Description

The ‘Royal Oak’ overturned the prevailing codes in 1972 during a period of existential crisis for the watch industry due to the boom of the cheap Quartz watches made in Asia.
The company had to come with a bold, solid stainless sports steel luxury watch, they gave the mission to Gerald Genta to design it and one of the most audacious watch was born.
– In 1993 the standard Royal Oak being already 20 years old, the brand looking for a younger generation clientele came with a very polarised design with the “Royal Oak Offshore”42mm shocking case, people in the industry calling it “The Beast”.

In 2002, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Royal Oak, the brand wanted to innovate but this time into the Haute Horology segment, they came up with the cutting-edge advanced version of the Offshore, the new masterpiece making department calling the new variation “Concept“.  The first born was the CW1 ref. 25980AI and from there a long line of models were destined to see the light.

*The present watch represents an ingenious new complication, in 2010, an F1 legend asked AP’s head watchmakers if its possible to create a watch that can measure and record an extended series of consecutive lap times for motor-racing ?  Five years later, they released the Michael Schumacher “Royal Oak Concept Laptimer” reference 26221FT,  a highly complicated chronograph with three column wheels that could measure consecutive lap times, it has a black openworked dial with two central second hands.  The case is a big 44mm in carbon with a titanium bezel, surprisingly the crown and pushers have rose gold insert and the Laptimer pusher at 9 o’clock is made of black ceramic with Michael Schumacher’s ‘MS’ signature on it.
This is a limited edition of 221 pieces only which are all sold-out. 

Audemars Piguet – bio

Audemars Piguet is a Swiss manufacturer of mechanical watches founded in 1875. They began in the Vallée de Joux. Jules Louis Audemars formed a partnership with Edward Auguste Piguet. Audemars created complicated blank watch movements for other manufactures to use. Piguet specialized in the final regulation of watches. They then split responsibilities when they began their own company. Audemars was in charge of production and technical aspects while Piguet focused on sales and management. One of their first achievements was creating the first repeater wristwatch in 1892 and in 1972 the iconic steel “Royal Oak”.