Thin Is In

Piaget has long been a leader in creating ever-thinner luxury timepieces, pioneering ultraflat mechanical movements in the 1950s, but the brand has excelled itself with the Altiplano Ultimate Concept watch, which is an unbelievable 2mm thick—just half a millimetre more than the diameter of a pinhead. It took four years of painstaking research to develop the thinnest hand-wound watch in the world. A new, high-tech, ultra-rigid, cobalt-based alloy saved precious fractions of a millimetre, and the case doubles as the exterior component and the movement’s mainplate to save more space. Piaget has filed five patents to protect its latest technological innovations. Yes, it’s a concept watch, so it’s not going into production yet, but its engineering advances will benefit future models.