Making of a cult classic
Four decades on, the Royal Oak timepiece is still in vogue
Many iconic companies have tried to revolutionise their industries through groundbreaking design, only to end up taking a very public face-plant. Ford, with the Edsel; Apple, with the Newton; Google, with Google Glass. That was the sort of risk that Audemars Piguet, the venerable Swiss watchmaker, took when it unveiled its Royal Oak in 1972. With its stark geometry and stainless-steel case, the futuristic Royal Oak seemed to anticipate the unloved DeLorean sports car more than the future of fine watchmaking.
And we know what happened with the DeLorean. (Yes, Marty McFly took one back to the future; the company also failed, just two years after the first cars were produced.)
That is why the success of the Royal Oak is so striking. Four decades later, the love-it-or-hate-it Royal Oak has become the ultimate cult watch, with vintage pieces commanding high prices at auction, new releases popping up on television shows and endless high-end variants becoming must-haves for the celebrity class.
With its octagonal bezel, exposed mounting screws and razor-sharp lines, the Royal Oak, as many of its devotees will attest, can be an acquired taste.
“When I first saw the Royal Oak, I thought it was ugly, too boxy, and awkward looking,” said Kevin Rose, the chief executive of Hodinkee, the watch site. “Then, after you spend enough time with it, you realise the funky-chunky-like design is really striking. It doesn’t look like every other watch, and that’s what makes it stand out.”
In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, musician and avid watch collector John Mayer admitted that the Royal Oak looks “like a stop sign on your wrist”. But that day, he wore a Royal Oak Extra Thin in rose gold, which retails for US$50,800 (1.8 million baht), at the end of his tattoo sleeve.
The Royal Oak’s back story is oft told among watch nerds, since the watch was born of an existential crisis in the industry.
By the early 1970s, cheap, rugged quartz watches from Asia were starting to flood the market and change the way watches were worn, because people no longer had to take them off to go swimming or play sports. Many makers of delicate Swiss mechanical watches grappled with dwindling sales.
To deal with the challenge, Audemars Piguet, founded in 1875, commissioned watch designer Gérald Genta to create the unheard-of: a luxury watch made of steel — stainless steel, not gold or platinum — with maximum durability and water resistance.
The space-age industrial design, which Genta sketched in a day, was a byproduct of its era, according to Michael Friedman, the Audemars Piguet historian.
“In design, there’s an absolute explosion of creativity — in motor cars, architecture, furniture — in the late 60s and early 70s,” Friedman said. “It’s a heightened period of experimentation.”
To underscore the Royal Oak’s sporty personality, Genta took inspiration from a deep-sea-diving helmet, which resulted in the case shape and exposed screws.
The finished product was a piece that pioneered a new category: the “luxury sport” watch. But success came slowly. It took three years to sell the first 1,000 Royal Oaks, because of its head-scratching design and high cost (about 10 times what a Rolex Submariner cost, although in those days, the Sub was still considered a sports watch, not a luxury item).
Audemars Piguet stuck with the design, and it became a centrepiece of the brand.
Prices now range from $17,800 for the basic Self-Winding Royal Oak in stainless steel to $95,700 for the Perpetual Calendar in rose gold (the company will release a yellow gold version this month).
The watch has become a talisman of cool onscreen, popping up in cameos on shows like Mr. Robot, Black-ish and, quite conspicuously, on several characters in Entourage. (None of this was paid product placement, Friedman said.)
Karl Lagerfeld, John Legend and Usher have all flashed Royal Oaks, and the watch is a staple in fashion spreads; the Cleveland Cavaliers’ J.R. Smith wears one in the January issue of GQ. Its sportier (and blingier) offspring, the Royal Oak Offshore diver watch, introduced in 1993, has become a go-to watch for eight-figure athletes like LeBron James and Tom Brady.
Vintage pieces from the 70s often sell for $30,000 to $50,000 at auction, Friedman said; exceptional pieces go much higher.
“The aspirational generation is now to the point where these are viable objects to collect,” Friedman said. “To the previous generation, they felt too contemporary.”
That’s one way to put it. Or you could just recall a line from the film Chinatown: “Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”
So too, apparently, do avant-garde watches. ©