Page 72 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2024

THERE ARE SPORTS WATCHES, THERE ARE DRESS WATCHES, Piaget’s watches have long been distinguished by their ultra-thin movements,
and then there’s the Piaget Polo 79. Created using approximately 200 grams of 18K yellow gold, priced just shy of $100,000, and displaying only hours and minutes, it’s as decadent as it is distinctive. Its case and bracelet are decorated with bold, horizontal lines called “godroons” that give it an integrated, sculptural look, and its dial is equally pared-back, with no numerals and a set of simple dauphine-style hands. Released earlier this year as the first piece to celebrate Piaget’s 150th year, everything about the Polo is as unconventional today as it was in 1979.
“It’s a very unique watch,” says Piaget CEO Benjamin Comar. “For the clients, the collectors, for Mr. Piaget back then, for the artisans in the workshops, and even for me. When I joined [Piaget] two and a
half years ago, the first question people asked me was: ‘When will [the Polo] be back?’ It embodies so much of our history and uniqueness; it’s much more than a watch, it’s a lifestyle.”
The origins of the Polo 79 can be traced back to the late 1970s, and Yves Piaget — the fourth generation to lead his family’s maison. For as long as Piaget had been in business, there had been two kinds of watches: casual, sporty models, and dressier, more refined ones. Now, however, with tastes changing and a new decade dawning, Yves Piaget realized there was demand for a third kind of watch, one that combined the luxurious materials and refinement of a dress watch with the robust sportiness of something more casual. “We had to answer to this particular demand of our customers who are used to getting just dress watches,” explained Piaget at the time. “Now our customers like to do more sports [and] they want to be exquisite, even in sport.”
The Polo, with a name inspired by the international clientele Yves would observe at Piaget-sponsored polo matches in Miami, was created to suit an emerging breed of luxury lifestyle. “In Texas, in Los Angeles, in Miami, people would dress in a very casual way, even if they had a lot of money,” explains Jean-Bernard Forot, the brand’s current head of patrimony. “While, in Europe at the time, people were more formal, wearing suits and ties. The watch was sporty-chic. You could wear it for the polo match, but also for the garden party or gala afterwards. It was suited for the American market, but it became a worldwide success for the maison.”
hard stone dials, and exquisitely crafted gold cases. It’s an identity that stretches back to the launch of the maison, by Georges-Édouard Piaget, in 1874. “We are watchmakers who became jewellers and even today, it’s the same creative studio that works on both, taking inspiration from one world into another,” says Comar. “When we talk about Piaget’s boldness, we think of these designs, of course, but it was actually there at the very beginning when Georges-Édouard Piaget decided to specialize in ultra-thin components.”
Decades later, Comar explains, it was this mastery of ultra-thin movements that made it possible for Piaget to utilize ornamental stone for its dials, and create some of the first jewellery watches of the 1960s. “This mastery, and creativity, created a very singular identity,” he adds.
The original Polo, then, didn’t look like anything that had come before. But it played to the maison’s strengths nonetheless, with delicately carved, polished gold surfaces and a cutting-edge quartz movement — both hallmarks of Piaget’s unique savoir faire. Piaget would also go on to create many other versions of the Polo throughout the 1980s, with dials made from onyx, lapis lazuli, turquoise, opal, and many other precious and semi-precious stones.
The new Polo 79, then, is a tribute to the original model, and a thoroughly 21st-century watch in its own right. At 38 mm, it’s larger than the original, but in line with contemporary preferences. And, while quartz movements were at the leading edge of technology in the 1970s, the new Polo 79 is powered by the more traditional — but still extremely thin — Piaget 1200P1, an automatic micro-rotor movement with a 44-hour power reserve that measures just 2.35 mm thick.
The watch also represents a shift in taste. As, ever since the Polo was dis- continued in the 1990s, most collectors focused their attentions on two kinds of watch: casual steel pieces, such as diver’s watches and chronographs, and highly refined complications including perpetual calendars and minute-repeaters. After decades of steadily growing enthusiasm for these pieces, however, the tide appears to be turning once again. Collectors now seem increasingly drawn to a third kind of watch, one that combines the luxury of high-complications with the clean lines and simplicity of a steel sports watch. So, just as the original arrived in 1979, this new Piaget Polo 79 is right on time.
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