In Finissimo
As Bulgari celebrates the 10th anniversary of its most innovative timepiece with a new recordbreaking launch, Sarah Maisey meets its designer, Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani
“It looks simple; that’s the point,” says Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, the man behind Bulgari’s distinctive – and phenomenally successful – Octo Finissimo watch. As the company’s product creation executive director, Buonamassa Stigliani is introducing me to three new iterations of the ultra-thin Octo Finissimo, created to celebrate the watch’s 10-year anniversary.
The reveal of the timepieces took place in Rome and was preceded by an event that had computergenerated graphics projected on to the 1,900-yearold Pantheon building. The conductor of the accompanying live orchestra was connected to a computer via a headset, which either slowed down or sped up the imagery in sync with his brainwaves. Avant-garde and groundbreaking, the performance perfectly captured Bulgari and Buonamassa Stigliani’s approach to watchmaking.
Rather than replicating what other watchmakers are doing, Buonamassa Stigliani insists on exploiting the very thing that sets Bulgari apart in the world of horology. “We are not Swiss, we are Roman, and the point is we can see things in a different way. For Italians, beauty is absolutely necessary. And when you walk around Rome, you are surrounded by beauty.”
The Octo Finissimo family has earned a reputation for bold aesthetics and technical excellence. It has also bagged a series of world records, including the world’s thinnest tourbillon in 2014, the world’s thinnest minute repeater in 2016 and the world’s thinnest perpetual calendar in 2021.
For its 10-year anniversary, Buonamassa Stigliani has created the Octo Finissimo Automatic 10th anniversary and the Octo Finissimo Chronograph GMT Automatic 10th anniversary – which are each being released in an edition of 200. There is also the Octo Finissimo Ultra, which at 1.80 millimetre thick, almost defies belief and is officially the world’s thinnest watch. So special is this timepiece that only 10 pieces will be created.
To set the 10th anniversary pieces apart from other watches that the house produces, Buonamassa Stigliani realised the project needed something different. “So I said: ‘Why don’t we use one of the first sketches that we made?’ And then started the nightmare,” he adds, with a laugh. “It took eight months just to develop this dial.”
The Octo Finissimo Automatic and the Octo Finissimo Chronograph GMT both have a dial that appears to be hand-drawn, with pencil dashes for the hours and a roughly sketched octagon inside the circular bezel. While the lines feel spontaneous, and echo a design created in the 1970s by storied watch designer Gerald Genta, in reality, each was fiendishly complex to create. “To turn the sketch into a digital version, you have to decide which pixel is in, or out. Because when I make a stroke on a paper, it’s a stroke on a piece of paper, but when you digitise, because the laser has to burn the dial, it is not the same thing,” Buonamassa Stigliani says. “The chronograph was even worse. We presented the prototype, and JeanChristophe [Babin, Bulgari’s chief executive] said: ‘Amazing, but I need to read the time.’”
For the new record-breaking Octo Finissimo Ultra, achieving a thickness of only 1.80mm required a totally new approach. “It was not a clear idea from the beginning. It was not to break any records, but a very wide brief.”
Concepto Watch Factory manufactures Bulgari timepieces, and while respecting its unrivalled expertise, Buonamassa Stigliani needed the cra smen to put aside their preconceptions.
“The first meeting with our partner Concepto was incredible, as the first layout was a watch that already exists. I said: ‘Guys, I am very sorry, but this doesn’t work for us. We need something that doesn’t exist today, so please push the boundaries, and try to imagine things in a different way.’”
For the Concepto engineers, who are famed for their absolute precision, this was no easy task. “This is perhaps the most difficult thing to do in Switzerland, to talk to watch masters and say, you have to think in a different way.”
To help create a completely new watch, Buonamassa Stigliani had to guide the team to defy watchmaking conventions. “I said, I don’t need the octagonal opening, I don’t need the round shape of dial, or of the bezel, and let’s take the biggest element – the movement – and start to spread it out.”
To achieve this, the movement was deconstructed, and laid virtually flat, which in turn created the need to replace the crown with two wheels. Otherwise, a tool would be needed to simply wind the watch every day. “I don’t remember how many people we had working
A beautiful watch without any objective or purpose is just a piece of art
day and night on this,” Buonamassa Stigliani says, but the process was slowed by the negative knock-on effect of each alteration. “Each time you put a new element on the table, you have a cascade of a lot of elements that don’t work anymore,” he explains.
In total, it took almost two and half years to perfect, and as he holds up the finished watch, it is clear even as its designer, he is captivated by its astonishing brevity. “From the face, it looks like a three-dimensional watch. But when you turn it, it’s like: ‘Where did it go?’ It’s like magic. Like an artwork by [Maurits Cornelis] Escher, and you lose your eyes trying to find the solution,” he says.
As an industrial designer, Buonamassa Stigliani is motivated by excellence in both form and function. “A beautiful watch without any objective or purpose is just a piece of art you keep in your room; it is not something that you want to use,” he explains.
Likewise, he insists, perfect engineering without beauty is a wasted opportunity. His role, he believes, is to navigate the narrow path between the two. “The origin of the Octo Finissimo was to wear a grand complication watch in a contemporary way. Before the Finissimo, ultra-thin watches were just for tuxedos. A round shape, white face and black crocodile strap without stitching. Perfect for a tuxedo, but impossible to use during everyday life.”
Now, all Octo Finissimos are a feat of engineering loaded with technically demanding complications housed in a darkly elegant, matte grey titanium case and bracelet. The titanium was not just an aesthetic solution, he explains. When creating the Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater in 2016, he realised the chimes of the gongs were getting lost. “I said I cannot hear it, we have to use a material to amplify this sound. Why don’t we use titanium? The reaction was: ‘Fabrizio, thank you, but this is one of the most noble complications in the Swiss watchmaking industry and we have to use white gold.’”
Deeply persuasive, his argument that every watch house already made watches in that way evidently hit its mark, and Buonamassa Stigliani got his titanium.
When it was first unveiled to the industry, even he was taken aback by its beauty. “It was a spaceship, like a Darth Vader watch, completely stealth, and was the first ultra-thin watch with a very modern, contemporary approach.”
The modernity is not limited to the material or the design, however. One side effect of reworking the new Ultra thin movement was the barrel being le exposed, creating a visual gap in the dial. Buonamassa Stigliani’s solution was to etch a QR code on to the barrel that the owner can scan, and that takes them to a dedicated site for the watch.
“The QR code opens a gate, and now this is the beginning of the metaverse,” he explains. He likens it to the doorway of the famous Bulgari boutique on Via dei Condotti in Rome, the company’s home since 1905, which has been visited by the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable and Elizabeth Taylor. “When you scan this watch you go into a world that doesn’t exist, through a physical object.”