When watch homes reinvent their iconic designs in jewelled kind, the outcomes may be chic, joyous, and downright outrageous. We single out 5 basic watch designs which were given a valuable spin for 2024.
Jewelled watches for 2024
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
Brown and inexperienced gem stones give a laid-back glamour to the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
(Picture credit score: Audemars Piguet)
Its fame was solid in pure, gleaming metal, but the Royal Oak’s super-clean traces take surprisingly properly to a gem-set guise. However then, as one of many authentic super-thin mechanisms, this celebrity watch – it was the primary design to make use of metal like valuable steel – has a naturally slender profile, permitting for the added quantity that precious-stone setting dictates. Audemars Piguet has been concerned within the enterprise of jewelled timepieces for the reason that late nineteenth century, when it supplied mechanisms for homes reminiscent of Cartier and Tiffany & Co. Having established an in-house jewelry studio in 1980, it has developed a jewelled-watch model all its personal. This yr’s Royal Oak automated variation is a positive instance: a mixture of 861 baguette-cut black sapphires, intense and light-weight tsavorites and smoky quartz mix to create a moody camouflage impact.
audemarspiguet.com
Bulgari Octo Roma
The Bulgari Octo Roma Phoenix secret jewelled watch in open and closed view
(Picture credit score: Bulgari)
Secret watches, timepieces with a jewelled dial cap and so designed to appear like a bracelet, have been initially created for girls within the Nineteen Twenties, who, eager to maintain a social diary on monitor, would possibly discreetly seek the advice of their watch with out insulting their host. Immediately, watch manufacturers more and more use them as a type of storytelling, with fantastical narratives all the higher to show in-house jewelry design and setting expertise. And, with regards to crafting fables across the intricate technological expertise that jewelled watches require, Bulgari is a grasp. This yr’s excessive jewelry Fenice Octo Roma Secret Watch is made attainable by the impossibly skinny BVL 268SK Octo Roma motion, permitting for an intricate mechanical skeletonised dial and the ornamental tapestry of a canopy with Phoenix rising up throughout the sizeable 44mm dial in a valuable sweep of blue, pink and purple gem stones, sapphires, aquamarines, rubies, amethysts and a tourmaline Paraiba amongst them.
bulgari.com
Patek Philippe Aquanaut Luce
Blue notes: Patek Philippe’s jewelled Aquanaut Luce excessive jewelry watch
(Picture credit score: Patek Philippe)
Whereas the 1976 Nautilus design is at the moment Patek Philippe’s most sought-after sports-luxe design, the Aquanaut, a extra informal variation launched 20 years later, in 1996, will get my vote. In all probability as a result of its streamlined profile and informal rubber bracelet, reflecting the checkerboard sample of the dial, is much less boardroom CEO and extra St Tropez weekender. This yr’s high-jewellery mannequin boosts the gem issue with a superbly thought of mixture of two setting methods: rectangular baguettes and snow-setting, the place variously sized smaller brilliant-cut white diamonds are tightly clustered right into a glinting floor. Right here, their addition softens the stark traces of the 72 baguette-cut blue sapphires and 38 baguette-cut diamonds, making a wealthy jewel for the wrist and a glamorous promise of surf-bound, summer season pursuits.
patek.com
Piaget Polo
Piaget celebrates its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary with a ruby-set model of the enduring Polo watch
(Picture credit score: Piaget)
The watchmaker-jeweller is celebrating its one hundred and fiftieth birthday this yr, and the star of the celebration is the Piaget Polo designed by Yves Piaget in 1979. Yves was a devoted artwork lover who counted Andy Warhol as a buddy, and there’s one thing of a Howard Hodgkin affect in his authentic watch design, the place the watch case, bracelet and modern gadroon ornament have been absolutely built-in in a sublimely pure mixture of the jeweller’s and watchmaker’s crafts. The Polo was ‘carved, hyperlink by hyperlink from a single block of 18ct gold’, in keeping with an advert marketing campaign on the time and is, you would possibly argue, the unique sports-luxe watch. Within the intervening 45 years, it has been redesigned virtually past recognition, however some parts stay, together with its super-skinny kind, which lends itself to this celebratory deep-red ruby iteration with baguette-cut rubies and diamonds. The skeleton dial can also be a recurring Piaget motif. Nonetheless, at a whopping 49mm vast, this model of the Piaget Polo is out of bounds for slender wrists.
piaget.com
Rolex Daytona
Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona with diamonds
(Picture credit score: Rolex)
Two new, jewelled variations of Rolex’s 1963 Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona are launched this yr, every incorporating mother-of-pearl dials and markers in sheeny white and black varieties, which has brownish, ombré tones on this case. The luminous coating present in oyster shells and others has lengthy been a favorite dial materials for watch homes, as a result of it may be reduce into super-thin sheets, and profile quantity is a major consideration in watch design. Rolex has been utilizing mother-of-pearl throughout its collections for years. Each Daytona items have white-gold circumstances, and the primary options the slick, black Oysterflex bracelet with white mother-of-pearl dial and chrono subdials in black. The steel bracelet version, nevertheless, sees the main points reversed, with a black mother-of-pearl dial and white mother-of-pearl counters. Thirty-six brilliant-cut diamonds circle every dial, whereas the chunky brilliant-cut diamond dial markers add a sporty frisson.
rolex.com
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