguet.”
Nowadays, every high-end watch brand offers a steel sports collection. But there’s little point looking elsewhere, when the Royal Oak offers the original, real McCoy, with killer looks and faultless execution to boot.